Today’s the day that Alley Theatre announces its new Managing Director: Jennifer Bielstein. With extensive experience on the business side of operating theaters, Bielstein will be following Dean Gladden who has held that position for 19 years.
Does that frighten her? Well no, given that the last person she succeeded had spent 41 years in that theater, she said in an interview with the Houston Press.
It also helps that while she’s currently the executive director at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, she grew up in Houston where she graduated from Stratford High School and her parents still live in the area. And she thanks Gladden for collaborating with her during the transition. She will officially start October 20, although she’ll be back and forth between the West Coast and here in the coming months.
“I’m so grateful to the Alley Board for doing the impossible: finding a new managing director to replace the irreplaceable Dean Gladden,” Artistic Director Rob Melrose said in a press statement. “It is hard to imagine a better choice than Jennifer Bielstein. Jennifer is already a legend in her own right with successful tenures at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Guthrie Theater, and American Conservatory Theater. I also feel that Jennifer’s warmth, kindness, and collaborative spirit are just what we need as we chart our way to Alley Theatre’s next era of success. I’m delighted to welcome Jennifer back to Houston and to create a successful partnership together.”
Gladden was well known for guiding the Alley through the 2009 Great Recession, the 14 months that the Alley’s productions were performed off-site because of the massive renovation project it undertook, the damages caused by Hurricane Harvey that resulted in $26 million in damages and the pandemic that shut everything down.
Bielstein shares Gladden’s experience with the pandemic just as all theaters struggled to stay alive during the time of shuttered doors and little revenue.
“Navigating the pandemic was a unique challenge for all of us across the country. I helped ensure that ACT came out of it in one piece and came out of it successfully. [I] was in a leadership position with LORT, the League of Resident Theaters. I was board president as the pandemic began. So worked to negotiate some terms at the beginning of the pandemic that helped more theaters across the country … in the ability to share our programs virtually.”
Bielstein said she knew from a young age that she wanted to seek a career that would support the arts. “My strengths were always behind the scenes.” She went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she majored in business and theater and decided then to aim for being a managing director at a regional theater. “My career was very focused on doing this work in the regional theater field. And the Alley is one of the top regional theaters.
“And the Alley is in a really strong place right now in terms of rebounding from the effects of the pandemic that have really taken a toll on our industry. And it’s exciting to step into this role at the Alley and partner with Artistic Director Rob Melrose whose work I know. I first worked with him as a director when I was at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.”
With a background as director of marketing and communications at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and extensive experience in fund raising at several organizations, she feels she is a good fit to be successful in her new job with the Alley.
What will be new for her is working with a regional theater that has its own resident acting company. The closest she’s come is her time at Steppenwolf which has a body of artists it regularly calls upon, but not one that it pays salaries to throughout the year.
What won’t be new is working with a theater that actively seeks out new works, she said. “It’s been a big part of my career. The Actors Theatre of Louisville used to have the Humana Festival of new American plays. You would go for a long weekend and see six to 10 full length world premiere productions. People from the industry and the world would come to see those productions as well as just theater lovers who wanted to experience new works.
“So I’ve had a lot of experience with introducing new works and that has continued here [at ACT].”
Asked what she was most proud of achieving in her previous roles, Bielstein said: ” I am really proud of creating really positive inclusive organizational cultures that ensure staff and artists and audiences feel welcome.
The one thing she’s going to have to reacclimate to is the Houston weather, at least in the summer. When we talked with her by phone on Monday, she was sitting in her San Francisco office with the space heater on.
