June 12, 205
FICTION by Ryan Pozzi
Say I Broke. Say I Tried.Say I Broke. Say I Tried.
-Constructed from emails, memos, and unsent notes after my resignation as artistic director.
From: Rachel Lancaster, Artistic Programming Liaison
To: Evan Maguire
CC: Board Oversight Committee
Subject: Clarification of Expectations: Artistic Collaboration & Conduct
Date: [REDACTED]
Dear Evan,
Following our recent conversations and several observations shared by members of the cast and production team, we wanted to revisit some key expectations around collaborative process and interpersonal conduct. This memo is intended not as disciplinary documentation, but rather as a reaffirmation of shared values.
As you know, our mission centers on fostering inclusive, respectful, and generative creative environments. Passion is essential to the kind of work we produce. At the same time, it’s important that all contributors feel safe, seen, and supported throughout the process. Concerns have been raised regarding communication tone, particularly in high-pressure environments such as tech week and post-performance debriefs. Several team members have described interactions as intense, unpredictable, or, in one case, “verging on combative.”
We recognize that immersive work can carry emotional weight, and that leadership in these settings comes with unique demands. The Board deeply appreciates your vision and acknowledges the extraordinary scope of your contributions to this institution. We want future collaborations built on trust, clarity, and care.
As we continue to grow, we hope to model adaptive leadership and hold space for multiple voices both artistically and operationally. In that spirit, we would welcome a conversation about how best to support your role while reinforcing collective norms of respect and psychological safety.
Please let us know a time that works for you to discuss further.
Warmly,
Rachel
[Evan’s unsent reply — Drafted, never delivered]
Sure. Let’s talk about “psychological safety.”
Let’s talk about what it feels like to manage thirty-five people’s egos, breakdowns, tantrums, and disappearances while still trying to make art that doesn't get mistaken for another fundraising gala with a spotlight. Let’s talk about holding a vision so complicated that not you, not the board, not even the artists fully understand it until they’re standing inside it. And let’s talk about what it does to a person to bear that for a decade with nothing more than a Post-it note of encouragement and an annual budget cut.
Let’s talk about how many of these same cast members were still rewriting their lines the night before opening. About the props that arrived broken. About the technician who showed up high. About the volunteer coordinator who forgot to schedule volunteers. And how none of them got a memo. Just me.
Let’s talk about passion. And how quickly the word turns into a weapon when it stops serving the people who used to praise you for it. Let’s talk about how the same intensity that made everyone clap during previews suddenly makes them whisper during intermission. Let’s talk about how “passion” becomes “problem” the minute someone gets uncomfortable.
You want a meeting? Meet me in the room I built, under the lights I re-ran at midnight, in the silence after the guests go home and there’s nothing left but dust and the chairs they forgot to stack. Meet me there.
Artifact: Project Description – Season Proposal Document (Excerpt)
Title: The Drowned Room
Submitted by: Evan Maguire, Executive Artistic Director
Prepared for: City Arts Innovation Initiative, Cycle B
Summary
The Drowned Room is a site-responsive, immersive performance exploring the mechanics of collective grief through historical abstraction and participatory embodiment. Centered on the sinking RMS Titanic, the piece invites audiences to enter as assigned ‘passengers’ and traverse the emotional, spatial, and ethical contours of loss through curated fate.
Concept and Process
Conceived as an act of radical empathy, The Drowned Room utilizes performance, sculpture, sonic immersion, and culinary metaphor to collapse the boundary between observer and participant. Each audience member receives a passenger dossier upon entry. Throughout the evening, they encounter layered stimuli, live performance, spatial disorientation, and narrative subversion, culminating in a final “submersion” moment in which the fate of each character is revealed.
Key to the piece is its emphasis on performative grief as data, collected in real time through responsive technologies embedded in the environment. The work asks: What does it mean to grieve when the outcome is already written? Can participation soften fate? Can we ever really know what it is to be lost at sea?
Collaborators
The Drowned Room brings together an interdisciplinary team of sculptors, culinary artists, sound engineers, aerialists, and storytellers. Participating artists are encouraged to respond not to a script, but to a central tension: how to represent historical mass death without spectacle, sentimentality, or distancing abstraction.
Installation Highlight
A key visual installation will feature over 1,500 suspended sets of silverware, hand-strung and arranged in a gradually descending wave form. This represents just over 1% of the material artifacts lost with the Titanic; a physical invocation of absence, waste, and quiet magnitude.
Projected Outcomes
- Six performances with a max capacity of 64 attendees per night
- Embedded grief response facilitators (2 per evening)
- Longform documentation to support publication and touring adaptation
- Cross-disciplinary artist cohort creation, potential model for future projects
From: Rachel Lancaster, Artistic Programming Liaison
To: Performance Cohort – The Drowned Room
CC: Evan Maguire, Executive Artistic Director
Subject: Debrief Notes – Audience Feedback, Opening Weekend
Date: [REDACTED]
Dear team,
Thank you for an extraordinary launch weekend. The feedback we’ve received so far affirms what we already knew: The Drowned Room is unlike anything our community has encountered. Many guests used words like “transformative,” “unsettling in the best way,” and “unforgettable.” That is a testament to your craft, your rigor, and your trust in process.
