Coterie Theatre appoints Khalia Davis as new Producing Artistic Director

Today, the the Board of Directors of The Coterie Theatre [2450 Grand Blvd] announced today the appointment of Khalia Davis as the new producing artistic director, effective Feb. 1, 2024.

Davis replaces interim artistic director Heidi Van who has led the artistic programming since February. 2023. Davis will partner with Managing Director Jonathan Thomas, who joined The Coterie in April 2022 as director of development, and served as interim managing director since November 2022, following the passing of longtime Coterie executive director Joette Pelster.

This is the first major step forward for the award-winning Coterie youth theatre since the December 2022 death of multi-decade artistic director Jeff Church, following a series of wide-spread allegations of abuse. A year-long search for his permanent replacement brings Davis to the forefront, as an outsider now tasked with crafting a path forward while also reckoning with the still open wounds of those impacted by Church’s behavior.

Ahead of her appointment to The Coterie, Davis served as the Assistant Director for the Broadway-bound world premiere The Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical. As the former Artistic Director of Bay Area Children’s Theatre (BACT), she led the world premiere of a kids play about racism, which brought together over 40 theater producing partners, and was viewed on Broadway on Demand nearly 80,000 times during its limited run.

She was also involved in The BACT Writer’s Room—created as a direct response to the lack of opportunities for BIPOC playwrights and composers specializing in TYA projects.

During the COVID pandemic when theaters were closed in the Bay Area, Davis worked to conceive and produce various forms of theatrical digital and audio content for young audiences that activated their creativity and imaginative play, showcasing the potential for future digital and theatrical collaborations in TYA programming. Other prominent theaters she has worked with include A.C.T., Atlantic Theater Company’s Atlantic for Kids, New York City Children’s Theater, Disney Theatrical Group, Spellbound Theatre and more.

Ahead of today’s announcement, The Pitch hopped on a call with Davis—in mid-move drive to KC—to discuss her plans for the future of The Coterie and how to face the complicated history of the venue.

The Pitch: You’re on the road. Where are you traveling from today?

Khalia Davis: From California. I’m born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area and I’m in the process of moving out for the job.

My wife is from SF as well. 

What was her first reaction to KC?

As a theater professional, she was shocked that we had two world class stage spaces that operate out of… a mall.

That’s exactly what I thought to! I came out for my final interview and they were like, “Here it is!” We’d basically just walked through a food court to get there. I went in and thought the space was adorable, but walk there was a little jarring to process at first.

So tell us about your journey in stagecraft that brings you to running The Coterie here in KC.

I was reached out to by the consulting firm looking to fill the job. They were very kind and mentioned that a number of people in the industry had put my name forward as being a potential fit for this job. We had some good, intense conversations about who The Coterie is, where they’re headed, and I decided I’d give it a shot.

What did you know about Coterie over the years, back when the opportunity was first presented?

I serve on the board of TYA/USA, and through that and being an artistic director of a prominent theatre company, I’d heard of Coterie on a national scale because of their reputation of premiering top-notch shows that wind up being licensed to perform all over the country. Their work in originating a lot of exciting new youth theatre projects has always been impressive.

There are some big shoes to fill in that respect, and on a large scale. What excites you most about the opportunity here?

I feel very aligned with their mission here. I’m aligned with how they develop new work, and I’m excited about expanding the canon of new musicals and plays for young adults and families. There are so many exciting varied and diverse stories that haven’t been told yet, and The Coterie has that baked into the fabric of how they produce work. They embrace much of that in how they choose new projects and new programming, so I’m excited to be part of the process of expanding the culture—and expanding what it means to make theater for kids.

The Coterie has always seemed important to the community because of the role it serves as an incubator for young talent, in a way that few spaces in the Midwest can. What part of working with actors in this middle ground, early in their careers, are you most interested in exploring?

I’ve always felt that a theatre for young audiences families is an opportunity for emerging young talent to really feel what it’s like to be in a professional theater setting and to cut their teeth on that in a really safe and loving and educational environment. We are we are made to be an educational institution because of who we’re serving. So if you are a young actor who’s like I just graduated from college, or I’m getting back into acting, or I really want to try this, and I’m serious about it. Performing for a company like the coterie is really exciting because we could say things like, this is you know, we’re going to treat you like you would if you were in an equity house, like these are the different procedures that you would go through. The quality of the work that you were being asked to produce with us is of the same caliber and level of any other top tier professional theatre. It’s just that our audience tend to you don’t still be pretty young. And that’s okay. And so it’s just really lovely to know that we can be a launchpad for people who are excited about pursuing a professional career in the arts and give them a safe space to feel what that feels like.

The Coterie is known for its abridged adaptations of shows for younger audiences—taking things like SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical on Broadway and reducing it to a third of the runtime while keeping a majority of the story and the best songs. What appeals to you about focusing on shows that are primarily geared towards youth audiences?

