It wasn’t long ago when segregation still existed in our public school system. Columbus City Schools officially desegregated on September 6, 1979.
Desegregation didn’t make the inequalities suddenly disappear. Ohio State Professor Simone C. Drake recently wrote a book about her experience as a young black woman in the 1980s going through the recently desegregated Columbus school system.
Then, since 2010, when the Noor Community Clinic opened its doors, Dr. Malika Haque and her group of volunteers have been providing primary care services to hundreds of underserved patients.
Finally, we discuss how the work behind running a theater requires more than just a leader. Award-winning artistic director for the Contemporary Theatre of Ohio, Leda Hoffmann, is building community connection through theater.
Guests:
- Simone Drake, author and English professor, Ohio State University
- Dr. Malika Haque, medical director, Noor Community Clinic
- Leda Hoffmann, producing artistic director, The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides in WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. Columbus City Schools officially desegregated on September 6th, 1979, but desegregation didn't make the inequities suddenly disappear. Ohio State Professor Simone C. Drake recently wrote a book called "Becoming Educated, a Midwest Story." It walks through her experience as a young black woman who was just starting kindergarten in 1980, here in Columbus. The book is about her experience as a black woman in the 80s going through the recently desegregated Columbus City School system. And Professor Drake joins us today. Welcome to All Sides.
Simone Drake: Thank you, Amy. Thank you for having me.
Juravich: So your book goes through your experience as a young black girl in Columbus City schools. During your time, the school had become integrated, you had black teachers, you had white friends. However, there were still some underlying inequalities. Can you share some examples of what you experienced as a younger girl in school?
Drake: Well, this book started out as a very different book. It started, well, I decided to go to law school while I was a professor and I was being very pragmatic and writing papers that connected to an interest I had on how black middle-class parents make educational choices for their children. And I don't know, then maybe around 2017, 2018, I decided to do a creative nonfiction. Program at the Kenyon Reviews Writers Workshop in the summer. And then the next year, I got a fellowship at the National Gallery of Arts Center for the Advanced Study in Visual Art. And I started writing parts of this book. But even then, it wasn't supposed to be a book. But different things led to other things. I ended up producing a documentary, I'll shut down about the... The 1971 closing of Lyndon McKinley High School due to racial unrest. My parents graduated from there. I grew up in South London. And, um, so just kind of organically and randomly. There's a point where I just decided, Oh, this, I like writing this way. It's different than the academic writing that I'd been doing for previous books and the stories just started flowing. Ciao.
Juravich: Yes.
Drake: How it came to be.
Juravich: The book is about your experience as a young black woman in the 80s, going through a recently desegregated Columbus city school system. So during the time your school had become integrated, you had black teachers and white friends. However, there were still inequities. So can you tell us just a little bit about, you know, you were, you were about to tell us about being in kindergarten and Oakland park elementary. Can you tell about some of those experiences as a young girl?
Drake: Yes, so I would say in elementary school, I was somewhat oblivious to what was going on politically and socially. But one thing that I think even integration couldn't address is that the neighborhoods for the most part remained segregated racially. So I grew up in South London, and pretty much all of my neighbors were African American. Um, I had a lot of friends who lived in Clintonville and I think most, pretty much all of their neighbors were white. So, um, so this, you know, the law had its limits. It could, but it could do what it could change, um with just sort of the, the dynamics of the country.
Juravich: Well, and also, there were quite a few pop culture references throughout your book. What made you decide to include that element in the book, just to make it different?
Drake: No, well, I, I study and I publish and I teach on popular culture among, among a variety of other topics, and it just seemed to make sense to me. I mean, so much of our lives are informed or experienced within popular culture. And I did a lot of sort of like memory type of exercises or memory work to, um, to write the book. That a lot of the things that I wrote about weren't necessarily things I just think about on a regular basis. And popular culture is a useful device, music, film for conjuring up the memory and for making the connections.
Juravich: In your book, you talk about the ways black girls were treated differently, especially when it came to education. Can you tell us about some things that you were told in comparison to maybe your brother?
