Paige Hernandez
Paige Hernandez is always in motion. Her progress from actor to director, dancer to choreographer, playwright to producer has been an organic one, driven by both artistic exploration and an inability to accept “no” for an answer.
As a result, she has been named one of “6 Theatre Workers You Should Know” by American Theatre magazine, one of Washingtonian magazine’s “40 Under 40,” received multiple Helen Hayes Award nominations, and gained accolades from Arena Stage, The Huffington Post and Theatre Communications Group.
Named Associate Artistic Director of Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre during America’s summer of unrest and plague, Hernandez jumped in with her signature vigor, attacking a role doesn’t yet even have a solidified job description — as she continues the long process of recovering from her own battle with COVID-19.
“We all know that from very adverse situations, amazing art happens. Just like there’s the Renaissance period … the Reconstruction Era, they’ll be like, ‘And then there was COVID 2020,’ and we got these amazing bodies of work from artists from all different genres and mediums that look like, yes struggle and strife and hitting bottom, but also how we overcome.”
This spring, Hernandez and her husband, jazz bassist Kristopher Funn, contracted coronavirus. “Both of our experiences with the virus were totally different,” Hernandez says. “So it wasn't even something you could kind of plan for or do better at really because they are such different experiences. That of put us out of commission for, you know, they were saying at that time two weeks but it really took us about three months. And we still are experiencing after effects and symptoms.”
COVID may have slowed Hernandez for a little while, but nothing ever brings her to a full stop.
The return to Baltimore and Everyman Theatre is a homecoming for Hernandez. “I'm from Baltimore,” she says. “Everyman is the first professional theatre to hire me, my first Equity contract … I am a product of the city and of this theatre company and then to be able to come back and continue to move it forward, you know felt like a good fit.”
In addition to her role at Everyman, Hernandez helms her own production company, B-FLY Entertainment, which she founded in 2011 and has since produced 10 original productions, five commissions, more than 200 residencies, and toured more than 40 states and six countries. The shows, including Paige in Full, Havana Hop and The Nayika Project, are what Hernandez calls “elevated art for the hip-hop generation.” Hip, incisive and broad-ranging in their scope, these pieces include deep explorations of jazz, Indian myth and dance, and growing up a multicultural kid in a multicultural world.
Even in quarantine, with live theatre on hiatus, Hernandez is hustling, teaching classes and camps online and diving headfirst into digital initiatives with Everyman.
She keeps busy.
“Have you ever heard that phrase ‘jack of all trades, master of none?’ That terrifies me,” Paige laughs. “I've never wanted to be like labeled that like, ‘oh she does so many things but they're all half-assed’ … the multidisciplinary stuff just kept happening because I kept being told no, or I couldn't sit at the table, or it wasn't under the timeline that worked for someone else.”
The flexibility to pivot and drive to learn everything from Chinese fan dancing to creating her own light plots to starting her own business are the perfect tools for an artist of this era, where artists have to take on more and more to stay afloat. It’s also the flexibility and acumen that artists of color have relied upon for at least a century, as American arts infrastructures were built to exclude them.
Now, at Everyman, Hernandez finds herself with an opportunity to contribute to the rethinking of American theatre. “Having someone on the inside, like myself, have a seat at the table to be able to point out different things that they wouldn't necessarily be privy to is also really special. To be a woman, to be a woman of color, they haven't had a woman or a woman of color in one of these positions before. So it brings a total new awareness to the company, and to what they do move, moving forward.” Laughing, she adds, “I also just bring authentic Baltimore to the table.”
What might American theatre might look like post-COVID and after a thorough dismantling of its systemic racism and elitism? Paige is optimistic.
She sees it moving toward “A whole new wave of thoughtfulness that really looks to being as equitable as possible for all parties involved. I think now more than ever, we're seeing that theatre, well theatre this past century anyway, got super-duper capitalistic in that it started to take shapes and structures that look like hierarchies and bureaucracy, and there's still this thing where producers are getting millions and millions and millions of dollars but the person on stage, [whose] sweat and tears that it's built on, aren’t even making livable wages.”
She adds, “And being able to really start to craft a new history where we really uphold what we currently look and feel like as Americans, and as American theatre, versus ‘We're going to do Showboat again and we know it's highly offensive for a group of you, but we're pretty sure if that group of you isn't coming.’”
We laugh in spite of ourselves because, as the great philosopher Homer Simpson says, it’s funny because it’s true.
“I love that — I believe it's a Toni Morrison quote, I'm not going to be able to do it any justice in this moment — but it's essentially like once you have a seat at the table and once you have power, it's your job to reach back, and who is behind you or who is below you and pull them up to sit next to you,” Hernandez says. “And that really sums up for me what I what I want to do with Everyman, because being able to fulfill my own art with my own work is one thing, but then when you're a part of an organization like that, I think it is very much my duty to make sure that the door remains open.
Paige has built a career and reputation making those kinds of opportunities, kicking the door open herself, and helping others through. It’s the kind of fierce ethic we can expect to see from her moving forward as she works with Everyman and artists everywhere to build a new theatre for a new era.
“Theatre that really embraces wanting to do right by everybody who can come and see it,” she concludes. “Theatre with more accessibility. It looks like a theatre that looks more like everyone who's coming to see the shows. It's not based in elitism. And it's also not based in traumatic and harmful practices … but now really looking at theatre as a true safe and creative space.”
