Staff Spotlight: Jeff Ryder, Managing Director

Virginia Stage Company is thrilled to welcome our new Managing Director, Jeff Ryder! Jeff joins VSC after nine years in various finance, fundraising, and management positions at Cleveland Play House. He joined the VSC team on March 28th!

We got to sit down with Jeff, during his very busy first week to ask some ‘top-tier’ important questions about him and his move to Virginia. Please stop and say hi to Jeff when you see him at the Wells Theatre or out in the community!

Marketing Associate: How would you describe your position at VSC to someone who may not be familiar with the title or a day to day in your life here?

Jeff Ryder: The Managing Director partners with the Artistic Director to support a strong organization that fosters an environment where artists can do their best work. Specifically, I focus on financial management, marketing, sales, human resources, fundraising, supporting our Board of Trustees, and all the other nuts and bolts that make a nonprofit organization run. All of this is in support of the art that Virginia Stage Company creates for the Hampton Roads community.

MA: Can you tell us a little bit about your background? What got you started in theatre and led you to here?

JR: So I’ve had a little bit of a winding path in the theatre. A lot of people start as actors and find their way to other areas of our business. That was NOT my journey. I started working in props design in High School and then grew into Stage Management. I majored in Stage Management at Tufts University and then worked for about a year and a half as a Stage Manager before I decided that I wanted to pursue other areas of theatre management. The Cleveland Play House Apprentice Program offered me the perfect opportunity to learn about finance and human resources, and led to me spending almost 9 years there working in every one of the departments that I now manage.

MA: How did you come to work for Virginia Stage Company?

JR: It was a really attractive opportunity to be a Managing Director at such a great organization that is well positioned to come out of the pandemic and be successful. This theatre is also very artistically familiar to me. VSC programs plays and theatre education programs that are interesting, thought provoking, and boundary pushing, and that ultimately build a stronger, more connected community. It is incredibly rewarding to support this kind of work.

MA: What's the biggest thing you are excited to have influence or impact on while working for Virginia Stage?

JR: I hope to have an influence on making Virginia Stage Company an integral part of our community. I mean that in a lot of ways. Welcoming the ENTIRE Hampton Roads Community to authentically enjoy our space, but also looking out at how we can make Hampton Roads a better place to live in a broad sense. VSC is already doing this work, but I look forward to helping it continue to advance.

MA: Before VSC, what was the most unusual or interesting job you've ever worked on?

JR: I did all kinds of unusual things at Cleveland Play House, but I once spent two summers managing a snack bar at a swimming pool. It was a real trial by fire experience in customer service. Many complaints came my way that were well beyond my purview…everything from ‘Can I get a different kind of iced tea’ to ‘Can you fix this maintenance problem with the pool’. At the time, I didn’t realize what good training this was for customer service positions that I would later hold in theatre.

MA: Where have you lived, and what is the most fun place to visit at those places?

JR: I’m from Iowa originally, went to college in Boston, spent some time in the Berkshires and Cincinnati as a Stage Manager, and then was in Cleveland for about 9 years working at Cleveland Play House. Boston is a great city with a wonderful connection to American History, but the place I most look forward to returning to visit is Cleveland. I don’t think it is well enough known that Cleveland is a great city for arts and culture. It has many theatres, a world-class orchestra, great museums, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I also look forward to going back to visit the West Side Market.

MA: When you first started here at VSC, what productions or projects in this current season were you the most excited to be a part of?

JR: I was really interested in The Thanksgiving Play when I was interviewing for this position, but the thing that made me feel like this could be my next artistic home was when I heard VSC was doing Every Brilliant Thing….this made me feel like this was a place that shared some of my values and would also feel artistically familiar. VSC’s programming sparks important conversations for our community in a wide variety of topics. I am happy to be a part of that.

MA: If you won the lottery, what would be the first thing you'd buy?

JR: That is a tricky question. When I was in elementary school, I had to do that assignment of ‘what would you do if you had a million dollars?’ so I made a proposal to build a sanctuary for Orangutans. I know now that everything I wanted to do might take more than a million dollars…but maybe winning the lottery would be a good start.

MA: Are you a dog or a cat person?

JR: A dog person *answered confidently* I have a siberian husky named Togo. 

MA: Most obscure random fact you know off the top of your head?

JR: The weirdest fact I know is that Barbara Walters, Anne Frank, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all born in the same year.

Staff Spotlight: Bethany Mayo, Education Director

Bethany Mayo and Patrick Mullins discuss rehearsals or VSC’s Newest Education Tour ‘Greenbeats!’

Last week, Virginia Stage Company had the privilege of welcoming a new team member to its organization in the form of new Education Director Bethany Mayo (she/hers). Bethany is an electric personality, with an ecstatic sense of excitement at the opportunity to bring theatre integrated education to the local student communities of Hampton Roads through Virginia Stage Company’s programming. Before joining us, she was the Director of Education for the Baltimore Shakespeare Factory. From her work as an actor and artist, she began to develop a love for teaching theatre (and literature) through performance and classes with her students. While Shakespeare has been her recent main profession, her Master’s and thesis focus on integrated theatre into all forms of education and engaging students in History, English, Math, and in ways that move their body, engage their creative storytelling, and help them grow a passion for learning.

