Texas Tech University

Broadway Bound

Jennifer Ezell

December 18, 2019

Alec Williams

Alec Williams is Broadway bound! Unlike actors, singers, and dancers who seek fame onstage, Alec will participate in a General Management Internship with a company that works with Broadway, Off-Broadway, and National Tours.

We agree to meet for coffee to talk about his current work and his upcoming internship, and as I walk up to the counter of The Lobby by Sugar Browns I realize that we're having a coffee before The Lobby's official opening day. I ask Alec how he even knew the location was open, and he explains that he's being talking to the owner of Sugar Browns about their relationship to Lubbock's downtown revitalization efforts and the influence of local businesses. As he shakes hands with our barista, who asks Alec about new theatre projects, Alec explains that arts management and community engaged arts creation is all about getting to know your community.

Alec Williams, a third year MFA in Arts Administration, is the Producer for the student led performance company Renegade Productions in Lubbock, Texas. He explains that arts administrators can work in specific disciplines or across the arts to make artistic pursuits come to fruition. He points out that all artists engage with arts administration because entrepreneurship is a "necessary survival tool in our dynamic industry." Williams, however, specifically wants to work in marketing, management, and funding for the arts. Currently, his vision for Renegade is to produce community-driven artistic experiences that provide visibility to nonprofits and businesses in Lubbock.

Williams is uniquely positioned for cross-discipline arts administration. While the MFA in Arts Administration is housed largely in the School of Theatre and Dance, Williams completed his bachelors in Vocal Performance in TTU's School of Music, where he also gained experience in opera performance. In order to gain experience in administration and the visual arts, he completed an internship with the Charles Adams Studio Project (CASP) and worked as a Public Art Assistant with TTU Public Art. Because he has worked in every School within the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Williams approaches administration with a since of modesty. He explains that "working across multiple disciplines makes you reinvest in humility time and time again" because being an comprehensive arts administrator means that he is often not the expert in the specific artistic project that he is helping produce. He encourages other artists to "be unafraid to look stupid and to be able to endow the role of "expert" to someone else (or even everyone else) in the room."

When I ask Alec Williams about success, I expect a business-driven answer. He surprises me, yet again, when he says that at this point, with Renegade Productions, success is not about making money, or even making quality theatre (although, "we always do our best to make quality, meaningful art"); instead, success is generating a Venn diagram of interests based on connections between artists and the community. Williams explains that if you a regular at a business or nonprofit and love their values, there is a high probability that they would feature a play [or other art] at their venue. That's how Renegade Productions was able to produce The Hairy Ape at Grace Campus, a transitional homeless shelter in Lubbock. While several reviews marked the show as a artistic success, Williams marks the real success as providing students and community members with experiential experience while also providing unique community engagement and publicity for the work at Grace Campus. While Alec will soon move to in New York City, his work with Renegade will continue in Lubbock, and he is confident that Renegade will run smoothly and continue community engaged art in his physical absence.

For measures of personal success, Williams says he asks himself, "did I serve the artist(s)? Did I serve the audience? Did I create any obstacles?" He is quick to say that the artistic endeavor belongs to the artists, and he measures his success by being able to serve the production and the community, by being able to ask for help, and by diving into problem solving without expecting to know the outcome himself.

Alec ends our interview by encouraging other artists to experiment within the realm of organizational structures and community outreach: "Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary work is fun, y'all. Especially if everyone is investing into the process and ready to invest in the 'play' aspect of the work."