The reason I love this work is that you’re condensing a show to get exactly what you need from it. Sometimes you catch a show on Broadway and sit through more than three hours of production, but it didn’t need to be that long. We try to stage things that get to the heart and message of a story as quickly and effectively as possible, so that our audiences can still take a lot away from it. We try to give an incredible performance in 55 minutes or less, or something around that scale, and we hope to make that time densely packed with as much as we can. The thing I’m most excited about, in terms of my tenure at The Coterie, is I always think about the fact that grown-ups have to bring kids to see these shows. The notion we would only be catering to the youngest audience members is ridiculous, because those parents have to watch the show as well. I’m excited about the crossover that can happen, between theater and multimedia and film and TV. You go and see a Trolls movie, you see parents and grown-ups are laughing at a lot of jokes that maybe go over the heads of the little one, but everyone is having the time of their lives, when characters are big and bold. My other favorite thing is watching these parents/caregivers when they watch their little ones experience the journey of a full show. It’s so impactful and beautiful to witness the show their their eyes.

Having developed your theater footing in SF, and doing years of work with elaborating on ideas and philosophies and experiences, what are the ideas you are most excited to transplant to KC? 

We treat this like an Equity house where it’s the closest you can get to participating in professional theatre, without having the full demands of that job foisted on you. You get your footing here in a professional way as a member of the industry. That kind of work is so vital to the development of a next generation of acting talent. Within that, there’s two or three things I’m really jazzed about. One thing is that Coterie has never had dedicated theater for very young programming in terms of shows for children ages five and under. I think that’s an important place to expand our audience to. There’s a powerful brand here that’s so beautiful, where you can have generations of families experience shows and classes together, in a multi-generational way, where everyone gets something joyful out of it. I want to explore how we’re all connected, and I think a big part of that is finding ways to have theater exist everywhere—in unexpected places. I want to have shows at the zoo. Where else can we be bringing our performances where new people will encounter it, in new contexts? I want to tour schools. How do we get more mobile? Finally, it’s sorta a question of how do we tie into all these tremendous places and the history of KC. There’s a Jazz Museum—how do we make something that belong in that space? How do we partner with them for something that enhances both institutions.

But the thing that I think that I am really jazzed about is the fact that I have always led my artistic journey and experiences through the lens of my Black female identity like I am walking political statement in the country. I cannot dismiss it, and it’s a part of me that’s baked into the work of everything that I do. I fight to ensure as many lived experiences are reflected on may stages as possible, to make sure that every child can look up and see themselves represented. I want to continue the process that’s always been a cornerstone of The Coterie in continuing to diversify who we are and what stories we tell. I believe that entertainment can give folks the tools to have bigger conversations, and be better equipped to have them. The Coterie’s mission has always been about not shying away from this, and that’s what lets me know I have the opportunity to do big, bold work here in KC.

You brought up the Coterie’s mission and how it’s not about shying away from things. With that in mind, let’s talk about the thing that everyone is shying away from. You’re coming into a position that, about a year ago, was vacated by the passing of two major figureheads, who were temporarily replaced by a couple of interim folks, but you’re now the first, real, continuous and permanent person to take the head of this organization. There’s a lot of oxygen here for you to be able to make your own choices about what The Coterie’s mission is, but equally, that gap has currently left a lot of questions about the gaps between that mission and how The Coterie operates. The way it was running versus what it hoped to be were, it turns out, fairly disparate. The question here is what kind of plans are you bringing to address this, and what is your plan moving forward? 

So during my tenure as Artistic Director at Bay Area Children’s Theatre, I spearheaded a culture shift within the company through staff and artists and teachers we were hiring and looking at them versus how the work was received. It was a large environment that gave us a lot of perspectives and allowed us to be diligent about a Code of Conduct and how it was applied. We created “community agreements” that everyone had to agree to sign at their first rehearsal and it looked very different. It was never this rush to get people to start acting out of the gate—the first thing we do with anyone is make them aware of our goals, our boundaries, our policies and so on. We made sure everyone had access to anonymously share feedback and to ask for help with issues to guarantee we had a productive, safe rehearsal space. I noticed a huge difference in what happened when we made ourselves so open. Growing up, I was a acting at age six. I’m my industry, I’ve seen some bad, dangerous, awful spaces. Our industry is so often marred with abusive tactics and toxic environments. In some ways, I’m a product of having suffered through that. And I always told myself that, when I became a director, I would be a leader, friend, and fellow artist—willing to put the needs of folks I was asking to do work for us ahead of myself. I believe that Coterie, in light of what’s happened, has had a long history of transparency and integrity that now also contains this series of events. This will forever be woven into the fabric of the Coterie’s history, and I will never go away. It’s going to always be there. But the fact that they want to move forward and double down on doing better in their mission, and putting a greater focus on making sure their stated values are their actual, functional values, is why I’m here. I’m somebody that likes to find missed opportunities. I like to look for what artists are hoping for, needing. That’s the basic idea of what I’m planning to oversee when I start getting involved in this community, and in this classroom.