Drake: Well, as far as education goes, I feel like my parents didn't really have gender divisions in that regard. There were lots of rules, though, that were very different between my brother and I and also related to school, especially as I got older with things like dating or things I could do with my friends or couldn't do that very much were about me being a girl. In school, I would say maybe by high school, I did notice that there were things and some of this might be in retrospect, but certainly I didn't in high school. I did not really understand what engineering was. But in AP chemistry, the boys would talk about engineering. Very few girls talked about engineering, yet we were in the same classes. Um, doing the same work and probably some of us getting better grades than the boys. So I, although I don't, I can't recall anything explicit from the teachers or the administration about what girls should or should not do or study. Uh, I think there, there were still some, um, attitudes that were just sort of implicitly embedded in, in how we were taught.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the memoir, "Becoming Educated, A Midwest Story," with author and Ohio State professor, Simone C. Drake. You went on to Denison University, which was predominantly white. You did not want to go to an HBCU. Can you tell us about that stage of your life?
Drake: Sure. My mother chose Denison University for me. I had another school I wanted to go to and I think they called after I had already accepted somewhere else and said they still had my scholarship and next thing I know, that's where I was going. And it was, it of demographics have changed a lot since. I started in 1993, but yes, it was a very, very small percentage of just non-white students in general. As far as an HBCU, it's interesting because most of my family that is from the south, largely from Georgia, pretty much everyone attended an HBCU, but I didn't grow up having a real strong connection with that side of my family. Because my grandfather was in the military. So that's how my family on my mother's side ended up in Columbus. It was his last, the Rickenbacker, the Lockborne Air Force Base was his last military assignment before retirement. And also I think the students that were very much for going to HBCUs, sometimes were the ones that critiqued me the most for whether I acted black enough or looked black enough, sounded black enough. And so at that time I had, that was sort of my association was, it was a space where, um, maybe I wouldn't be accepted. I've, I've very much changed my attitude as a parent and encouraged my children to, to definitely consider HBC uses.
Juravich: Yeah, that was my next question. Your memoir extends to when you finally had your own children. So how did your experiences growing up and what you wrote about influence the way you're approaching school with your own kids?
Drake: Well, initially I wanted to replicate my experience. I wanted my children to have my experience and my experience going through Columbus public schools was an overall, a good experience, but, um, the schools had changed. We had a significant, um U S Supreme court case in 1996 that, that changed, um the court mandate for integration. And, and also I, I didn't, I didn't live in a neighborhood I grew up in anymore. And so there was just a, it became very complicated in ways that I had just imagined through rose colored glasses, I guess it was going to be so simple. Um, and we had also before having children move back here from like the Washington DC metro area, which is very different than central Ohio. And so I was just always kind of searching for, I don't know if it still exists or not, and just also where they would be safe, like psychically safe. And I think that is why I initially started a very different project for this book when I was in law school.
Juravich: Overall, you know, so you've written this book, overall, what do you hope people take away from the book? Like, what's the biggest takeaway that you hope that people get after reading your memoir?
Drake: That there are many different ways and places in which we become educated. You know, because a lot of the book, I call them vignettes, they're so short, not chapters. A lot of them do not take place inside a, you know, a traditional classroom space, educational classroom space. And so that we're always learning, we're always becoming educated in various. Spaces and walks of life. And so I think that's, to me, what the book is really about. Yes, it is about the integration experience and then parenting. But it's also all of the things that I keep learning in life and will continue to learn.
Juravich: We've been talking to Ohio State professor and author Simone C. Drake about her recent memoir, "Becoming Educated, a Midwest Story." Thanks so much for joining us today, Simone. Thank you for having me. And coming up, we're going to talk to the executive director of the Noor Community Clinic, which provides primary care services to the underinsured. That's when Fascinating Ohio from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sids and WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. The Noor Community Clinic opened its doors in 2010 with a mission to be a primary care provider for patients who lack access to traditional healthcare providers. Dr. Malika Huck founded the clinic as a pediatrician. For over 20 years at the nationwide clinic professor at pediatrics at Ohio State University. And she joins us today to tell us about the clinic and her work. Welcome to all sides, Dr. Huck. My pleasure. So tell me about the Noor Community Clinic. It's affiliated with the Noir Islamic Cultural Center in Hilliard. How did it come about all those years ago? How did you end up starting this community clinic?
