Just Get In There with Jonathan Moscone

Beth Davies, host: Suppose you have a passion from an early age that you want to turn into a career. How do you actually do this? How do you find the right jobs – the ones that draw on your interests and your strengths?

Welcome to Career Curves where we talk to people who have interesting careers and explore how they got where they are today. I'm your host, Beth Davies. 
 
Today we’re joined by theater director and producer Jon Moscone, currently the Chief Producer for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Jon, who discovered his passion for the theater as a teenager, grew up in a political family. His father, George Moscone, was the mayor of San Francisco in 1978 when he was assassinated. Jon was just 14 years old. In our conversation, Jon shares the influences that shaped his life and how he made bold moves to build his storied career, including moves that brought local politics back into his life 

Let's go to the beginning. How did you get started in the theater.

Jon Moscone, guest: High school, like every good, young, gay boy. I started in the theater because I was really afraid of the world that I was in. I had a hard time fitting in the sports part of it, and I looked for community, and I walked into the theater department, and all I remember is that they allowed me to be in the show immediately. They didn't even, they didn't even audition. I was in the ensemble in a musical review, and from that moment on, I kind of found my tribe because it was all accepting. It didn't care that I didn't have proficiency or talent. It just wanted me there. So I just found my voice because they allowed me to speak my voice.

Beth: As you were growing up, what were messages that you got from your family about what job and career should be?

Jon: 100% supportive. Before my dad died, he was enthralled by my interest in the theater and super supportive. He loved the theater. My mother the same way. Every decision I made that moved in the direction of pursuing theater, first as a major in college or beyond that, everyone was behind it. No one questioned it.

Beth: At what point did you start to know that you could take this community that you found, and this passion that you were finding, and actually turn it into something that would be a career?

Jon: Oh, that took forever. I mean, it was such a long evolution for me. I became a little high school theater star. I was the star of the plays in my senior year and so I thought, "I'm, the shizz. I'm gonna totally be an actor." And then I went to college and I went to Williams College back east. And, I auditioned for the play there, which was a German play called Tales from the Vienna Woods by Odon von Horvath, which is, of course, not a show anyone would know. (This might be the time it's ever been mentioned in a podcast.) I had only been doing musicals and so I didn't get in. And, it was devastating. And so I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and got little, small parts and studied theater.

It was a really rigorous theater program. And then my senior year, I was asked by the head of the program to assistant direct an opera and I did. And then, I directed something else. And then, my first mentor, a woman named Arden Fingerhut, who was a really profound and well known lighting designer from the sixties and seventies, she said to me, "I think you're a director." At that point, I decided not to go on with acting. I had applied to graduate school in acting and gotten into one or two, and then Carole Shorenstein Hays, who was a friend of the family, Broadway producer, and operates the Curran Theater and owns the Curran Theater here, she said, "Well, don't be an actor. Please come work for me. Figure it out." So I spent a year working for her and I, I just kind of, did it. I knew that if somebody said, "You're a director" and someone I really trusted said, "You're not really an actor", I didn't want to try to prove them wrong. I was like, trust them.

So I just passively made the move, but I didn't know how to be a director and I needed a job. So, I worked in producing. I assisted Carol, when she was producing a play called Fences, which went on to win the Pulitzer and the Tony. It was her first big show. A year after that, the show had flopped in San Francisco and so she cut staff and she fired me. I had to be fired because I was the youngest person there and had been there the least. But she did help me get a job in New York.

I just flew out, interviewed with three places, got a job at the New York Shakespeare Festival selling tee shirts in the Delacorte Theater, and paying the bills. I was in Accounts Payable. I cannot sell anything and I don't know how to pay bills, so it was a terrible fit. But I said yes because I thought, "Just get to New York, just get there. I don't even know what I'm going to do when I get there. I'll just get in. " Which was just the opportunity move, like just go. And I did it.

Then I transferred quickly over to Joe Papp's office, who was the legendary producer. He was looking for an assistant. His assistant had left and I went over and I interviewed with him and 10 minutes into the interview, he's like, "I like you. I'm going to hire you." So I walked proudly back to the Accounts Payable office and said, "I'm moving over to Mr. Papp's office," making the head of Accounts Payable, really angry at me. I walked over to the next building and at the end of the day, I finished in Joe's office and worked for him for three years. It was extraordinary.

