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24^th Street Theatre’s Jay McAdams and Debbie Devine

Behind the Green Carriage House Doors

By Jannelys Santiago-Negron

This article is part of Stage Raw’s series on domestic partners who run Los Angeles-area theaters, on how they’re coping under a stay-at-home order, and what they envisage as a future, after the plague and in in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

This particular interview is also part of the Z. Clark Branson/Stage Raw/Wallis Annenberg Center Grow@The Wallis Young Journalists’ Initiative, where the writer, Jannelys Santiago-Negron, is a Mentee.

“The first step towards success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you find yourself.” – Mark Caine

Are We Having Fun Yet?

from 24th Street Theatre’s 2019 production of Dwayne Hartford’s THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY OF EDWARD TULANE (courtesy 24th Street Theatre)

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“It’s dream-centered work, Devine explains, “[We have] an aspiration to be able to do it, and let it be possible.”

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During these months of the pandemic, 24^th Street Theatre’s executive director Jay McAdams and artistic director Debbie Devine have been home a lot, being married and co-running a theater that focuses on youth theater – producing textured plays for young people – so sophisticated that they resonate with adults, too — couched in imaginative productions.

“It’s dream-centered work, Devine explains, “[We have] an aspiration to be able to do it, and let it be possible.”

And yet, since their doors have been closed by the pandemic, the couple has never been busier – creating online talk shows and classroom videos, while teaching-artists have been doing online shows. They quip that sometimes they do wish they could go back to work so they can get some rest. Although they may drive each other a bit crazy, they have always been together to run the non-profit organization.

McAdams has been a producer of dozens of theatrical productions at 24^th Street over the past 20 years. He received the LA Weekly’s 2011 Production of the Year award for 24^th Street Theatre’s production of Arístides Vargas’s La Razón Blindada, and was selected by the U.S. State Department to serve as a Cultural Envoy to El Salvador.

Devine serves as the company’s artistic director. An award-winning and respected leader for over three decades, she chaired the Drama Department of the Colburn School of Performing Arts for over 35 years.

Devine describes the constant work as “asking for donations from foundations and individuals, and you are constantly running on a treadmill to keep it going, and it will be 24 years now of working together.” (A team of six runs the company.)

Part of the fun of being co-bosses together, they say, is how some of the theatrical teachers they educate in different workshops wouldn’t know that they were married.

Adds McAdams, “There aren’t a lot of husband and wife dentists, or husband-and-wife air conditioning repair businesses.”

The community at large, however, knows the couple well, along with their passion for bringing the community together, for, literally, opening their doors to their neighborhood.

The Big Green Doors

From when the doors were open, now a future aspiration (Courtesy 24th Street Theatre)

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Among their founding principles is to keep their doors open to the community. Before the pandemic, during the day, people would walk by and see the Big Green Doors open to the public, welcoming those who want to come in for complimentary coffee and snacks.

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Built in 1928 as a Carriage House, what’s now the 24^th Street Theatre was home to the working horses of the Grand Victorian homes near the University of Southern California. The building became home to the 24th Street Theatre in 1997, when McAdams and Devine opened it as a theater. Among their founding principles is to keep their doors open to the community. Before the pandemic, during the day, people would walk by and see the Big Green Doors open to the public, welcoming those who want to come in for complimentary coffee and snacks.

With the pandemic, however, they have adjusted and created a new online program, “Beyond the Carriage Doors.”

“We [local theaters] are all trying to do the same thing: We are trying to keep our audience engaged and bring new materials for the classes,” McAdams explains. They’ve done interviews with playwrights of children’s theater such as Mike Kenny, and they interviewed two city officials in the second week of unrest.

Theater as a Core:

Jesús Castaños Chima-and Tony Duran in the company’s 2011 production of LA RAZON BLINDADA (courtesy 24th Street Theatre)

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“At the Beginning of the play we would not be married, but at curtain call we would be married,” explains McAdams.