Dr. Malika Haque: First and foremost, I'd like to greet with my Islamic greetings. As-salamu alaykum, which is peace be upon you. It has been a fascinating story about the birth of the Noor Community Clinic. The Noor community clinic is also known as the Muslim clinic of Haya. A group of physicians and healthcare providers, I always had this idea about serving them to serve, right from my early childhood. And during my internship, by the way, I'm from India, and my husband and I, after our marriage, came here in 1967. And then following that, I did all the internships and fellowships, and finally, Settled down as a pediatrician and worked for 35 some years at Nationwide Children's Hospital one of the largest Hospitals in the country and also I was a fellow at Ohio State University College of Medicine the first year that is 1970 to 71 and Did my fellowship in developmental disabilities and mental retardation and I served as a primary care physician for children in the underserved areas of Nationwide Children's Hospital and built the first clinic, full-time primary care clinic. And then in 1973 to 74, and then later on, we have many other clinics that were established in succession to that, but I was the first one to do, to establish the primary care at Nationwide Children's hospital in the community. And therefore had a lot of experience. So. This idea of having the Muslim physicians get together and come up with this new community clinic was always there in my head because my father wanted me to serve the underserved. Because when he graduated, he presented me with a diamond ring and said the richest have the best care in the world, but the poor don't have any. So you are going to take care of the poor. So. When this idea came, it was brought to my attention by a couple of very fine human beings, one Dr. Issa Mustafa and Dr. Hani Sacher, who brought this idea from Muslim Clinic Ohio that was established in Dayton, Ohio. And then later on in Cincinnati, and they said, maybe you can do it here in Columbus, because they know that had been very innovative and establish. Lot of good courses in the Ohio State University curriculum for the medical students. So when they brought this idea to me I said okay let me see what we can do and I got physicians together and health care professionals, nurses together and we had first meeting in my house and later on is the history is you know everybody got excited.
Juravich: Yeah.
Haque: That we're going to have a Muslim clinic, because Muslims are wonderful people. Islam is a religion of peace, but we are always associated with some kind of disaster somewhere in the world. And so we wanted to establish an ongoing healthcare facility that will help people of all faiths, not just the Muslims. Muslim clinic is actually a misnomer. Because it serves individuals who are underinsured and not insured and whose income is very low. They cannot really provide. So calling it the Noor Community Clinic, it's for the community. For the community, for the committee. And it's, Noor is light. And so it's a light of hope, light of health.
Juravich: The committee. And you very strategically chose you open the clinic on Wednesdays and the hours are in the evenings. Tell me why that's important.
Haque: Because, you know, Ohio State had three other clinics going, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. The only day that was open was the Wednesday evening. And we decided to work on Wednesday evening for the simple reason there was a slot that was not filled. And Muslim Clinic Ohio took that slot. And I said, we're going to work on Wednesday evening and and it's run by physicians as well as the students are the real strength of a clinic. It's amazing. We have 100 medical students go through our program. Wow, 100. 100 medical students who learn about empathy, sympathy, caring for multicultural population. It's not just Muslim, but other cultures.
Juravich: The clinic is an opportunity for students to gain experience. How do you find the students to work there? Do they volunteer?
Haque: They all are volunteers. We have so many students, we cannot handle all of them. Like, we used to have, in the beginning, the Muslim student population was not that much. These clinics attract, just because we are no clinic, Muslim Clinic of Ohio, all the Muslim students want to come. And those who are undergraduate, who are Muslims, they have hope, they look at you. We are a role model for the healthcare professionals in the community, the younger generation. And they're motivated by the fact that we're doing so well. Noor Community Clinic now is the best, is considered, when you Google, is one of the top clinics in the country. University-affiliated, Muslim-free clinics. There are two clinics, and the top clinics in country are Noor community clinic and the Uma Clinic in Oakland, California. And therefore, I feel very good, very good that we have, we're serving. So about thousands of patients every year and primary care as well as special care. Inside the Noor Community Clinic we have a women's wellness clinic, a diabetic clinic, and we have a mental health clinic. Therefore it's a combination of many subspecialties. And we have wonderful physicians who dedicate their lives. They go out. Into the wall at seven o'clock in the morning, and they finish the hospital work, and they come to our clinic in the evening.