Beth: You have quite the smile on your face as you're talking about that.

Jon: It was fun.

Beth: What made it extraordinary as a next career move for you?

Jon: Well, he was, I mean, I didn't really know it at the time, but he's a legendary New York theater producer and he was a civic leader. He was very politically active. He was probably the most powerful man in New York theater at the time. He was the man who made A Chorus Line possible. He produced A Chorus Line. He was quite demanding. He was really difficult to be with. And so I just learned very early on just to do my job and whatever he wanted, I did. I called him "Sir". I never called him anything, but Sir. I followed all the rules. I didn't need anything from him because I thought… well, I just didn't. He started to bring me closer and closer into a circle. I hung out with big stars all the time. Kevin Kline, Raul Julia, Meryl Streep. Benjamin Netanyahu was a good friend of Joe Papp's. So I just got to be in such an amazing sphere of people. I was just the happiest man in the world… until I wasn't. Because it was very clear that I was just going to become that for the rest of my life, somebody who just worked in the American theater as a producer. And I remembered Arden saying that I was a director.

Beth: So, you're in this environment where you're with the hottest producer in New York, you're learning from him, whether it's intentionally or not just by being in his sphere. And then, as you said, somewhere in your mind was this voice saying, "But you're meant to be a director." How did you make the decision to leave and move on?
 
Jon: You know, the memory plays tricks on me because it only appears in my mind as a kind of movie moment, where I really had this "A-ha" or I remember being at dinner with Joe… (who I got to call Joe once I quit. He said to call me "Joe" but I never did. I called him Mr Papp or, sir. So now I call him Joe, but I don't want anyone to think that my life was that joyful)… and his associate producer and the head of casting and the press director and the associate producer. We were all having dinner and his wife, Gail, who was the head of new play development. This was about the 20,000 dinner and I was the young one and I was just starting to become one of them. I was just accepted into this circle and I thought, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to become these people." And not because I wanted to, it's because I'm now sliding. I can see the slide and I went, I'm just going to keep going. I'm going to get another job, I'm gonna get another job and living in a nicer place in New York, in a nicer place in New York. I felt like that can't be. If I could see that far into the future, it can't be right.

Beth: I would imagine, at that time, that you started to tell people – some of your inner circle – that you were thinking to move on.

Jon: I never told anybody.

Beth: Oh, you didn't.

Jon: No, I didn't.

Beth: Oh, so you didn't have anybody telling you, "You're crazy, you're crazy. Here's this really clear path. You should stay on it.

Jon: No. I am, problematically, not conversant in what I'm thinking I want to do. I don't do that. I don't talk about it. I just sort of figure it out and then it gets announced. Because I don't like to let the air out and I don't like people telling me that it's not a good idea. And I don't like to consider too many options.

But I did contact Sharon Ott, who was the artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre. And I said, "Can I be your directing intern?"

Now, I'm very aware of the privilege and access I had to even have the number of someone who could do this and that I could ask this.

And she said, "Sure." And then that day I went home and I bought myself a ring. And that ring, once I put it on, was my promise to myself that within a week I would quit. And so, I was in the car with Mr Papp and we were driving and we sat waiting for somebody. We're on Park Avenue and I said, "Ah, I'm going to quit. I need to become a director." And he cried; he didn't want me to go. He offered me a new title, more money, allowed me to call him Joe, which evidently must have meant something to me then, and I just stayed on for another four months. And then I did it.

Beth: Did you stay those four months because he had asked you to stay or was that your notice period? I think it happens often that people get re-recruited back into a role and yet their heart is already in their next role. So I'm wondering for you, why the four months? Was it a long notice or was it an attempt to re-recruit you and you thought you were back in?

Jon: Well, it was very emotional at the time. I think the decision was very clear and forceful from a kind of professional perspective, but it took a while to break up. And, I also wasn't in a hurry and New York was so much fun. I didn't want to move back to Berkeley, but it was the phone number I had. So I called and I did it. So it was, it was a great move.