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Not surprisingly, the couple met through the theater. McAdams was studying at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, a colleague (who had graduated) auditioned for Devine’s company, Glorious Players. McAdams explains that one day she called and said, “Hey I was telling my director about you and she said she needed another actor, get over here right now!

“I went over and auditioned and got the part” McAdams continues, before a smile spreads across his face. About ten years later, McAdams and Devine would start their own company. Their inspiration for founding 24^thStreet Theatre was that they had wanted to create stories that could enrapture the audience with a kind of child-like magic.

When asked about their marriage, McAdams said that they had gotten married in 1991, but that they had wanted to do something that no one had ever done before: to get married within a play.

“At the Beginning of the play we would not be married, but at curtain call we would be married,” explains McAdams.

The couple had written the play together, and planned for the wedding ceremony in Oklahoma. The catch was that they couldn’t find a preacher who would do it. (Those they approached thought it was blasphemous to wed in a play in a theater rather than in a church.) Eventually, they found a cooperative preacher – the chaplain at the local racetrack.

“Theater is in our core,” Devine says, smiling admiringly at her husband.

The Work of Sisyphus

WALKING THE TIGHTROPE, Mike Kenney’s play produced by 24th Street Theatre in 2013 (Courtesy 24th Street Theatre)

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“Like nearly all theatres, we are also standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. We’re doing the self-reflection this moment in history calls for so we can do even more going forward.” McAdams says.

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AB 5 is now a California state law (as of January 1, 2020), directed at the gig economy but with repercussions for the arts. For instance, it mandates that all workers in a theater be designated as employees, all but eliminating the former designation of “independent contractors” for actors, designers and many theater staff. Theaters in compliance with the law have seen their annual budgets swell by up to 35%, mostly from the minimum wage requirements for all employees, compounded by the employee taxes that must be paid by the theaters to both the state and federal governments. (There are moves afoot by arts advocates to create an exemption for non-profit companies, such as live theaters. )

Do you have the confidence that the theater will survive the double blow of the pandemic along with AB 5?

“The theater or the marriage?” jokes McAdams, before turning more serious.

“It’s a present threat for the artists, since [theaters] weren’t going to be hiring for quite a while anyway, and their situations will be hard for them. The education, time, work, and the money needed for the actors to get where they were is going to take a significant toll on them.”

Still, the couple believes that their theater will survive. At a recent Center Theatre Group (CTG) panel, somebody had made the joke that theater people are cockroaches — hard to kill.

“Theater is about overcoming obstacles” Devine explains, “Storytelling only exists because there are obstacles in it. [Sometimes] it’s the [existential] threat that can give confidence to the directors and actors. It can be rent, actors, AB 5, but they prevail.”

Through Covid-19, unemployement has shot up to 25% among those in the arts, and it has been a particularly brutal to theater communities across the country. But it’s also been brutal for many vulnerable populations – particularly seniors.

24th Street Theatre has been buying groceries for the people in the neighborhood. Recalling an experience the prior week, McAdams explains, “An old man had to get baby aspirin that he couldn’t get from Ralphs. The community knows that they can ask 24^th Street Theatre for help.”

In this regard, the 24^th Street Theatre is like a church, assuming the responsibility to care for those who are less fortunate, and in turn they receive gratitude.

Their signature slogan is “24th Street Theatre:. More than Just Plays.” McAdams explains.

“Like nearly all theatres, we are also standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. We’re doing the self-reflection this moment in history calls for so we can do even more going forward.” McAdams says.

“One of the good things about being old, about being a theater for 30 years,” he adds (ten years at the Odyssey and at 24th Street for two decades), “it gives us a sense of stability.

“Even through the big recession of 2008 and 9/11 we were all wondering if life would go on, and it did change, and still went on. We are resilient as a tribe. . . Old theater couples are stubborn.”

Part of their stubborness is how their bond is unbreakable, and their determination to get past the sundry threats of the pandemic and the legislative challenges.

For those graduating from the school system into a chaotic, surreal existence, the couple leaves high school graduates with the following words:

“You’re not alone, the world always looks scary when graduating from high school, but it’s going to pass. Be strong.”

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