Juravich: Well, yeah, well, speaking of dedicating their lives to it, I feel like that that is you in a nutshell. You have dedicated your life to this. You mentioned that you moved to the U.S. From India in the 70s. So tell me about your background shaping the doctor you are today. Just like, tell me about, you know, the little girl who grew up in India and how you became the doctor. You are today.
Haque: Yeah, you know, as a little girl, I always wanted to be the best in terms of whatever I do, whether it's a meal that I'm helping my mom to cook or whether it is a flower arrangement or my studies. My studies, I couldn't be a second. I had to get the, my mother was so cognizant about giving me, giving her children the best education. I think the credit goes back to my mother. So I tell my grandchildren that. It's a great grandmother who has made you what you are today. Because she wanted me the best education. She put me through private schools. Even those days, she understood that, you know, the languages are very important. She has to learn. And my mother did not want the girls, especially we had three daughters and three sons my mother had. And she wanted the girls also to have as best education as the sons. Put me to private schools, and my father was in the war a couple of times, the Second World War, as well as when there was a division going on between India and Pakistan, you know, he was in Pakistan at the time. And therefore, my mother was the strong housekeeper, and really made sure that we got the best education. She, I remember, My mother makes a lot of sacrifices when my father was not able to send the finances from when he was, when the separation was going on. She sold her bracelets and tore up her golden worked saris to melt into silver and then pay my tuition, pay the six children's tuition in private schools. And so that thing helped me. And then I was the first student in my high school. First student in my pre-nurse exam, got a gold medal there. And then, I was selected to be, my parents did not, parents, I had no role models to be a physician, to be honest. Nobody even went to college, because Muslim women, after they turned monarchy, used to be kept, had to be keep home, and had a tuition, my mother had a tution, and a British lady to come. And teach her English at home. So my mother realized how important this was, so she wanted us all to go to private convents. I went to St. Thomas' Convent, I went Christ Church Convent and went to Stella Murray's College, all run by nuns. And so, any case, to make the long story short, coming back, my mother decided that when it was time for me to select my profession, I said, what do you want to do? My parents asked me, I said, well... I want to be a housewife. I want go do home science. She said, well, you can do home sciences, you can be a good housewife, but also, I think God has given you the brains and you've been top in the universities, so maybe you should go into medicine. I thought I'd be an old maid. And I...
Juravich: Ha!
Haque: Medicine is so difficult But she said, no, you just try because, you know, you have special talents. Go there for two months. If you don't like it, you come back. So that led to my admission to the medical school. And I loved it. I couldn't be what I am today if my parents had not introduced it in a positive way and give me the freedom to choose what I want to do.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio from all sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the Noor Community Clinic with founder Dr. Malika Huck. And we're also, we're talking about her life basically. Can you tell me about maybe a special anecdote or an experience that sticks with you from all of your time working in these clinics, especially the Noir Community Clinic? Is there something that sticks with you that you'll just, you know, you want people to know about? Every patient is.
Haque: Excuse me. That's okay. Every patient is fascinating. Every patient has stories. And we see sometimes many refugees who have left their homes and come. And they had everything, but when they come here, they have nothing. And they have to build their lives together. So one time we had a mother come in and she was driven away from the home by her kids. And she said she had nowhere to go. And then we make sure that you know, she was given a shelter and also taken care of physical as well as emotional needs. So the, every patient has a story. And, you know our students and our physicians are very cognizant of the fact that these are the families that need a lot of not just physical care in terms of taking care of the health is different ailments, but also mental and emotional. So my students, when they go into the exam room, I have taught them, treat them with respect and with kindness, and follow the cultural values. Like a lot of my students who are not even Muslim, they greet them with Islam alaikum, and that opens the door for them. Like, you know, I used to go into Spanish family's room and say, hola, and they will feel so happy, they'll start. Talking in Spanish, I said, oh, no English. So therefore, you know, the patients love us, the patients loves us, you and then later on, they get healthcare and they move out. But some people just still want to stay there because they love the care they have gotten us. So my students and my doctors are wonderful and they have made Noor Clinical under my leadership at what it is today.
Juravich: What do you hope for the future of the clinic? What are your dreams for it? Do you have a strong group of volunteers who can take it over? What's going to happen in the future?