Beth: And so at this point you were really focused on creating a director path for yourself.

Jon: Yeah, I was. And so I went to Berkeley Rep and I became a directing intern and I just jumped in. Because I'd worked for Papp and all these superstar adults and all these outsized egos, I just knew how to fit in with the directors of the plays. I just knew what to do because I just saw I could assess their ego very quickly and be like, "Don't say anything. Don't speak, don't speak for a week." Or, "Oh my gosh, they're going to be super easy." And I would go in and each outcome was the same – I got entrusted with parts of the show. So I was really successful and I was really happy.

Early on, like just two months in, I thought, "This is going to be over in a year. So I got to plan. So I thought, "Let's go to graduate school."

Beth: Before we talk about grad school, because I've got a question for you about that, I've got one more question about coming to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. You made that move into an intern role. You'd been working in the theater for four years and then still took an intern role. Why did that title at that point feel like the right thing? Even when you're talking about big egos? Sometimes people feel like, "I've got five years of experience. I'm not an intern anymore."

Jon: Well, it had the word "directing" before it. So it was identifying a track and I never even considered the idea that anyone would want me to do it. So I had to step down a couple of notches and I had to start over. Going up is just about money.

Beth: Yeah.

Jon: That's really what it is. And it's about positional power but real power – which is really just your creative sense, your creative ability, your maturing, your empathy – all these things that are about developing yourself are to me what define your power. So yeah, it was a step down, but I also got a free apartment. I didn't have to live at home, which was really great because I didn't want to do that, and I got to be in a rehearsal room.

Beth: Yeah. You got a job that was taking you on the path that you wanted .

Jon: It was my fantasy. I wasn't starving and I could do it and I thought, "Just do it." The privilege that I've had, which is something I've become aware of as I've gotten older, was I was never going to starve. I knew I was never going to starve. So every move was enabled by that base knowledge. I don't think I thought that at the time, but it did allow me to do that.

Beth: So you may have been able to take some risks that other people might not be able to.

Jon: I could take risks because I had access and I had a support system and I live within a system that allowed that. You know, that was the truth.

Beth: Yep.

Jon: Yeah.

Beth: So, you mentioned a moment ago that a couple months into being a directing intern, you realize that the next move was going to go back to grad school. What made you decide on grad school? Why was that such a clear next step?

Jon: I needed time. I needed space. I needed to be given keys to a rehearsal room. I really am a learning fanatic. So I was desirous of being amongst very, very intelligent people who had made careers in the theater but were about teaching.

Beth: Now, some people believe that grad school, that type of credential, opens up doors for them that they wouldn't get if they didn't go for the degree. Was that true for you and is that true in the theater?

Jon: Yeah, it was true for me. I didn't think that was true when I applied. I didn't really know what life was going to be like on the other side.

Beth: And what did you do after grad school?

Jon: I got a job. Yeah. I'm just trying to remember how I did it.

All I did was write four theaters that I read about. I read all their seasons. I read through all these books that they used to produce called Theater Profiles. And I would read them and I named four theaters where I thought all the directors and all the designers and all the plays were really cool. And I wrote them and I said, "I would love to come work for you." I didn't say direct for you. I just said, come work for you.

One reached back to me and said, "I'm looking for an associate and I'm going to be in Boston at Logan Airport on my way to the Cape. Do you want to interview?" Little did I know that he was also a Yale School of Drama grad and knew my two professors very well and they had told him that I was somebody to look out for. 

So I met him at Boston Logan Airport in May, right as I was graduating, and he offered me the job as the associate director and he said, 

"But, I'm not guaranteeing that you'll direct." And I went, "Okay, I'll do it." I just took it. I figured, once again, just get in, just get in and I'll figure it out from there.

Beth: I'm definitely hearing that as a theme: Just get in there. Why has that attitude for you been a driver? How did you come to this idea of, I'm just going to get in there.

Jon: It was the thing I told you at the beginning of the story. I just walked into the door of the theater department at Saint Ignatius, and I didn't care and they didn't care. And I was just in and being in was all that mattered to me. Just being in the room.