So as full transparency for the place from which I am asking the next questions, I want to give some context. I have an opinion on how The Coterie has handled the aforementioned transparency since the Church incident. My opinion on this matters much less than the voices of the people I spoke to when reporting on this, and their feelings on how The Coterie has operated since. I recognize that behind closed doors there have been a lot of moving pieces here, including legal things that we can’t discuss today. But I would say that the overwhelming feedback I get is that people who came forward about this do not feel like it has been handled well, or transparently. There was, from the outset, a sort of idea that the theatre would shut down production for a while to examine what had happened and make sure the space was safe. Productions mostly continued unabated. People in the community, especially the larger theatre community in KC, felt like what happened at The Coterie was also a missed opportunity to bring people together, and to help inform/inspire folks at other stages and companies get on the same page for what shows should look like moving forward, not just trying to keep up appearances while the public was paying attention. I understand that, in some part, this is asking you about choices that you weren’t a part of. You’re literally driving to KC right now, I know that you can’t speak to the internal decisions of this theatre in January of last year. But you are stepping into a position whose previous role involved allegations of a multi-decade run of abuse. Once you get your feet under you here, and have the lay of the land, do you have a plan for how to address the specter looming over the theatre, or the victims out there that are still hurting?

First, thank you so much for that overview. As you’ve alluded to, I’m walking into some dark moments, and doing it from an outsider’s perspective. It’s interesting to know that the broader artistic community still has interest in addressing this in an open way. I would love to create that safe and brave space for people to voice their concerns and find solutions. I also want to make sure that my entrance here isn’t just some kind of performance—a distraction to say that here’s a new person, everything that came before is relegated to the past now and we’re just going to plow ahead. Without the people that have been impacted by this, and their desire to participate in making things better, we don’t have a theater. I want to reach out but I want to do it in the right way, when I know what I’m talking about. I do have to ask for some grace and time, because I don’t know everybody yet. I’ve heard things, but I need to learn from the full community. I need to understand who we’ve hired and why, and I need to just meet everyone and understand their stories. I love people and I love talking to people and I hope that by extension I’m making the best possible choices for the group. I know the quality of work and creative that The Coterie was famous for, for decades, and I want to get us back to that place. But that does take a backseat to wanting people to come in, to share with me, to be honest with me, and to work towards making this feel like it is a theatre for the entire community again. I’m trying to hit that line between being sensitive to the needs of everyone who came through this, but also wanting to encourage them to work with me on mending the things that happened.

What is your dream show to put on here? What’s the first one that, as soon as you get a slot, you’re going to shove up on that stage?

It’s not official yet, but I feel like I’m willing this into existence. There’s a TYA version of The Wiz that’s a version of the one on Broadway right now, but condensed to an hour instead of the two-and-a-half hour version. The representation within that cast would be great on stage at The Coterie, but equally the message is prevalent and still important. It would be a welcome challenge to take on something this big and bold, but within a more intimate setting, and see what that does for the engagement of young people watching.

You’ve been acting since you were six. What is your favorite role you’ve ever had?

I have two.  I was in a version of Medea in high school, and I played Medea. It was really cool because our director set the show in Sylvan like right after the Civil War in the bayou, and Medea was represented as like a witch doctor, and healer and it was just really exciting for me to witness what you could do with classical text. But add, add some sort of vision to it as a director like that was one of the first times that I saw what if you have a really strong vision as a director, the work the dramaturgy around it, the relevancy around it would still ring out and ring true, even if you’re not setting it in Greek, Sophocles time when Medea was written. Plus, it stretched me as an actor for the first time. I would say that my second favorite role that I’ve played is Ti Moune in the play Once on This Island. I love the the way in which the show is set where there are storytellers that are helping to make this little girl feel safe and better by sharing the story. It’s a fairy tale, but it is again told through a different lens, a different cultural lens that kind of expands the idea of what a fairy tale could be and who could be telling them.

Finally, the ultimate litmus test: What are your choices for best and worst Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals?

I wish I could’ve been in the room to see how he pitched Starlight Express. “Okay, they’re trains. But hold on, they’re also gonna fall in love. And they’re going to be on roller skates.” And then people with money said “Yes.” That is the power of persuasion that I’d like to wield. On the other end of the spectrum is Cats. That live action movie from a few years ago is so unbelievably weird and uncomfortable, but the music is phenomenal. Much like Starlight Express, I want to see him doing the pitch: “I was reading a book about cats. I think the actors should be cats, in full body suits with whiskers. And it will be heartbreaking.”