Front Porch Arts Collective

In August 2023, the Front Porch Arts Collective (The Porch) in Boston, Massachusetts, was beginning its 2023-2024 artistic season. A contagious energy filled The Porch’s office space. The first rehearsal for James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fat Ham, directed by Obie Award winner Stevie Walker-Webb, was days away. Dawn Meredith Simmons, co-founder and co-producing artistic director, would be responsible for transferring the show to Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre as part of a co-production between The Porch, The Huntington Theatre Company (The Huntington), and the Alliance. Simultaneously, co-founder and co-producing director Maurice Emmanuel Parent was an actor in a production at another theater, while also working as a line producer for Fat Ham and preparing for another semester as a Professor of the Practice at Tufts University.

The Porch was also entering its last year of a three-year residency with The Huntington, so a plan for the future was needed. A residency is a model wherein one institution, typically one that is large and well established, provides resources for a smaller organization.

The partnership between The Porch, the only professionally producing Black theater in Boston, and the Tony Award-winning and historically white Huntington, intended to strengthen The Porch’s organizational capacity. After three years, The Porch was supposed to have the resources to operate independently, without support from another company. Parent and Simmons were unsure if the theater was ready. Due to shortcomings with the partnership, The Porch had not yet expanded its board of directors, significantly increased its contributed revenue, created new staff positions, or received substantial mentorship from The Huntington. Additionally, Simmons and Parent had no leads on office, rehearsal, or performance spaces. Some Huntington staff members expressed interest in extending the residency. However, The Huntington’s new leaders, artistic director Loretta Greco (whose first full season had only just begun) and incoming executive director Christopher Mannelli (who wouldn’t begin full-time work until November 2023) had yet to express this intention. As a third possibility, it might be time to pursue a residency elsewhere in Boston.