MIRIAM WEIZENBAUM, chief of the R.I. Office of the Attorney General’s Civil Division, was named the new board president for the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre during the performing arts nonprofit’s annual meeting on Oct. 23. She has served on the Warwick-based performing arts organization’s board since 2014 and was its vice president last year.
What attracted you to join the theater’s board in 2014? I had attended very little theater before discovering the Gamm and was stunned by the power of these enacted stories. I had never seen acting, stagecraft, or play selection that reaches the complicated truth of humanity over and over. Also, as a parent of two children, I felt I understood the importance of making theater available for children and was so impressed with the Gamm’s educational program.
What are your goals for the theater? My first obligation – and my aspiration – is to support the work of the Gamm so this theater continues to have room to produce what we all need. … Sustaining this theater has to mean supporting actors, staff and audience as they should be. Concretely, the goals for the theater are continuing to produce the highest-quality and thought-provoking work, achieving and sustaining financial stability, breaking down barriers of race and income so we can expand and diversify our audiences and educational programs, and ensuring the board, actors and staff can implement best practices as an organization.
How do you plan to help the theater recapture its audience and find long-standing success? Audiences are starting to return in strong numbers! We have increased both subscriptions and single-ticket sales year over year since we returned from the pandemic. … We must continue to produce relevant art, support new artists, push out what the Gamm presents to more potential patrons in areas such as the East Bay, West Bay and Connecticut, and increase contributed financial support since earned income is only 50% of our total budget.
You said the theater must face the realities of financing and fundraising in the midst of higher costs. How does the theater plan to address that? The Gamm has an incredibly strong and deserved reputation for high-quality productions, which is the first most important piece of any development plan: create something the world needs, recognizes and appreciates. We have implemented a robust fundraising plan that begins with the people who already know that the Gamm is worth their financial support. We are listening to and communicating with those supporters more closely than ever. We are pursuing grants at levels that match the impact of the work we do, both on the stage and in the classroom. Our current approach to sustaining and growing our audience seems to be working, but we are also developing new forms of promotion and outreach. We will be expanding our educational work. That includes close partnerships with public and private schools across the state, as well as Rhode Island’s higher education institutions.