That said, we also want to acknowledge a few challenges and areas for continued discussion:
- Safety and clarity: A handful of attendees expressed uncertainty about exits and physical navigation during the “flood stage.” Some felt disoriented in ways that bordered on distress. We want to retain our immersive power while also ensuring accessibility and informed consent.
- Tone and emotional regulation: Several guests reported a sharp tonal shift in the second act from elegiac to “confrontational” or “hostile.” While this may be intentional, we invite reflection on how those transitions are scaffolded for our audience.
- Installation concerns: We are reviewing protocols around structural rigging. One minor incident involving the cutlery wall installation was resolved quickly. Still, guest perception of safety is essential to our long-term viability.
- Press considerations: A preview feature has been delayed pending clarifications about the show’s internal narrative logic. If you’re approached by media, please redirect all inquiries to the communications team until further notice.
Let’s remember: risk is part of the work, but care must always be part of the risk.
More soon. Please take good care of yourselves and one another.
Warmly,
Rachel
[Evan’s private margin note – never shared]
Transformative. Unforgettable. Confrontational. “Hostile.”
Amazing how all four can live in the same paragraph.
We invited them to drown and they complain about the current. What did they think was going to happen when we let grief into the walls? When we made them experience someone else’s death for two hours without irony or exit signage?
The second act isn’t too sharp. It’s just the first one that lies to them.
The cutlery fell. I’ll own that. I should have checked the rigging myself, even if I wasn’t the one who hung them. But don’t you dare call it “a minor incident.” Don’t you dare fold it into tone.
And if you’re worried about press delays, maybe we stop giving them paragraphs that read like disclaimers and start giving them something that matters. Maybe we let the work say what it means, instead of filtering it into something soft enough for a grant reader’s nap.
If I have to keep translating the fire out of my own work just to keep this place running, then what exactly are we building?
From: Rachel Lancaster
To: Evan Maguire
CC: HR Archive
Subject: Performer Reflections (Confidential) – Internal Debrief, Drowned Room
Date: [REDACTED]
Evan,
As part of our ongoing commitment to artist well-being and open dialogue, we conducted one-on-one debriefs with ensemble members following this weekend’s run. I want to share a few notes in confidence, with the understanding that these are offered not as formal grievances, but as invitations to reflection.
The majority of performers expressed pride in the work and gratitude for your vision. Several, however, also voiced recurring tensions around tone, rehearsal dynamics, and perceived volatility during pre-show notes and load-out.
Selected quotes (anonymized):
- “There’s no room for questions. Just corrections.”
- “I never know which version of Evan is going to show up.”
- “I want to believe in the work, but sometimes I leave feeling like a prop instead of a collaborator.”
- “I’m not asking to be coddled. I’m just asking not to be humiliated in front of the lighting designer.”
Others noted a growing sense that their artistic contributions were becoming secondary to logistics, or that their input was welcomed only when it aligned with your preferences.
None of this negates the impact you’ve made, nor the complexity of your role. But I wanted you to have this information early, in the spirit of trust, so that we can move forward with shared clarity.
Let’s talk soon.
Rachel
[Evan’s unsent response – never typed, but fully formed]
Tell me something I haven’t heard in a hallway whisper.
They want to be “collaborators” until it’s time to finish something, and then suddenly I’m the one who has to shape the ending and make sure no one gets crushed by a swinging light or improvises their way into an insurance liability.
I asked for contribution, not consensus.
And if the lights weren’t right, or the transitions dragged, or someone came in cold because they were ten minutes late to their own scene, you know who took the note? Me. I took it. And I owned it.
They get to walk away when the show ends. I stay. I fix it.
I’ve never shouted without being interrupted three times first. I’ve never lost it in a room that was working.
But fine. Let’s talk about tone.
Let’s talk about how “vision” sounds noble in brochures, and “rigid” in cast notes. Let’s talk about how collaboration looks great on paper, right up until someone has to choose between an idea that might sell and a risk that might matter.
Let’s talk about how every one of those quotes gets to stay anonymous. But I’m not allowed to disappear.
From: HR Dept. (compiled by Olivia Chen)
To: Board Oversight Committee
CC: Programming Liaison
Subject: Incident Summary – Feb 4 Incident, Drowned Room
Date: [REDACTED]
This document summarizes the events of February 4 following the 8:00 PM performance of The Drowned Room.
Summary:
At approximately 10:34 PM, during strike and debrief, a confrontation occurred between Executive Artistic Director Evan Maguire and Curator-at-Large [Name Redacted]. The interaction followed a guest complaint regarding a safety incident involving the silverware installation on the east gallery wall.
According to multiple witness statements, the conversation escalated quickly and included raised voices and at least one expletive. Mr. Maguire reportedly referenced “incompetence,” “negligence,” and “someone getting us sued.” The exchange culminated in Mr. Maguire throwing three detached pieces of silverware across the gallery at the north wall. No individuals were physically harmed, though several performers present described the incident as “shocking,” “volatile,” and “deeply uncomfortable.”
