Two Distinctly San Francisco Theater Corporations Announce Daring Management Adjustments
“People have to understand that empowerment is beauty,” he says. “Empowerment is love, creativity and openness. That’s a beautiful gesture, that’s a beautiful deed … I don’t want to be bold enough to say “revolutionary”, but in some ways it is that we will believe in it about bricks and mortar, about finances, about a well-known story. “
For Allison Page, the Executive Artistic Director of Killing My Lobster, San Francisco’s 24-year-old sketch comedy company, the pandemic brought an unexpected insight. Accustomed to acting in almost constant motion (in addition to her myriad tasks at Killing My Lobster (KML), Page is also a playwright and occasionally an actress) and stuck in what she calls the “limbo” of the slow, uncertain advance in the direction of. denotes the reopening of live performances exhausting them in new ways.
The pandemic shutdown gave her time to investigate other aspects of her life as well, which led her and her musician husband Al Kong to decide to move to Nashville, Tennessee in 2022. While Pages’ announcement of her imminent resignation from the company, which she described as artistic, is more than a decade away from her departure home, the search for her successor has already begun. The company plans to hire an Executive Director in July and then an Artistic Director by January 2022 so that each new leader has time to intersect with Page, whose institutional knowledge of the company and its many activities is in-depth.
Allison Page in her award-winning role in “How Does That Make You Feel” with Killing My Lobster. (Clinton Nelson)
Page is no stranger to running a company with limited resources and people. At the age of 18, after the drama teacher retired, she applied to direct the fall production of the high school in her hometown of Thief River Falls, Minnesota. This early success gave her the impetus to start her own community theater company – Big Al’s Traveling Theater – which she ran for five years before moving to San Francisco in 2008. In order to raise money for her productions, Page took part in medical studies.
“I would take these non-branded versions of drugs to test their side effects against the branded version and basically get locked up in a hospital for a month,” she recalls. “But I got … five grand so I could produce a show.” Upon arriving in San Francisco, she starred in longtime Tony and Tina’s Wedding, performed stand-up comedy, and participated in plays such as Pint Sized Plays, Diva Fest, and the SF Olympians Festival. In 2010 she was part of the KML Preaches to the Choir ensemble and has been active in the company ever since.
Allison Page, second from left, in KML Presents 1997 with Killing My Lobster. (James Jordan Pictures)
An initiative Page is particularly proud of the fact that at the beginning of her tenure as an employee she implemented diversity in Comedy Fellowships that are currently offered to BIPOC and LGBTQIA + applicants in both comedy writing and comedy acting. These grants were designed to ensure these communities were represented in the writers’ room and acting pool – as the grantees are guaranteed a place on a show after they “graduate” from the program, according to Page. Some later became professors at KML, started their own businesses and ensembles, and even moved out of the Bay Area to look for opportunities in LA and elsewhere.
“If you can create a system where more people have experiences they didn’t have before, and then use those experiences to not only propel yourself forward – but also take other people with you – then it will be better for everyone. “
Allison Page in the director’s chair at Killing My Lobster. (James Jordan Pictures)
As for her own ride, Page isn’t sure what her future holds or if she’ll stay in the theater. For KML, however, she hopes it will continue to be a place that “prioritizes the needs and passions of the artists who work there”. The company recently released a Bill of Rights for Artists (inspired by the HUGE Improv Theater in Minneapolis), a Bill of Rights for Students, a Needs to Create Access Questionnaire, and an update on their DEI and Anti-Racism Action Plans. All of this, according to Page Points, is in the works, but she hopes that work will normalize across the industry.