We are thrilled to share her infectious energy with you all, so we recently sat down with Bethany to learn a little bit more about her.

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Marketing Associate: How would you describe your profession to someone who might not be familiar with it?

Bethany Mayo: So…how I’ve described it in the past I “I make educational programing, for use in school or at the theatre, for K-12 students” so they can either use theatre to learn something or get more acquainted with other lessons. I’m excited to bring this experience to VSC, my previous experience was directly tied to Shakespeare and theatre education. We talked about language, rhetoric, or English classes…but here I’m more open to do everything! Which I think means more students can take advantage of the benefits of arts integrated learning. Connecting those things back to what students are learning in their classroom, or social skills, how to work in a group…all those skills you need to learn moving forward. It’s

MA: Can you tell me a little about your background?

B: I started a bank teller, believe it or not! My husband and I moved to Baltimore, and once there I finally found a theatre where I felt like I could find my full-time career as an artist. I auditioned, and found that there was a position available as a teaching artist. I took the job, hoping to lead to an opportunity there, but on my first job teaching students in an English class learning Romeo & Juliet I fell in love with the process and seeing what students learned from it. I continued as a teaching artist for 5 years, remaining with a focus on Shakespeare, and learning my voice and style as a theatre educator…I found an opportunity to be a Director of Education at another theatre and thought what’s the worst that could happen?

So I took a chance, applied, got it…found out I wasn’t half bad at it! And so I started to grow. While in the position, I started to wonder “!hat if we did this with other classes? How do we help theatre integrated teaching assist with teaching other courses like history where the content is so dense?” This was what started me on my Master’s Program…so I worked in my first Director of Education job at a theatre while beginning work on my Masters. 

Coming from my research, articles and news going all the way back to 1920 classroom professionals keep talking about how the next big thing will be ‘integrating theatre into classroom lesson plans for all topics’ but then here we are today…and it’s still going to be the next big thing. Imagine, What if you learned historical eras from what the most popular dance were? Kinesthetic learners can get engaged physically and hold onto new things learned if we expand their educational experience to include performance, movement, language in these new ways.
 
MA: How did you come to arrive at your position here at Virginia Stage Company?

B: I moved here with my husband, who’s in the military, and I looked at all the theatres I could back in December of 2020 but no one was hiring. But about 6 weeks ago, in the middle of the night, I had a sudden urge to go “I wonder if that theatre I liked was hiring?” I opened up my computer and saw the Director of Education position was available so I applied. It was like a voice from the universe!

MA: What impact do you hope to have with your time here?

B: What I want to do is…the way VSC’s current Education Program is built is made to operate externally and meet people where they are. What I feel is missing is how our program draws people in, so what I hope to do while I’m here is build the kind of Educational Programming that can bring people here. Combining arts integration skills to figure out where in the local school systems we can be of use, I’m a huge fan of arts in schools. It’s a wonderful tool that helps art meet those students in places and in opportunities where they might not normally get exposed to the theatre for a long time.

Rooting our external programs in a way that engages with the curriculum, but leaves bread crumbs to what we do with our shows back at the theatre and brings those students here. In the version where this doesn’t suck and I don’t get fired, of course!

MA: Before working at Virginia Stage, what was the most unusual or interesting job you’ve ever had?

B: Two come to mind, the first one is a specific assignment I had on one of the jobs. I was a Standardized Patient in Baltimore and we were working with medical students at the end of their unit on labor and delivery. I had a backpack with a hollow belly where we had a water-filled infant doll inside the hollow case. It was supposed to teach the doctor’s in training about how to build repour and comfort quickly with patients in a time-sensitive situation. I had one student catch and piledrive the doll into my chest, and I cannot forget that experience.

I also used to work for a murder mystery company that would go to locations, restaurants etc., performing live murder mystery theatre experiences. But sometimes you’d be invited to personal homes and be in these spaces for 3 -4 hours that you’d never been before and with people you’d never interacted with before. So our audience member interactions were always a stab in the dark…but it was a lot of fun too!

MA: What places have you lived before here?

B: I have lived in Des Moines, Iowa; Cavalier, North Dakota; Kansas City, Missouri; Fulton, Missouri; Pensacola, Florida; Baltimore, Maryland; and now HERE!

MA: When you started with Virginia Stage, what show or project were you most excited for?

B: When I looked through the season, in the early days before I applied, I saw that VSC tackled Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility. Both shows I loved, and with full casts that were made up of local and professional actors alike. A concerted effort to concentrate on hiring and presenting local talent alongside out of town talent to shape a full show that showcases the brilliant work of local artists.

MA: What is the first thing you would buy if you won the lottery?

B: Another house, real estate market y’all…that’s all I can say.