Edgar Dobie
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Humanity’s Greatest Invention
“The greatest invention was not the light
bulb, electricity, or space travel,” avows Edgar
Dobie, invoking an idea he heard in high school
and never forgot. “As human beings, our greatest
invention was language.”
When the concept first seeped into his
young mind, Edgar found himself not only
embracing it, but also evolving it. He came to
understand that language is the building block of
stories, and that stories are, in turn, the best and
most generous way to exchange a commodity as
precious as language. And what better
way to express language and stories
than through a live performance?
“Along that vein, it became
clear to me that the great storytellers
were playwrights,” he continues. “I
realized that I wanted to be doing
something that engaged with this
concept. I wanted to take literature and
breathe life into it by working with an
artist to interpret it and bringing an
audience together to witness it. And by
breathing life into that language and
those stories, you make them perishable
in that they’re different every day and they don’t
last forever, but that creative challenge and
complexity is what drives me.” Now the Executive
Director and co-CEO of Arena Stage, a theater
company that promotes creativity and community
in Washington, DC, paying homage to humanity’s
greatest invention is another day in the office for
Edgar.
Edgar assumed his role at Arena Stage in
2009, but the company has been active in the
greater Washington area for over 62 years,
remaining a pioneer in the resident theater
movement. In the 1950s, the area had very few
options when it came to live theater. “People
weren’t as enlightened at that time, and the
National Theater had a whites only policy,” he
remarks. “The founders of our theater, Zelda and
Tom Fichandler, were engaged in the civil rights
debates going on here. But they moved beyond
the protest. They wanted action.”
Thus, the Fichandlers and others in the
community sought to address two concerns. For
one thing, none of the art being performed in
Washington was created in the community; rather,
it was whatever was a hit on Broadway. “The
train would arrive with the actors and the scenery,
stay for a week or two, and then be on their way,”
Edgar explains. “There was no real connection to
the community.”
For another thing, due to
segregation, theater wasn’t available to the whole
community.
Thus, the Fichandlers
hoped to create a place where the artists
lived
and
worked
within
the
community, and a place where
everyone was welcome. “What I love
about the Arena Stage is that, because it
adhered to those two founding
principles over time and touched
enough people in the community, it has
built up an equity that makes it as
essential as the public library, the
university, or the hospital,” he points
out. “The community has come to
embrace it.”
Arena Stage got its name from the “arena
in the round” format. The Fichandlers used an old
Vaudeville house that had been converted into a
movie theater, turning the stage and part of the
orchestra into an arena format in which the
audience sits on all sides. “It’s an architecture and
format that reflects the mission and vision of the
place, as there is no balcony that segregates
people,” Edgar points out. “If you’re seeing
theater in the round, you’re there witnessing the
art and looking at people from your community at
the same time.”
For most of Zelda’s tenure as artistic
director, Tom served as the executive director.
Arena was launched as a for-profit corporation
with shareholders, but he initiated the
infrastructure shift into a not-for-profit in the late
1950s. They were one of the first theaters to
approach Congress to request an educational
Edgar Dobie
status of 501(c)3, and they were able to convince
the government that there was a strong public
purpose in doing so. With that, they became a
resident theater and built up an ensemble of actors.
Tom helped to found an organization to do the
collective bargaining with the actors, and later a
theater communications group. As one of three
resident theaters in the United States at the time,
there are now over two thousand built in its image.
Doug Wager took over as artistic director
after Zelda, and he was succeeded by Molly Smith
in 1998, who brought with her a new vision to
produce American writers’ work exclusively.
Writers like Eugene O’Neil, Tennessee Williams,
and Arthur Miller had produced a body of work
that could sustain the theater alone, and while
Arena maintained its commitment to developing
new work, they resolved to focus on American
playwrights. “We know that if a particular writer
has a great relationship with their own home base
theater, chances are that no other location will do a
better production of that writer’s work,” Edgar
adds. “Since we’re resident in our community, we
feel a need to be connected to local universities like
Georgetown, ensuring that there are opportunities
for students to do fellowships at Arena as well.”
Today, Arena Stage is an operation that
draws $18 million per year, employing around 130
people. They’ve just built a $135 million building
that houses three theaters of different designs to
accommodate different types of artistic works.
