The first time I met Philip Arnoult was in a conference room at Towson University, during the first few weeks of my MFA in theatre there in 2009. He was doing his annual lecture about the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD) to the new graduate students, and I had no idea that sending him one email after that meeting would change the trajectory of my theatrical life so much.
The last time I saw Philip, I was sitting next to his bed at his rehab center in north Baltimore in mid-June of this year. The systems of his body were failing, but his mind was as focused on the work as ever. Persistent in his desire to keep working, he kept up an emphatic refrain: he still had something to give. There was still so much work to do. He passed away a few weeks later, having made one final trip to live closer to his daughter Alison in Charlotte, North Carolina.
We’ve lost many of the diplomats of our profession—those who made it their life’s work not to make the work but to make connections between people who make the work, crossing the invisible boundaries of countries and politics. Ellen Stewart. Martha Coigney. Now Philip Arnoult.
There is still much work left to do. So much left undone. So many artists being further isolated by the invisible boundaries our governments decide for us. So what now?
Philip was born into a humanity at war with itself, and in the last years of his life, he often spoke about how the world of his old age was rhyming with the world of his youth. Democratic countries descending into authoritarianism, dictators violating the boundaries of countries they had been at peace with for decades, artists suffering under the decline of funding and the rise of censorship, those who had enjoyed relative freedom of expression now faced with a choice of exile or imprisonment.
Philip devoted himself to finding all the pathways for artists on either side of those walls to talk to one another, to build relationships, to witness each other’s work.
At the bookends of Philip’s life in the theatre, the government propaganda machines were doing their best to create walls between the people of their nations. In both eras, Philip devoted himself to finding all the pathways for artists on either side of those walls to talk to one another, to build relationships, to witness each other’s work. At the core of his often ridiculously ambitious projects (like the years-long artistic exchange between Kenyans and newly post-Soviet Russians) was an unshakeable belief that the way we survive together is to know one another, not just as artists, but as people.
He followed in the footsteps of his mentors Ellen Stewart and Martha Coigney, first with the Baltimore Theatre Project, a free theatre that was one of the few places outside of New York that followed the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club model of giving nontraditional theatre folk space and time to experiment. Then, with CITD, which he ran with his spouse and partner Carol Baish (who preceded Philip in death by just eight weeks), and through which he continued the work he learned from Martha Coigney and the International Theatre Institute, which was basically to ignore the boundaries created by the Cold War and to cultivate relationships with artists in Soviet Bloc countries anyway.
CITD became Philip’s life’s work: from the early 1990s until the moment of his death, he cultivated ambitious, multi-year projects that connected artists from East and Southern Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and all over the United States through partnerships, exchanges, festivals, guest artist residencies, and so much more. I know that my own theatrical aesthetic was absolutely shaped and influenced by the hundreds of performances I saw during my work with Philip, and I can only imagine how many others can say the same. But even more importantly than the art, Philip helped me create my own ley lines to people and history around the world in ways that have shaped how I think about the purpose of what we do in the world we live in. Many times, I find myself giving advice to younger artists in the words Philip said to me and so many others: if you think about your path as a life in the theatre, rather than a career in the theatre, you will find depth, connection, and meaning beyond just the furious cycle of season planning.
Philip loved visiting with people over a good meal. He loved being the relative straight man in a room full of weird artists, and the weird artist in a room full of bureaucrats. He was deeply confident in the righteousness of his mission. And he wanted to work until he died.
I initially worked for Philip as his graduate assistant and then served in many different roles for CITD, from project coordination to reporting on festivals to being his driver and plus one for innumerable shows up and down the east coast. In the last year of his life, I had officially rejoined the CITD team part-time as a program associate. Working with CITD, I traveled to Hungary, Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria multiple times and made connections with a wide network of American theatremakers who I otherwise would likely have never encountered.
One of things I miss most about Philip is how much he loved—loved—going to the theatre. “Let’s go to work!” he’d always proclaim when I’d pick him up in his Baltimore rowhome to see a show in town, or in Washington, DC; or Philadelphia; or occasionally one of the dreaded up-and-back trips to New York City. He’d say that same phrase leaving the hotel lobby on the final day of a 20-show festival in one of his beloved partner countries. He reveled in every moment of it, the same expression of joy, anticipation, and awe on his face every time he walked into the theatre.
Philip loved the theatre, even when he didn’t always love the work he saw, and he and I did not always have the same taste. But I came to appreciate and understand the importance of the way he would end a long car ride conversation critiquing something that didn’t quite hit the mark:
“Well, you know what I always say,” he would start and then dramatically pause before continuing, “if it were easy, everyone would do it.”
The work was important. But not as important as the people. So even when the show was “half-baked” (another Philip favorite phrase), he would be back for the next show, because he wanted the artists to know that their relationship—their human connection—would outlast the ephemeral highs and lows of our art and our societies.
So how should we continue this work?
How can relationship-building with the international community feel important when we may be fighting on multiple fronts at home? Where in the world can CITD be of most use in fostering those relationships?
Not just those of us on the CITD team, not even just the many of us in Philip’s orbit, but for all of us in American theatre: what now? What do we owe to these elders, these connectors who braved hostile governments, language and cultural barriers, and the ebb-and-flow of funding to weave together decades-long bonds with artists around the world? What do we owe in the present to our counterparts in other countries who are being increasingly isolated and censored? What do we owe to the generations of artists to come, who will pick up what we leave undone?
We don’t have all the answers. But here is what Philip left with us:
In the short run, those of us working as the CITD team will forge ahead with the work Philip was doing at the end of his life. In the midst of governments making travel unsafe or squeezing the life out of theatre, Philip had been rethinking how to make connections and support work. In Hungary, we can show up, witness, and tell the story of artists bravely forging ahead with their work in a harsh climate. In Ukraine, we can exchange scripts and read each other’s words, so that the stories are heard in the United States, and futures can be imagined in Ukraine. In Poland, we can forge new bonds with a new generation of theatremakers looking to remake their theatrical landscape.
The current team is composed of longtime partners of Philip and the work, all taking on new titles and responsibilities:
- Brandice Thompson, general manager, who has been working with CITD since 2019.
- Howard Shalwitz, associate director and Poland program director, who started traveling with Philip while still artistic director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre.
- Yury Urnov, associate director, who first met Philip as a translator and young director, and is now a co-artstic director of The Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia.
- Susan Stroupe, legacy and communications manager, who worked as a graduate assignment and project manager with CITD first from 2009-2013 and then came on board again last fall.
- John Freedman, Ukraine program director, who was one of Philip’s longest partners, originally based in Moscow
We invite you to be in conversation with us. Contact us at [email protected], and let’s make a connection.
In the long run, the questions, and CITD’s work, become more complex. The US theatre faces a future where isolation and polarization will likely get worse before it gets better. How can relationship-building with the international community feel important when we may be fighting on multiple fronts at home? Where in the world can CITD be of most use in fostering those relationships? And in the deepest heart of it all, as we continue to lose and mourn the great connectors of our community, who among us will step into the breach, to keep the lines of connection strong, to be the ones who stare down government restrictions, dwindling funding, and demoralization, and say “Let’s go to work!”
