VT Voices: Southern Vermont’s Leading Ladies

BY JOSHUA SHERMAN, MD
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRYCE BOYER AT OLD MILL ROAD RECORDING

Southern Vermont’s arts scene is thriving. Local playhouses, art centers, and theatre festivals draw international talent and attention to the region, bringing world-class art, music, and theatre to the delight of both out-of-town visitors and local Vermonters.

What many people may not know is that this is primarily happening under female leadership.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment (which granted women the right to vote), we sat down and spoke with the strong female leaders who run some of Southern Vermont’s most prominent and influential artistic organizations.

Anne Corso

Anne Corso, Executive Director of the Southern Vermont Arts Center

Anne Corso is the Executive Director of the Southern Vermont Arts Center. She holds a degree in Art History from Rosemont College, and a master’s in museum education from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has served as the director of education for the Reading Public Museum in Pennsylvania, and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. She is passionate about community building and has brought new life to the Southern Vermont Arts Center, forging powerful connections that have provided exciting opportunities for cooperation with other local artistic organizations.

On Persistence
“When I was a little girl, my mom used to take me on the train into Center City, Philadelphia, and we would go to the art museum. I knew from the time that I was a little girl that I wanted to work in an art museum. When I was in high school, I told my teachers and my guidance counselors I wanted to major in art history, and they said, ‘Well, you can’t do that. No one gets paid doing that. That’s ridiculous. I don’t even know where you would go.’ So I cracked open my books, and I found the place where I could go and found a little community as I was making my way through undergraduate and graduate school. Eventually, I realized, ‘Hey, you know, these people were wrong. You really can make a living in the arts.’ I’ve had an incredible career in art centers and art museums, teaching art and talking about art and living in it and around it every day.”

On The Southern Vermont Arts Center
“At Southern Vermont Arts Center I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I was able to build a new team. [I] brought on a couple of [people in] key positions, one of them being my manager of education, who has really, really dialed it up in terms of all of our programming efforts. I think that where we’ve been able to start to change things and accomplish things is making people realize that we do want to be there for the community. And we want to program both for them and with them. We have a year-round community—people like us who live here every day who are raising their families here every day. As we offered a new suite of programs and exhibitions, we started to incorporate those people into our programming with things like yoga in the galleries and parent-child art classes and spring break camps and holiday camps for kids. That’s when I started to hear, ‘It feels like the Arts Center is coming to life again.’ For me, that’s been so gratifying.”

On the Vermont Artistic Community
“I’m shocked at the wonderful group of artists who were native to Southern Vermont. The Luigi Lucioni [paintings] are incredible. We have one of the largest collections of them. I recently discovered our beautiful collection of Ogden Pleissner watercolors. He lived in this area and worked on a nearby farm painting incredible sportsmanlike images of fly fishing. We actually put them up in one of our galleries and are starting to focus a little bit more on our permanent collection. And that’s just the visual arts. I am very proud to host Manchester Music Festival. We have this amazing resource in the Arkell Pavilion—that’s a 400-seat performing arts theater. I hope, looking back 10 years from now, we can say, ‘Can you believe that we hosted so-and-so at the Arts Center?’”

Listen to the full audio interviews at
oldmillroadrecording.com/vt-voices

Susanna Gellert

Susanna Gellert, Executive Artistic Director at Weston Playhouse.

Susanna Gellert is the Executive Artistic Director at Weston Playhouse. Prior to joining Weston, she was the associate producer and director of the Studio at New York’s acclaimed Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA), and was also artistic producer and resident director at Center Stage in Baltimore. Susanna currently teaches in the MFA Directing program at The New School. She has also taught at The University of Chicago, the University of Rochester, Bard College, Columbia University, and NYU. She holds degrees from Yale University, Columbia University, and The University of Chicago.

On Directing
“I knew early on that I didn’t want to be an actor. I loved watching actors, and I loved working with actors, but the first show I ever worked on, I was an actor and I just didn’t enjoy it. I felt self-conscious and didn’t like being told what to do. My theatre teacher said, ‘Why don’t you try directing?’ I went away to summer stock in the Berkshires, and within a week I put my foot down and said, ‘No. I’m not going to be an acting apprentice, I’m going to be a directing apprentice’ and I created that program for myself. I loved the thinking part of it, and the collaboration part of it. I knew that by being a director, I would spend my time reading, thinking, and working with people to make them feel as good about the work as possible.”

On Running Weston Playhouse
“Before I became an artistic director, I would often make the case that by being in the room as a director, you are putting all of the pieces together. You have to be very political and you have to be an incredible listener and strategist. Now that I’m running a theater, I feel all the more that that is true. I think you have to be a little bit more thoughtful about what you want to put into the world. I find myself thinking a lot about what my audience might be thinking, what they might be feeling, so that I’m not just telling them what to think, but responding to what’s going on in the world.”