And, I just have a huge amount of moxie and charisma and I have a lot of self-confidence and that all came from my father. He just was that way. I was always a Johnny-on-the-spot person, annoyingly so, very much annoyingly so. I am even annoyed telling you because it's just who I am. 

Beth: But while you're annoyed telling me, I actually hear it differently. Because what I hear is you've got the moxie to ask people to open up the door and walk in, but then you get in there and you make the relationships and you figure out, I'll do whatever I need to do. And then you show them that they were right to open up the door and let you in.

Jon: It is proven true and I think it's something I name now in the work that I do, that relationships are everything, everything. Relationships with everybody. And I'm not talking about trading up relationships or managing up relationships. It's just, you know, 360 degrees relationships. Everybody. It's just everybody creates the net in your life.

Beth: Which theater was it that you went to work for?

Jon: Dallas Theater Center.

Beth: And how long did you stay there?

Jon: Seven years. And I went without even visiting

Beth: And so he said, I can't promise you that you're going to direct… 

Jon: Uh huh.

Beth: Did you?

Jon: In my first year. He left a show without a director and in the middle of the year he said, "I'm thinking it's between you and Tony Taccone. (Tony's the departing artistic director of Berkeley Rep and one of my closest colleagues and a mentor.) And he goes, "Who should I pick?" And I said, "I'm not answering that question. That's a dumb question." I said, "I'd pick Tony if I were you, because I don't want to work here if that's what you're putting me through. So hire me or don't hire me, but don't ask me." And then he gave me the job.

So I did direct. And by the way, Tony Taccone is just fine. He's a Broadway director. He didn't suffer from not getting that job, but the point was I ended up directing there, at Dallas Theater Center, every year while i was there, sometimes two shows a year. I created a production, my own adaptation of a Christmas Carol with a colleague, Preston Lane.

And, I started to forge a freelance career in the regional theater system. So basically the big theaters in every city. I just started to get asked to do shows and I would just start doing them. So Dallas was my home base and I would go around the country. And so I forged a career, an independent career, while I was rooted in a community organization, the Dallas Theater Center.

Beth: Some people worry that if they're out freelancing they're going to be perceived as not having a commitment to the main job. How do you balance both of those? 

Jon: Well, that was true. After a while it became very clear that I was much more interested in my own personal journey and the rehearsal room than I was in the organization. And at that point, I quit. 

I always try to get out before I'm fired. Never been a bad idea, for me, to think that I'm not really doing the job that I was hired for. So, I left.

I again gave it a couple more months and then I moved to New York to try to become a freelance director without an organization to hold me. And at that time I got recruited to apply for two jobs to run theaters. And I was super young – I don't know, 33, 34.

I applied to both of them. I was the second choice for one, and I was the first choice for the other. So I, I took the one that I was offered, and that was the California Shakespeare Theater.

Beth: And so it brought you back out again to California.

Jon: It was truly the one thing that kept me from saying yes immediately. Took me about three months to say yes to the offer because I was really terrified of coming back home. And it just felt, it didn't feel right on several levels. It was also Shakespeare theater and I had a little experience in Shakespeare, and it was an outdoor theater and I didn't… We had the Delacorte Theater in New York, so I understood that. But the whole thing was just so outside of my pocket. And I did it, in contrast to the way I told the story before, it was the first time I kind of bucked my instinct, but it proved to be the right thing.

Beth: So you come back out to California and you join the California Shakespeare Festival…

Jon: That's what it was called at the time. I so hated the word "festival" that I changed it to "theater" . That's what I did for 15, almost 16 years.

Beth: Once you got into it, what did you discover that you weren't expecting? Because you went into it with this fear. So you get in there and stay 16 years. So what did you discover about it that actually did fit and held you and kept you motivated and interested for that long?

Jon: It was a great job. It was a theater that had really wanted from its leadership – and the board wanted – a vision that was going to bring it to a level of relevance that it had not had in quite some time. And I thought that's a great problem to have, right? The board wants you to do this. I made a very early choice just to call every director I knew and loved or admired – and really aggressively did not people who had much experience in Shakespeare, which is not hard to find because really great directors don't often get these big shows. So I was calling people up and they just said yes. They're like, "Yeah, I'd love to."

