Anne Quart
Image courtesy of Anne Quart.
Anne Quart is the Senior Vice President of Production & Co-Producer at Disney Theatrical Productions. Her story reminds us that we have to say “yes” to the opportunities that come our way because we just never know where our connections and experiences will lead us. I highly recommend listening to Anne’s story and heeding her advice in the current times we find ourselves in. Read/listen up!
When people ask you, “what do you do?” what do you tell them?
I think that the best way to describe what I do is that I spend all day engaging with various different kinds of artists. In some cases, I help artists get things done that they want to get done, and in some cases I help them understand why what they want can’t happen and offer them what we can do instead. Connecting different artists to each other. . . that’s a big part of what I do too. I’m always talking to various directors, choreographers, designers, actors, technicians, to try and figure out: what are all the puzzle pieces we need to put together to make a show happen? That’s part of it. The other part is strategy, which is really about where and how we can open the content that we have. Does it make the most sense to open out of town and then come in to New York, or is there a piece that actually doesn’t need to play New York and is better suited to open in London or open in Australia? That’s a big part of my job— looking at all of our content and all of our distribution channels around the world and figuring out how we get all of our content in the right place at the right time. Made exceptionally hard by COVID as you can imagine, because every one of these countries and territories are managing the pandemic in a different way. They’re responding in a different way, their governments are responding in a different way and they all have a different sense of timing. And that changes every 5 days. So it’s been tricky lately, but I do spend a lot of my time on the strategy side.
And I would say the 3rd piece is the monetary side and the budgeting side. In producing the kind of shows that we produce, I’m responsible for quite a large capital budget. I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how we meet financial deadlines.
People, strategy, and money are how I spend my day.
That’s a good way to concisely describe what a producer does, like if I had to give a “definition” of it.
It’s also important to understand that no day is the same as the day before. You get used to the phone call that diverts an entire plan or an entire day and that’s just the job.
Right, a big part of it is being a problem solver for the projects you’re working on.
Definitely. And, figuring out what’s an actual problem or what is a problem for the moment. That’s a big learning that I’ve had in the last decade or so: a lot of things, if you give them 24 hours, become much different. They evolve or they go away or someone changes their opinion— not everything is a crisis always. Some things just need to percolate.
Why do you like what you do?
I love being with artists. And I love supporting them in making what their vision is. That’s the easy answer. The secondary answer is that I also like making things that are seemingly impossible happen. There’s nothing more satisfying than working with a group of enormously talented people and pulling something off that nobody thought was possible. And I love watching an audience enjoy something that we as a group of people created. I think that the emotional high that you get from being in a theatre with a group of artists whether it’s finally making a transition that took forever to get— like I think about in Frozen, when she transforms into her ice dress— to the audience it takes a heartbeat. It took us weeks to get it to a place where it looked right. And to see it land and be delivered is pretty impactful. But ultimately it’s the people. I like the people. There’s nothing like being in a theater full of talented people.
So how did you get here? What were the twists and turns?
“The thing to follow through that journey. . . is that at every chance I had where somebody offered me something, I said yes as opposed to worrying about whether or not it fit into the narrative I created about what I was going to become. It’s amazing what can happen when you say yes”
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like right now too, everyone’s plans are getting thrown into the air—especially recent grads but also anyone at any point in their career. You could never have planned for this. It’s been awful and messy but it’s also a blessing in disguise. You’re just going to have to deal with the hurdles— especially being in the entertainment industry, stuff is going to happen all the time that you can’t plan on. It’s teaching us to re-evaluate what we’re going to say yes to.
For the kids coming out of school and the people in your generation, when you look back on this, this is going to be a blip to how it all started. When you’re 45 or 50 years old this is going to be a story you tell people. Now it feels like this huge insurmountable thing: how am I going to get from here to where I want to be? But it will happen. The people who are going to get back into the mix the soonest are the people who say yes to jump back in the pond in whatever way they can. I do think once we’re back, we’re going to be back with a vengeance. We have been so starved of gathering, connection, art, and healing. I’m stealing Julie Taymour’s line: she talks about going to the theater as a religious experience, it’s healing. And we’ve been starved of it. Once it’s safe, truly safe, it’s going to be overwhelming how much is created.