Haque: Okay, I'm thinking about it because I've been there for almost 18 years now, you know I am trying up to I I have presented this to Physicians individually. They said dr. Hawk. This is too much. This isn't too much you're doing four people's job How are you going to do this? I said well you can do it So I've got four physicians four to five focusing on whom I'm going to distribute the work It's going to take four or five people to replace one you. Yeah, yeah. Four to five people. Because they said they cannot devote that much time. And I said, you can do it, you do it. What I did was I cut down on all my paying jobs. I focused mostly on Noor Clinic because this is like my baby. And I say it needs nurturing, caring, and now it's growing. It's bringing fruits, like it's helping people. So you cannot ignore this. So I'm training. Four or five doctors to take over and maybe select one of them who will be able to assume the responsibilities and I have to focus on other things as time has come, I mean as we move along.
Juravich: Well, I want to thank you so much for your time today, and thank you for telling me about your life and about the clinic. We've been talking with the founder of the Noor Community Clinic, Dr. Malika Huck, who has been a pediatrician in the area for more than 20 years and is the founder of the clinic, thank you, so much, for joining us today. You're very welcome, and I loved it, thank you. And coming up, we're gonna talk to the producing artistic director of the Contemporary Theater of Ohio. That's when Fascinating Ohio from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sighs in WOSU, where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. For Leda Hoffman, producing artistic director for the Contemporary Theater of Ohio, running a theater is more than just putting together productions. She joined the theater in 2020, and Lita has been the visionary for the theater's future and has been on a journey to build community connection through theater. She joins us today. Welcome to All Sides Leda.
Leda Hoffmann: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: So what is a producing artistic director that that that title sounds so fancy what?
Hoffmann: What does the role involve? Yeah, it's basically like being the CEO of a theater. So I'm the leader of the theater and making sure that everybody who works there being at full-time staff and guest artists are all working in the same direction.
Juravich: Okay, so are you involved in day-to-day productions? Are you trying to oversee everything?
Hoffmann: Yeah, so I direct about half the shows we do every year, so I get to be really involved in the artistry of it. And I, at the end of the day, select the shows that we do. But then of course, I'm also fundraising and figuring out marketing strategy and all of the administrative things.
Juravich: All right. So I'm sure you have a team that you also are kind of a one woman band. Yeah. Yeah So you joined the theater in 2020. You moved from Chicago. Is that right? That's right. Okay That's an interesting year to move for a theater company. Did you like pandemic? Was it a pandemic?
Hoffmann: Yeah, it was a pandemic move. Everyone I interviewed with, I only met over Zoom, and it was months before I met most of the people I work with in person.
Juravich: Yeah, what was it like the idea of thinking of like taking a job running a theater company when no one could go to the theater?
Hoffmann: Was it was really crazy trying you know it was a chance to try to talk to people when we couldn't gather in the ways we were used to yeah I think the nice thing about it reflecting on it was that everyone was innovating but everyone was just trying new things figuring out what virtual theater looked like figuring out other ways of gathering other ways of having conversations and so doing that at the beginning in a weird way was a blessing to sort of level set figure out who I was in this leadership role listen and have time to. Doing full productions and all the scenery and costumes and all of the things that go into it, I got to just talk mostly on Zoom to lots and lots of people from Columbus about what they wanted theater to be.
Juravich: Yeah, did you, I don't know if you were like on a job hunt and you interviewed for a whole bunch of jobs, but like what made you decide yes to the Contemporary Theater of Ohio?
Hoffmann: Yeah, a friend of mine reached out and said, hey, I'm helping the contemporary find a new leader. I think you should apply. And I was settled in Chicago and running a company there and really happy. And so I actually went, I don't know. I'm not sure. And he said, Leda, you've got to talk to these people. And the conversations were so great, I ended up moving here. So was your background in theater? Were you a theater kid? I was definitely a theater. I moved growing up a lot. And so, I found community by being in the school play.
Juravich: Yeah. Yeah. Plays musicals.
Hoffmann: I used to sing, I don't sing anymore.
Juravich: Okay, dance.
Hoffmann: A little. A little?
Juravich: A little, so all the things. Do you have a favorite play you were in as a kid?
