New director of Theatre Philadelphia gets out the word -- and the love

Want to know how deep Leigh Goldenberg's theater roots go? Think of a woman who has done Off-Broadway and worked all over the Philly theater scene, from the Arden Theatre to PlayPENN, from the Lantern Theater to Tiny Dynamite. Think of a teenager taking acting lessons at the Arden, entranced by a Midsummer Night's Dream starring her teachers.

This is the person who on Jan. 3 became  executive director of Theatre Philadelphia (www.theatrephiladelphia.org). More on that in a moment.

Even deeper are her Philly roots. To know Goldenberg is to know her commitment to community and social justice. She's a former marketing director for Wash Cycle Laundry, which has made a sustainable, environmentally conscious business of hauling cargo across town by bicycle, often pedaled by employees just out of incarceration, addiction, welfare, or homelessness. She serves on the board of the South Philly Food Co-op, chairs the Friends of Kirkbride Elementary School, and is in the 2017 Class of Connectors and Keepers at Leadership Philadelphia.

Right now, she has to listen to some random journalist's questions. Soon as that's done, she will -- on one of the coldest days of the year -- hop on a bike and pick up her daughter at the Project P.L.A.Y. School in the Bok Building. When I say, "That sounds like one cold ride in South Philly," she says: "Hey, I do it all the time."

Theatre Philadelphia is dedicated to marketing Philadelphia theater and getting more folks to come out. It handles the Barrymore Awards (Philadelphia's yearly equivalent of the Tonys), funnels local grant money to artists, and promotes Philly theater (offering one of the best available listings of what's playing in town) and the Philly arts world. The revamped website looks pretty indeed, but the challenge remains: How to get out the word that Philly is a theater town, full of good things if you'll only come out?

To call Goldenberg "positive" is to do her an injustice. You can almost hear her smile through the telephone. She recalls those acting lessons at the Arden, and, now, as she says, "it's come full circle: My desk is in the very room in which I took those classes, a space Arden has donated."

"We need to be better at communicating what theater in Philadelphia as a whole is all about," she says. "We in the community have a very strong sense of our identity … but we're less great at getting that sense out to the public."

So what is her sense of this town's theater world? She first says "collaborative": Artists work together. Then "supportive": Artists encourage one another. And those artists are "extremely versatile. ... You'll see actors going from stage to stage, both large and small productions, often going from role to role as both actors and producers and designers. You can see it all over town. Quality is extremely high."

OK, but New York. She acknowledges the shadow of that Godzilla of a city, and that many theater lovers go up to see Broadway, neglecting a lot of great theater here.

How is she going to get out the word? Collaborations are key -- among artists, theaters, and acting groups, of course, but also cross-genre, cross-venue, getting plays into museums, galleries, and non-arts cultural venues. (How about Hamilton in front of Independence Hall? Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at the Comcast Center atrium? Fences at Citizens Bank Park? Stupid F*@ing Bird at Underground Arts?) (My ideas, not hers.)

She wants "to get people to cross genre boundaries and come see theater, perhaps in different combinations and settings than they've been used to. There have been a few successful projects of this kind -- the Bearded Ladies Cabaret at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for example. I'm a theatergoer, and that show got me into the museum space."

Like every arts person in this arts town, she's thinking about young people, who, if they only knew it, would really like theater. The already-mentioned collaborative, out-of-the-box, cross-venue events, combined with parties and mixers, have proved popular, here and across the country.

This is also a college town with college students, many of whom take theater classes or major in theater. They may get their degree and go off to "work at Comcast or in a tech firm," as she puts it, which is "perfectly great -- but their love of theater doesn't have to just go away. That's still there. I'd like to keep their love of theater going."

Love of theater? Goldenberg speaks of MARCUS/EMMA at InterAct Theatre Company, when, at the play's opening call to stand up, the audience leapt to its feet; and Constellations at the Wilma Theater, when two actors, Jered McLenigan and Sarah Gliko, conjured up parallel universes on a bare stage. She looks forward to seeing S-heads, the bicycle subculture play at Azuka Theatre through March 12; and Midsummer Night's Dream, through April 9 at the Arden.

More love: Goldenberg cites the live, one-time-only crackle of a theater event. Yes, she could stay home and watch a TV screen, but she would not be "surrounded by people. … Watching a play, you are living with other people, breathing the same air, and that social aspect of attending a play in a theater is really often very spectacular."