I started. My first season was all women directors and me, two of them had never done Shakespeare before. I had never done Shakespeare before. And then I started to shift the plays away from Shakespeare entirely to create a more diverse, aesthetically diverse and formally diverse, sort of roster. And, I met resistance at every turn and I met new support at every turn.

I knew that all change, all leadership, was about measuring the forward movement with the backward movement. Right? So the resistance was always going to be there and if the forward movement was bigger, you could go. You always had to risk something. You always had to lose something to gain something. And so I was really, really into that. It got me going. It was exciting. It felt like politics. It just felt like politics. It felt evolutionary and it felt adaptive and it felt forward moving and it felt expansive and more. It was about more and more people being able to come.

And I just believed it and I trusted it. And the board, even if they sometimes were resistant, but they came along and I always did things with the board support because you can't without them. 

Beth: Which pulls in again your belief in the power of relationships.

Jon: Yeah, that's right. And it's just so great. And, and at the same time, my job was trying to get people who didn't see themselves welcome in our theater. This is the Bay Area and we have excluded so many people. I'm realizing how many people aren't coming, what kinds of people were not coming. And it's because we weren't coming to them. We weren't in relationship with them. And that was the beginning of the biggest changes at Cal Shakes.

Beth: There's something so beautiful in what you just said because if we go back to the start of our conversation and you talked about getting into the theater for yourself, and that you went in your high school and you found a place where you were belonging. And now what you're saying, too, is you looked at the organization that you're in and recognize that there are a whole bunch of people that you weren't even inviting and letting in. And that in you still was this seed of, "There's something about the theater that is about welcoming people and we have to expand it." And I don't know if you've ever made that connection between the two, but as we tell this story this way, there's a real tie in between where you started and what was going on here.

Jon: Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm on my phone, I'm listening to a book called White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and it's a pretty sobering book. And what it's clearly stating is that without accepting and understanding my privilege, I can't really clearly understand the structure. So I can easily default, as can many of us, to a narrative of individualism. "I just had the moxie and I walked in. I did this and I did that." And without acknowledging all the things where I was able to walk in a door, I was even at the school to walk in the door and I was able to walk in and feel like everybody else. I mean all these millions of things without acknowledging all of that, it can just default to like what a great story of Jon that Jon told about himself. And that's a really sort of living inside of the supremacy paradigm, which is the reality and one that we have to look at and deal with and dismantle.

Although I'm reading the book now and finally having the language to say it, it was my instinct at one point at Cal Shakes that just making the place more welcoming was not about breaking down any paradigm because there were so many things that were invisibly unwelcoming and invisibly uninviting and invisibly excluding. And without seeing that, we had achieved a really great paradigm of a big, great, white theater. And I just knew, instinctually, without having the language, that it had to be more progressive, more aggressive act to include. And so I started that path in the late 2000s.

And over time, I realized, this now must become the challenge for the next leader – someone who is really living this, someone who really manifests it in her, their, his life and vision. Because I think I've really done as much as I can in this paradigm.

And so, that was my decision. It was my decision to say, "Yeah, this is the right time."

Beth: Yeah, it's, "I've created this initial momentum…

Jon: Yeah,

Beth: …but now it needs somebody else to be able to carry it forward."

Jon: It was the first one. All the momentum changes, all the shifts were well within my sphere of powers. And this one I could have, but I thought it would have been more about my keeping my job and less about what needed to happen for the organization. Again, I think back to my Dallas days, it was different contexts, but it was similar – what does the organization need? What does the community deserve? And what have I done already? Right?

Beth: Yeah.

Jon: And it's not about giving up, it's not about failing. It's quite the opposite. It's quite the opposite about placing yourself sort of in context and just saying, "I am no longer that person. Someone else is now that person." And it's very freeing actually. It was very freeing. It's scary because you're sort of giving up all the things that you, all the chair that you were in… you give up so much and then you just realize, "Oh, there's so many other things." It takes a couple of years to figure it out, but you're like, "Oh my God, I have so much." Again, all that power is still there. I'm now an amateur again, but I still have that same power.

Beth: So after 16 years at Cal Shakes, you made the decision to leave and what was your next move from there?