Hoffmann: Oh my gosh, I was in our town in high school.
Juravich: Oh.
Hoffmann: And yeah, I love that story. It was great and sort of what I didn't know about that show and now know as an adult has been really fun to look back on.
Juravich: Um, so since joining the theater company, you have taken on more roles, um, than just a director. You also, you gave the theater a makeover. Um, tell me about some of.
Hoffmann: Those changes? Yeah, you know, the pandemic really gave us a chance to have these conversations. And so we were called Catco. Lots of folks in town know us as Catco, a long history, right? Almost 40 years of history as Catko. But as we were reaching out to new audiences and talking to people who'd moved here, that word and the acronym it had become, people didn't necessarily know we were a theater or what we did. And, so we took a very bold step after talking to lots and lots of people and now are officially the Temporary. Which was in the acronym CATCO, but people just didn't know. And so now when we say, hi, we're the Contemporary Theater of Ohio, people know where we are and what we do. Okay.
Juravich: What, when was the decision actually made to get rid of the catcona acronym? Was it before you came?
Hoffmann: No, no, no. This was while I was here. So I think 2022.
Juravich: Okay, yeah, yeah. Well, it's just an interesting thing, because I was talking to a friend the other day, and we were talking about going to the theater and blah blah blah, and they were like, whatever happened to Catco?
Hoffmann: So we're out here trying to teach people. We're still here. We just changed our name. We just changed our name.
Juravich: Okay. So how has that transition been going? Do you feel like it's growing pains or do you feel a lot of people are, because someone like me, I've been in Columbus for 20 years, so you know, I still would maybe call you by accident. Yeah, yeah.
Hoffmann: By accident. Yeah. Yeah, when people ask, can I still call you Catco? Of course, it's great. But we've really found that it's brought a lot of new audiences to us. We're able to reach out to people and have people know who we are right away. Even just, you know, standing at ArtsFest a month ago and talking to people who are passing by. Some people are like, are you used to be Catco, and then other people are, like, oh, contemporary theater. I love contemporary theater. And that spurs a conversation. So it's gone pretty well. It's a scary thing to do. But to say we're gonna change our name and please follow us, but people have been really supportive Okay, so now you're gonna have to define contemporary theater for me. Yeah, do that Yeah, so as part of the process of the renaming We also looked at our mission statement our vision statement and we really defined contemporary theater as relevant to the current moment Mm-hmm. So every time that we talk about doing a play or a musical me and my team We have to sit down and go does this feel like we know the answer to why right now? And a lot of that means that we are doing mostly shows that have been written pretty recently. That's the easiest way to make something relevant. But even if we're reaching back maybe 20 years, when we did nine to five, the musical for example, you go, I know why we wanna talk about gender in the workplace. And I know I wanna do that now.
Juravich: Okay, so contemporary can be something older, but it just speaks to our time in a different way. To our time in a different way.
Hoffmann: And most shows, I mean, like our upcoming season, most shows the oldest play would be, you know, five, maybe 10 years old. So it's really the newest plays that are being written about who we are as a society. And we get to do them in Columbus.
Juravich: Yeah, so tell me about finding new plays, right? Like, are you doing plays that are, like, off-Broadway? Are you doing play that have never even touched Broadway, and you, right, like that kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah.
Hoffmann: For the most part, we're doing shows that have just had Broadway or off-Broadway runs. And then also trying to cultivate the new plays. So maybe about once a season, we'll do a show that it's its first production or its second production ever, and it's on the way to Broadway or on the way to more productions around the country. But next season, for example, we are doing a show called Eureka Day. It was written in 2018. But it had a New York productions, a Broadway run, it won a Tony, and now we're going get to do it at The Contemporary.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio on all sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking with the Producing Artistic Director of the Contemporary Theater of Ohio, Leda Hoffman. So a part of your goal is to make theater more inviting and accessible.
