Portland Center Stage (B)

Portland Center Stage endured a period of rapid, radical change as the institution faced its own complicity in the systems of oppression called to task by the Black Lives Matter and We See You White American Theater movements. As members of the board grappled with new antiracist ideologies indicative of a changing nonprofit climate, many found themselves out of step with the organization’s new direction. Managing and Artistic Directors Cynthia Fuhrman and Marissa Wolf were instructed by the board to withhold the events that caused a significant disruption from certain board members during an IDEA workshop training; Fuhrman and Wolf kept the incident confidential from the rest of the staff at the board’s behest, sowing seeds of deep mistrust among staff.

Wolf and Fuhrman offered staff the opportunity to vote on recommendations for actions concerning the board’s future. The options the two leaders offered were:

1) Ask the board officers to resign their officerships, and suggest the whole board undergo a self-evaluation to assess whether they were really willing to take on this IDEA work, as well as ask the board to generate a timeline for IDEA deliverables

2) Ask the board officers to resign and leave the board, and ask the remaining members to undergo a self-evaluation and generate a time for deliverables; or

3) Ask the entire board to resign, save for three members who would be asked to stay to meet the legal minimum requirement for a functioning 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Among the 27 staff members working at PCS at the time of the vote (besides Fuhrman and Wolf who abstained), roughly two thirds voted for option three, that the entire board be asked to resign.

Director of HR, Equity & Inclusion Caitlin Upshaw recalled:

I think that there was a diversity of opinion [among the leadership team] about whether we should full-on ask the board to resign. Among [the larger] staff, there was a very strong sense that asking the full board to resign was the right thing to do.