Saying “yes” to unexpected opportunity—whether it’s been directing, teaching, or mentoring a new generation of artistic voices—has been a trademark of Hall’s multi-faceted career.
After the success of her directorial debut, Hall was determined to learn more about the craft, which she knew involved a lot more than the “hanging out,” as she refers to the process, with her Campo Santo family. This took the form of shadowing directors she admired, and learning the vocabulary of time management, and working with designers and production staff in bigger theaters.
“A lot of my directing aesthetic comes from being an actor and understanding how to work with actors,” she reflects. “I feel my strength is really pulling the work out of actors in a way that they feel appreciated.” Over the years she’s cultivated her skills in both, and her work has appeared in one capacity or another on pretty much every major Bay Area stage (as well as films like 2016's Blindspotting).
It’s common to refer to actors who also sing and dance as “triple threats,” and by extension, Hall could be considered a sextuple threat, at minimum: she also directs, teaches and writes. But artistic directorship has been one role she’s put off, even though this isn’t the first time over the past ten years that the Lorraine Hansberry has invited her to take it on. For one reason or another, she never felt the time was right.
“Even this time around, if you asked me six months ago if I thought I would be the artistic director of Lorraine Hansberry I would tell you no, that wasn’t my plan,” she admits. But her perspective shifted during the pandemic, causing her to reevaluate where she wanted to channel her energies. And so, this time when the company’s executive director Stephanie Shoffner offered her the position, she was ready to “once again...say yes to something I had no idea of what to do!”
While she’s still navigating the specifics of fundraising and day-to-day operations, she’s not short on artistic ideas. She hopes that the New Black Voices initiative for playwrights will eventually include full productions, and she’s eager to see a return to producing Black classics as well as contemporary, multi-disciplinary work, a particular strength of Campo Santo.
As a mentor and a leader, Hall exudes a self-possession instilled in her from a young age and honed over her long career.
“I grew up in a household where...being Black was the best thing ever,” she reminisces. “Not that we were better than anyone else, but that we were these powerful beings.” Learning to keep hold of her power, and “show up as herself” on every project has been a lifelong pursuit, and one with many levels and lessons. But now, she admits, she doesn’t know any other way.
“Just imagine if we all were confident in ourselves, and we came into a room together to create art in a collaborative way, with all of this confident powerful energy,” she enthuses. Having the opportunity to implement this vision of collaborative confidence at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre is sure to be an inspiring legacy all its own.
More information about the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre and Margo Hall can be found here.
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November 25, 2020 at 06:00AM
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Margo Hall Set to Lead the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre Into an Exciting New Future - KQED
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