Hoffmann: How do you do that? Yeah I think you know it's uh we're in a really intimate space so the largest space we perform is two is 200 seats that's at the rife at the right center right downtown yeah um so we're just across from the state house um we have free parking you know and so you get to come here and and it's there's not sort of a grandeur of going to a theater like the Ohio um instead you're in this intimate studio black box and you're right there with the actors which I find especially for newer theater goers is really exciting to really feel like you're there with the audience. And then, you know, we have lots of programs. We've got pay what you want tickets available for the first two performances of every single production, which is a great way to come try us out before paying full price for a ticket. And just, you now, ways of having talk backs with actors, talk backs with community members so that it's not just coming to see a play, it's all about the conversation around it.
Juravich: Tell me about marketing and getting people to know not just about your name change or who you are or what you do, but like to actually get the butts in the seats. Yeah.
Hoffmann: We found that word of mouth is the most important thing and at the end of the day it's folks knowing about us and going hey I'm curious about that and then eventually going oh I trust you I want to be a subscriber get tickets to all four shows and you know so marketing is a lot of reaching out a lot social media and just being in the right rooms and talking to people the artists that we work with are great also at spreading worried about their shows. About 98% of the people we work with live here in Columbus or central Ohio. And so it sort of spreads from friend to friend to friends that people have heard about this great thing. We've got a show coming up, A Jagged Little Pill, which the Alanis Morissette album I'm sure you've heard of. So that will really help us meet new people because it's something that folks have heard of before.
Juravich: Whenever you said 98% of your actors are local here. Okay, so how how do you recruit the actors? Do you have just like a set of people do you have auditions or does that do people who are just like? They have full-time jobs and they do the play on the side
Hoffmann: Yeah, yeah, so we do a big audition every spring and we cast out of that. So we invite everybody We usually get about 300 sometimes 400 people who show up to audition for these parts And we work with professional actors. So, we work both union and non-union actors and it's really a mix I find in this community People who deal are mainly actors and then they're gig workers and they're picking up coffee shop jobs or actors who have full-time jobs during the day. And we always rehearse evenings and weekends so we can accommodate those folks. So people are doing two jobs at once and coming to rehearsal.
Juravich: Yeah, that's what I was wondering. So if if do you do you cast based on availability to or is it your casting like, you know, you have these 300 people auditioned you already know the plays.
Hoffmann: Yeah, we already know what the plays are gonna be. When I pick the plays, I go, I'm pretty sure we can find the people for this. And that 2% of people is, oh, I might need to house one of the actors if we can't find a specific role. And actors know before the audition when we rehearse, and so they decide what fits in their schedule.
Juravich: Community and connection are some of your top priorities. How are you using theater to build community?
Hoffmann: Yeah, I really think that theater and the arts are the way that we're gonna build empathy and the way we're going to connect with each other. And it's my responsibility, I've done a lot of this work at Milwaukee Rep, is to think about community engagement. And what that means at The Contemporary is what we do next. So you come see a play, hopefully you've seen a different perspective. You've thought about something you're thinking about in your own life in a new way, and then what? So that's about having resources in the lobby to take home. It's about... The panel conversation afterwards with somebody who's doing that work in central Ohio that touches on one of the topics of the play, working with community partners to bring folks to the theater who spend their day-to-day lives working in whatever issue we might be talking about. And so that work says, you know, this is gonna be entertaining, it's gonna be fun, we like to use comedy and music and all of the fun things about theater, but we're asking you to take the next step and just think a little bit as you're leaving the theater.
Juravich: Nowadays, people can watch shows and movies with the click of a button. There's so many streaming services. But there's something special about seeing live theater. Talk to me about the human connection and how you get people off the couch.
Hoffmann: I think it's that human connection, especially how intimate our theaters are and how small they are. You are really there with the people. And you turn off your phone. I mean, I'm also guilty of sitting on the couch and watching TV while scrolling Facebook and we're doing too many things. When you come to the theater, you say, hey, you know, this play is 90 minutes long and we are all going to be here together. And you can hear the person next to you laugh. And you can... Feel the energy of the audience. Last year when we did Jaja's African hair braiding, we just had so many people talking to us about how they felt like they were in the hair salon that reminded them of places they'd been or they'd heard about. And I think there's just something so special about having the people in the room with you so that they can hear you laugh, they can here you cry.
Juravich: You do both plays and musicals, right? So does each season just involve like, you're like, okay, definitely two musicals two plays just to.