Through transformational gifts and donations, a
committed membership base, a community
engagement program with eleven teaching
ensembles throughout the D.C. metropolitan area,
and their fellowship program, Arena Stage’s role
in the community and in the landscape of theater
is bustling and multifaceted.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for the Arena
Stage, however.
When the former executive
director, Stephen Richard, left to become
Campaign Director at the Children’s Museum, the
company scaled back to performing six shows a
year as they searched for the perfect candidate to
join the team, using that time to vacate the site of
the two organized theaters so construction could
begin. Several candidates had a few key skills, but
not the entire repertoire. Fundraising had stalled
in the wake of the economic crisis in 2008, so the
successor would undoubtedly face a formidable
challenge. “But Arena Stage is Arena Stage,”
Edgar affirms.
When Edgar heard about the search and
contacted the recruiting firm, they told him he
wasn’t the sort of person they were looking for
because he had been involved in the commercial
sector. Time passed, however, and he noticed the
position was still open, so he contacted the firm
again, to find that it was no longer on the
assignment.
Arena had formed a board
committee, so Edgar contacted them directly, and
was received with a warm welcome. They had just
gone through a large reduction in workforce and
were scaling back even further on their
programming. Furthermore, they were about a
year away from assuming the title of their new
building, and they didn’t have an operating plan
in place.
“The plight of the company was even
more complicated than I had originally thought,
but from my perspective, more interesting,” Edgar
says. “I’ve always been drawn to those situations
in which you have to repair an aircraft mid-flight.
I like that challenge. My wife and I were also
ready to have a child, and I wanted something that
would bind me to a community like Washington
with a glue like Arena Stage.”
It was an
organization that was trying to find its way, and
Edgar had the map.
Today, Edgar is involved in finding new
opportunities for production. Having come out of
the commercial world, he knows that the interests
of his investors—the audience—are the company’s
own interests, and he takes this into account in
executing the company’s business plan. “I often
think of myself as a casting director,” he says.
“My job is in large part about building and
promoting the right team. You can’t do all the
fundraising, market all the tickets, or be in every
classroom
making
sure
the
community
engagement program is running properly. You
have to make sure you have great people in those
areas, reinforce the vision of the enterprise, and
then stand back and let them shine.”
Edgar was born in a small village in British
Columbia, where an appetite was created in even
the smallest communities to see live theater. His
father was a mechanic and his mother was a
telephone operator, and he was raised the second
oldest of five boys in a 900-square-foot bungalow.
His older brother, Donald, had cerebral palsy and
was severely handicapped, but the family
supported him wholeheartedly. He had a life
expectancy of 12 to 15 years but lived to age 54,
Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area
largely because he was so engaged in the life of the
community.
Edgar’s was, and continues to be, a family
that fights for what it believes in. His mother
fought for just wages and fair pension benefits,
joining the union movement. As a small business
worker, his father sat on the other side of that aisle,
making for interesting dinner table conversation.
The family worked to found a small assisted living
group house that would allow Donald to move out
on his own, and Donald himself worked to turn
the group home’s van into a carrier service for
nonprofits. Edgar, himself, is the only one of his
brothers who left home to attend college.
“My parents only asked that we find our
own way, and that we made sure it was something
that contributed to society,” Edgar recalls.
Working in the community theater and holding a
leadership position in the drama club, he thrived
in school, and there was never a question that he
would attend college. At that time, if they studied
hard and earned good grades, students in Canada
paid no tuition for higher education, so Edgar was
able to attend university and emerge four years
later without debt. He got his undergraduate
degree in Theater and English at the University of
British Columbia, and then got his Masters in
English at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire,
England.
One of his undergraduate professors was
founding a company at the time he was graduating
and wanted him to join the venture, so she agreed
to hold a position for him for one year only. His
masters program was two years, but he instead
started his thesis the first day of his coursework so
that he could graduate in time to accept the job.
Thus, he started as managing director, bookkeeper,
production manager, house manager, and bar
tender for the New Play Center, where he worked
for over five years. Their purpose and mission
was to provide an avenue by which any resident of
British Columbia who wrote a play could receive
assessments and critiques.