Immediately afterward, two cast members exited the space. One has since submitted a written resignation. Informal discussions suggest at least three others considered walking out but were dissuaded by peers.
A preliminary review determined the fallen installation elements were improperly secured due to adhesive degradation and ambient humidity. The curator in question was not directly responsible for physical rigging but had approved the installation layout. Witnesses confirmed the silverware had already fallen prior to Mr. Maguire’s response. The objects were thrown away from others and did not strike any person.
Mr. Maguire met with Programming Liaison Rachel Lancaster on February 6 for preliminary discussion. A formal review is underway.
[Evan’s margin note – penned in black ink, upper-right corner of the printed copy]
I threw the forks because they were already on the floor.
That’s what no one seems to remember. They weren’t metaphorical. They were literal. They fell. They could have hit a child. The guest was right to be furious. And so was I. But mine had teeth. And a history nobody cared to learn.
But I didn’t throw them at anyone. I threw them away. Away from the cast. Away from the set. Away from the empty water pitcher someone left onstage.
I threw them because I was holding everything, and that moment snapped the last wire.
And yes—I shouted. I swore. I lost it. I shouldn’t have.
But nobody talks about the week leading up to it. About the understudy who ghosted. The fabric that didn’t arrive. The light board crash. The vendor who tripled their price after the preview article dropped. The board member who suggested we “just dim the lights and play audio if the set isn’t ready.”
Nobody mentions the six cups of coffee and the nineteen-hour day. Or how I stood there, watching the guest storm off, imagining how it would all fall apart, again, and how fast everyone would pretend they’d never seen me give everything I had to keep it from happening.
Nobody remembers the burden. Only the sound of forks hitting the wall.
[Unsent Email – Draft 1. Saved but never opened again.]
To: [REDACTED]
Subject: I shouldn’t have said it like that
I don’t know how to start this without sounding like a man trying to walk back a fire he set with his own hands.
So I’ll start here: you didn’t deserve it.
Not the volume. Not the tone. Not the way I made you small in front of the cast. You deserved better than that. From me. From all of it.
I’ve spent the last few nights trying to write this in my head, and every version ends the same way: me, still furious at the situation, and you, still the only one who didn’t get the luxury of walking away. You stayed. And that—god, that makes it worse. Because I expected you to. Because some part of me thought: if anyone understands what I’m going through, it’s her. If anyone sees what I’m doing, really doing, it’s her. So I held you to that. Without asking. Without checking whether you were okay.
I shouldn’t have. That was lazy. And selfish. And unfair.
But I need you to know, it wasn’t about you. Not really. You were the only one who was working at the level this thing demanded. Which meant you were the only one I could snap at, because everyone else was already gone. Not physically. But gone. Half-present. Making excuses. Playing it safe. Doing the minimum and calling it self-care.
But not you.
You were still there, sweating it out with me. Still believing the thing could be what we dreamed it was. And I should have protected you. I should have drawn the heat toward myself and let you breathe for once.
Instead, I gave you the worst part of me. The version that forgets how heavy it’s gotten until something cracks.
And you didn’t even flinch.
You didn’t yell back. You didn’t shame me in front of everyone. You just held it. Quietly. Like it was one more piece of the broken set.
I don’t know how to undo that. I don’t know how to make that moment smaller. But I want you to hear the part no one else is going to say:
This place only works because of you.
Not because of your job title or the way you know how to calm down a weeping aerialist. You never let the mess of it dull your belief in what we’re trying to do. Not once. Not even now.
I hate that I made you question that.
If you’re angry, I deserve it. If you walk, I understand. But if you stay, I promise, no more silent expectations. No more assuming you’ll carry half the sky because I’m too tired to lift my side. I’ll do better. I swear.
Even if we never talk about this. Even if you never read this.
Even if the next show collapses and the board votes me out and we’re both left with nothing but the memory of how good it could have been.
You mattered. You still do. And I’m sorry.
E.
From: Board Oversight Committee
To: Staff and Ensemble – Institutional Announcement
Subject: Transition of Artistic Leadership
Date: [REDACTED]
Dear colleagues,
We write today to share that Evan Maguire has chosen to step down as Executive Artistic Director, effective June 30. His departure marks the end of a foundational era for the organization.
Under Evan’s leadership, this institution has grown from an experimental vision to a recognized platform for boundary-pushing performance. His commitment to innovation, risk, and cross-disciplinary collaboration has shaped a legacy that will be felt for years to come.
We are in the process of finalizing interim leadership plans and will share more in the coming weeks. For now, we invite you to join us in expressing deep gratitude for Evan’s contributions and wishing him well in his next chapter.
Sincerely,.
The Board of Directors
Attachment – Personal Note (found among final desk materials)
Don’t frame me in the hallway..
Don’t name a lounge after me..
Don’t distill the heat of what we built into a single quote you can emboss on a plaque.
If you must say something, say I stayed longer than I should have..
Say I wanted it to matter more than I wanted to be liked..
Say I wasn’t always kind, but I was never careless.
Say I broke. Say I tried.
If anyone asks, say I’m still here. Just in a different chapter.
Read more about the author here