Hoffmann: Variety. Yeah, usually we do one musical and then a series of plays. But, you know, this year we're doing a play with music, where the mountain meets the sea. So it's two actors and two musicians on stage together telling a story. You know, I find that it's really just what what are the good stories that matter that are going to matter to people in central Ohio that people want to hear. And then, you just trying to get a mix of styles, so that some things are really realistic, some things, are more stylized, some things have music, some things don't. So people get the breadth of what's going on in the theater right now in America.
Juravich: So you teased it but I'm gonna circle back to Jagged Little Pill because I'm an Alanis Morissette girl you know I had I had that album of I'm of the right age very influential so tell me how you ended up deciding that putting Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill on your stage was gonna work.
Hoffmann: Yeah, you know, we're always looking for shows that are really exciting and have hooks so that people like you have gone, oh my gosh, I love that music. And then this show is so brilliant because it's taken her songs, you're going to get to hear most of the songs on the album, plus more, and it's put a story behind it. So at the end of the day, it's a story about a family trying to figure out who they are. Of two teenage children, a mom, a dad. And they're going through the things that people are going through in the world. One of the main ideas, Jagged Little Pill, the mom is dealing with an opioid addiction after an accident, and so we get to use this platform that we have to say, hey, you're gonna come, we're gonna rock out and sing these beautiful songs, and we're also gonna talk about the opioid crisis in Ohio, which is a major topic that I think we've all gotta pay attention to and think about and help our neighbors out. You also mentioned Eureka Day. A brief synopsis of what that is. Yeah, Eureka Day is a comedy about school vaccine policy, which sounds not funny. And it is so funny, because it's just.
Juravich: What was the name of the character?
Hoffmann: Eureka Day is the name of the school. And so it's a private day school, and they've all got to figure out what they want their vaccine policy to be, sort of a PTA-type group, but we just get to laugh at the terrible ways we talk to each other. Oh, no. Right? How do we figure out how to come across divided ideas? Where do we find empathy in this ridiculous comedy?
Juravich: Well, I can picture how you're gonna market Jagged Little Pill and get people like me to come because you just have to say Jagged Little Pill and I'm there. How do you get someone to come see Eureka Day?
Hoffmann: You know, a lot of that just comes from a reputation that says, hey, trust us. You know it's also it won a Tony Award. Some folks have heard of it from its New York run. It's actually one of the most produced plays in America right now. So, you know, if you've got friends in other cities, maybe they've seen it and they tell you it's great. But I just get the fun job of saying, hey it's it's a comedy about vaccines. I promise it's really funny. OK, we have two minutes left.
Juravich: Left. What are your future plans for the theater? Are you trying, are there any future changes that you're hoping to still make?
Hoffmann: Yeah, I think it's really more and more leaning into the community engagement piece of what we do. So I'm just looking to connect with more community organizations, really listen to what Central Ohio wants to be talking about, what things, we have a great way to highlight, right? We've got thousands of people who are gonna see our shows every year, and we get to say, hey, here's a thing, I'd love you all to be thinking about and all to talking about. And so just thinking of us as a community hub, as a convening space, and not just a space to see a performance. Is gonna be the next step of where we're headed.
Juravich: How do you get people to differentiate you from, like, the Broadway across America, things that are coming to the Ohio Theater, which is across the street from you, literally, to, you know, give something a little different a try, rather than the wickets of the world.
Hoffmann: Yeah, I think, you know, when we work with those folks all the time, we just we get to talk about the difference of space. So the different the way it feels because of the size of the theater. You've got really high quality professional artists in both spaces. But when you come to the contemporary, you're also getting that that extra idea, right? You're getting the talkbacks, the panels, the the think pieces, and we're just able to do shows that never get to go out Broadway tour. John Proctor is the villains, my favorite play, we're doing it next year. Had an amazing Broadway run with Sadie Sink from Strangers Things in it. And it is a show that didn't get a tour from Broadway. And so Columbus gets to see it because we were able to get the rights to do this show here.
Juravich: This, you've been listening to Fascinating Ohio from all sides on 89.7 NPR News. And we've been talking with Producing Artistic Director of the Contemporary Theater of Ohio, Leda Hoffman. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you. And thanks for listening to All Sides in Fascinating Ohio. I'm Amy Juravich on 89.7 NPR News.