Jon: To go work for somebody else. I think one of the moves was like, be inside something for a while and learn about someone else's vision, enacting someone else's vision, supporting it.

Beth: That can be a really hard move when you've been the one in charge and controlling the vision and deciding the vision.

Jon: Yes, it was hard at times, still is, but it's much less so.

Beth: And this is the role that took you to…

Jon: …Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, which broke ground in the 70s under my dad's leadership as sort of the civic, cultural center for San Francisco . And Deborah Cullinan, who had been with Intersection for the Arts for 17 years, was a very close collaborator of mine. And so when she moved to Yerba Buena, I joined her Board and then a year in, I join her staff.

So I transitioned, I spent half my time at Cal Shakes and then half my time at Yerba Buena. Lesson to many people: there is a point where you shouldn't stay any longer.

Beth: Were you doing that for them or were you doing that for you?

Jon: It was fully for them. It was fully for them. It was against every good piece of advice I've ever given. I needed to. You can't run a theater half time. So when I got to YBCA, the job that was created with me, and for me, was the Head of Civic Engagement, which had always been something that Deborah was interested in doing, sort of elevating community engagement, which is something that all arts organizations do into one of the thrusts of the organization.

Over the years we've developed a lot of work with schools and in the Tenderloin and public arts work and relationships with City Hall and being pretty active in two efforts. The second one, being the successful one: to restore the hotel tax allocation to the arts in San Francisco. 

It's been a joy to marry my history of art making with my instinct and interest and commitment to the political life of San Francisco.

So now, I'm the Producer, which is not entirely that different, but it is somewhat different. It's a little bit more about how we produce things at YBCA.

Beth: But it does sound, at this point, like you've left behind the directing. Is that true?

Jon: No, I've directed a show a year for the last couple of years. 

Beth: At YBCA or is that something on the side?

Jon: It's not in my job.

Beth: So again, it's still a part of you. It's still, like you said before, you may change these titles, but that doesn't necessarily mean you divorce yourself from other parts of what you've been and what you've done and the skills you have.

Jon: I will say it is hard to direct now because it's not intrinsic to my job. I love directing. It's like making a chair. It's like what I know how to do and I love doing it.

But I am getting really excited about teaching and I love doing that. I taught at the Yale School of Drama this last year and I'm investing in what it means to teach people, because I just love doing that. It's so hard and it's such a learning curve and I'm semi-amateurish around it, but I have a huge amount of expertise, so I'm trying to bring that expertise in to impact other people at various ranges, whether it's collegiate or graduate or community. I don't really care. I actually like all of those levels.

Beth: What I love about your story is that you're still curving. That you may have thought I was coming to ask you, "Tell me about a story" as if this is the final chapter, when the truth is no, you are still actively curving. You're curving now with how do I bring more civic and politics and how do I bring in more teaching and how do I keep the things I've done before. And, in my opinion, it's these curves that keep life interesting.

Jon: I think my ultimate goal is to really position art and artists in the civic life of a community, to have them at the table to provide the kind of creative component to critical problem solving. And that to me is the win. It's not about me being in that regional theater anymore.

Beth: Those are all means to this bigger end.

Jon: That's right.

Beth: Thank you for that. I've got a couple more questions for you.

Jon: Sure.

Beth: What would you say was the smartest career move you made, whether intentionally or accidentally?

Jon: Going to run a theater in Orinda, which is not a town I'd ever would've gone to in my life.

Beth: And that was the Cal Shakes. 

Jon: Yeah.

Beth: If you could have one do-over, what would it be and why?

Jon: Oh god… so many.

Beth: I just even like capturing that, your initial reaction being "so many".

Jon: There are so many.

Beth: While we can have storied careers, that doesn't mean that they're not filled with mistakes as well.

If there's one piece of career advice that you could give your younger self, what would it be?

Jon: Don't set yourself apart from your artistry. Being an organizational leader should not mean that you do not pursue your artistry with equal fervor.

Beth: And, how do you define success?

Jon: Lasting change where creativity is honored, expected, rewarded.

Beth: This has been an absolute pleasure, so thank you so much.

 Jon: It was fun.