I’m really excited to come out of this and see what will be created too. Speaking of coming back, while Broadway is on pause, what do you see changing when Broadway returns? Is there anything that you’re personally working on?
We will be changed forever when we come back. Certainly we’ll all have lived through the pandemic, but on the specific issues of social justice and representation, there is no going back. This moment feels like a moment of true change. We no longer can only have lip service about representation and inclusion and authentic voices. We’re never going back.
My first priority is in educating myself. I’m doing the best that I can to read as much as I can. I imagine that’s going to be a lifelong pursuit. It’s not like you read 10 books and you’re good to go— that’s not how it works. I do find the more I read the more I can self-reflect and the more I can look at my own behavior. I enjoy that part and I am pursuing it.
We are doing a ton of looking at our Disney Theatrical organization, our Disney Theatrical productions, and how we staff our productions both on the title page and backstage. As well as asking ourselves: how can we be more inclusive in terms of backstage practices? For example, hair. What I didn’t realize was that we have so much work to do to make sure that our Black performers feel like they can have an authentic conversation with someone about their hair and I’m learning a lot on that front. We’re really striving to make sure that we can change the makeup of backstage. Which is tricky. If you look at what backstage is, it’s give or take, and these are not official numbers, but I bet it’s 98% white and male. That’s not great.
A couple years ago when we launched the Frozen tour, I made a pledge to try and put the show out with a crew, and a management team, and an orchestra that was 50% men and 50% women. We were able to do that with some really hard work. We need to aspire that every time we collect a group of artists that we have gender representation and ethnic representation and that we have all dimensions of diversity represented.
I don’t think we’ll ever go back. Do I think we’ve solved it? No, I don’t. In many ways, some of this is going to take being back in a theatre, being back in performance and being back in creation to really exercise these values.
We can only be better. The more inclusive and diverse we are, the stronger we’re going to be, the more creative we’re going to be.
Totally. And as an audience member, what kinds of stories do you hope to see more of?
I would have said this even before the pandemic— I remain hopeful and optimistic that we’re going to start telling stories about women that are real stories, that are not caricatures of what people think women are supposed to be. There’s this weird pendulum thing that happened where people were like oh my goodness there’s no stories about women! Then some, not all, became caricature-y. I’m excited to see authentic stories about various kinds of different women’s lives.
I also think that in a post-pandemic world I’m very anxious to see truly new stories. I want to see whole new characters and new story arcs that we’ve never heard. Which is hard for me to say because everything that we produce is based on intellectual property, so I get that. But as an audience member, shows like Come From Away and Dear Evan Hansen. . . to make something that captivating that is wholly brand-new is not an easy feat. You know everybody’s saying that right now maybe the new Great American musical is being written or the new Great American play and I’m talking to composers and lyricists that I know who are in the business and they feel this great pressure. They’re like I’m not writing right now! So we’ll see what it actually becomes.
What’s inspiring you right now and what’s bringing you joy right now?
I have some fun speed round questions to wrap it up! First, what was the last thing that you watched?
I think I watched Princess Protection Program with my 8 year old.
That was a good one!! I remember that!
I also love Succession, and I loved The Politician.
What was the last thing that you read?
This is embarrassing but I’m going to tell you the truth. Because the days are intense, I have gotten quite addicted to David Baldacci, who writes terrible airport novels. They’re crime whodunnit type things and they’re my go to at night now. It’s mindless and it’s not Hemingway but it’s my new addiction.
I also just finished White Fragility, so I’m balancing those together.
Lastly, if you could tell a younger version of yourself one thing, what would it be?
Don’t panic. Wait 24 hours. Most things solve themselves.
Words to live by. Well that’s a wrap! Thank you for sharing your story with us Anne!