Before long, they had built up enough
producible material to launch one-act festivals,
which they found a sponsor for. They then
decided to build a theater along with two other
groups, West Coast Actors and Carousel Theater.
Edgar was elected to be general manager of that
project, and several of their writers were produced
on Broadway later on, attracting the interest of the
National Arts Center in Ottawa. The National Arts
Center offered Edgar a position as managing
director of their English language resident
company, where he made many professional
connections that led him to a position as managing
director at a new civic theater company in Toronto
called Canadian Stage Company. “Our idea there
was to build a company with the resources, heft,
and level of activity that the Stratford and Shaw
Festivals provided for their writers,” says Edgar.
“We wanted Canadian Stage to provide the same
level of support and opportunity.”
The work and relationships he developed
in that capacity later led to a Sunday afternoon
phone call from an entertainment executive who
had founded a company called Cineplex/Odeon,
which became the second largest moving
exhibition company in the world.
He was
interested in building a worldwide vertically
integrated entertainment corporation with a live
entertainment division and wanted Edgar to come
discuss his vision over tea. Edgar accepted the
position and led the company to purchase and
restore a theater and to put on the fastestrecouping, most profitable production of Phantom
of the Opera in the world at that time.
That production caught the attention of
Andrew Lloyd Weber, who asked Edgar if he’d
come serve as President and COO for him in New
York City. “That offer was based on the simple act
of doing a good job,” Edgar reflects. With that, he
came to America in 1992 and worked for him for
seven years, winning a Tony Award for his
production of Sunset Boulevard.
Edgar then
decided to venture out and launch his own
company, through which he collaborated on the
introduction of Riverdance, a highly successful Irish
dance show, to the United States.
He also
produced Paul Simon’s The Capeman and was
managing producer of the Tony Awards.
After a stint on Broadway with his
independent company, Edgar found himself sitting
on a commercial theater panel with a specialist
recruiter for resident theater.
He had just
produced a show called The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer, which had not been well received, and it
dawned on him that he was most happy when he
was running a public theater. The recruiter then
connected him to a job at Trinity Rep, where he
worked for six years. Then one fall, his father and
brother passed away. “You’re reminded of your
own mortality, and I wanted to do what was
meaningful to me,” Edgar recalls. “I had taken on
Edgar Dobie
so much that I wasn’t getting that sense of joy from
doing a really good job.” After another five years
in the commercial world with Riverdream
Productions, The Pirate Queen, and 9 to 5, Edgar
returned to the public theater work again—and to
Arena Stage.
In advising young entrepreneurs entering
the business world today, Edgar emphasizes the
importance of looking for an opportunity with
some authority attached. “That way, you can take
an action and feel connected to what you’re
doing,” he says. “You also must be prepared to
work collaboratively. Try to understand how an
organization operates and what its mission is, and
try to touch that in a small way at first. The more
you embrace, the more you share, the better
equipped you will be to deal with whatever issues
come your way in the future.”
Beyond
that,
he
emphasizes
the
importance of choosing your path deliberately.
“To choose is to renounce,” he says. “Looking
back, I didn’t have a planned trajectory for my
career. It was more of a career by invitation, and
in retrospect, there are some invitations I wish I
hadn’t taken.” Despite those offshoots, however,
the main course of Edgar’s professional path
followed a course dictated by passion, and nothing
less. “When I come across an important story,” he
says, “and when I have the opportunity to help
translate that story into reality in a meaningful
way—one that can be shared with the community
and thereby enrich it—that’s something that
endures.”
© August 2012 Gordon J. Bernhardt. All rights
reserved. Reprinted by permission.
 By Gordon J. Bernhardt, CPA, PFS, CFP®, AIF®
About Gordon J. Bernhardt
President and founder of Bernhardt Wealth
Management and author of Profiles in Success:
Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the
Washington D.C. Area, Gordon provides financial
planning and wealth management services to affluent
individuals, families and business-owners throughout
the Washington, DC area. Since establishing his firm in
1994, he and his team have been focused on providing
high-quality service and independent financial advice to
help clients make informed decisions about their money.
For more information, visit www.BernhardtWealth.com
and Gordon’s Blog.
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Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area