On Vermont
“As a child, I came up here almost every summer. My uncle had a place in Wilmington. I grew up spending at least a couple of weeks here each year. When I met my husband, he had been coming up here for his work at Bennington College. When he and I started dating, one of our first trips was to Vermont. Very early on in our relationship, Vermont became the dream. And amazingly, the dream came true. And here we are. What’s attractive about being a woman running an institution in Vermont is that you’re not a part of the rat race. Some of the leading Broadway stars come to Weston, but no one is checking their phone every five minutes to see if their agent has called about the Hollywood gig or to see if the producers have called about taking the show to Broadway. You really do have that time for contemplation and thought. And …[Vermont] is also gorgeous!”

Listen to the full audio interviews at
oldmillroadrecording.com/vt-voices

Dina Janis

Dina Janis, Artistic Director of Dorset Theatre Festival

Dina Janis is the Artistic Director of Dorset Theatre Festival. She is a member of the famed Actors Studio, has taught at Bennington College since 2000, and from 2005 to 2008, she ran the LAByrinth theater company’s well-known lab intensive at Bennington. She has served as one of the contributors to the renowned Kilroy List for the past two years, which works toward addressing gender equity in new play production on a national level.

On Theatre and Acting
“I was born in Chicago and when I came to New York, I was studying with Stella Adler. It was an amazing experience. I used to volunteer at The Actors Studio as an observer and then eventually auditioned and became a lifelong member. I was so blessed to have so many people like Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Harvey Keitel that were involved in running sessions. It was really a trial by fire, because the membership would show up every Tuesday and Friday, and people would get up and work, and they would get critiqued by the people there. It was a competitive environment, so you had to hold your own.”

On Directing
“A natural evolution of working on new material is that you become very involved in the kind of conversations that are happening in the room as the play is growing and birthing. Out of that, I began to really understand that I had an aptitude for directing and for engaging with a play … that led naturally to playwrights bringing me stuff and saying, ‘Can we work on this piece?’ I also did a lot of work assisting. I assisted Al Pacino and John Gold Rubin. There were a bunch of different directors who let me be an assistant to them and watch the process. Eventually, I started developing my own content and working on my own plays.”

On Female Leadership
“Women in leadership roles in the theater is still really something new. It’s definitely been a long time coming. And frankly, in these daunting political and social times, when you look at what the theater is doing, and film as well, in insisting upon making real change in diversification of casting and programming, I think that’s important. It’s inspiring to be in that environment at this moment.”

On Getting “Hooked” by Vermont
“[Coming to Vermont] was really not by design. I had been in New York for more than 20 years. My older son was 5, and I was expecting another son. I just felt like I wanted to get out of the city for a little while and get some perspective. Coincidentally, Bennington was looking for someone to replace an acting teacher. I had no plans of staying and I ended up getting hired to teach one course at Bennington. That evolved into an ongoing teaching relationship there. Eventually we really moved up here full time, and my kids all grew up in Vermont and went to school here.”

Listen to the full audio interviews at
oldmillroadrecording.com/vt-voices

Betsy Bleakie

Betsy Bleakie, Festival Manager of Manchester Music Festival

Betsy Bleakie is the Festival Manager of Manchester Music Festival. Before coming to work at Manchester Music Festival, Betsy spent years honing her marketing and promotion skills in the fields of retail and fashion merchandising, working with Victoria’s Secret catalog in the 1980s, and playing a pivotal role in the brand’s development and expansion. After moving to Vermont and transitioning to consultation and fundraising work with local Southern Vermont library projects, including the Mark Skinner Library and the Manchester Community Library, Betsy is now applying her promotional development skills on behalf of Manchester Music Festival, continuing the festival’s forward trajectory with an emphasis on outreach, promotion, and community connection.

On Music
“I just watched the documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and she said something that spoke to me [about] her love of opera. She said, ‘It’s like an electrical current that flows through me.’ When she said that, it really resonated with me, because my daughter and I would always talk about how music gives us chills. That’s what music can do for you. It’s emotional. It’s spiritual, but it’s also physical. And I love that.”

On Female Leadership
“I think things are changing. I was lucky in that as I was moving up the corporate ladder, more women were entering the workforce at a pivotal time. Tenacity and preparedness has helped me as I’ve moved up and moved around and I view that an asset. The beauty of chamber music versus orchestral music is that it’s theoretically more egalitarian; there’s more opportunity for equality in the music. [In a] small ensemble, you can’t disappear into your section as you can with an orchestra. I really like that about chamber music.”

On Manchester Music Festival
“What we provide with Manchester Music Festival is first class. It’s really fabulous to be part of an organization that is contributing to the arts and culture in our region. We bring people together in different stages of their careers. Our young artists and our faculty can learn from each other and connect, so that’s really exciting.”

Listen to the full audio interviews at
oldmillroadrecording.com/vt-voices

Peggie Telscher

Peggie Telscher, President of the Board of the Manchester Music Festival

Peggie Telscher is President of the Board of the Manchester Music Festival. An accomplished opera singer and vocalist, with a degree in vocal performance from Northwestern University, Peggie also holds a law degree from The University of Chicago, with years of experience working in the fields of commercial litigation and health care law. Through her work with Manchester Music Festival, Peggie works tirelessly to bring first-rate musical talent to the Manchester area from around the world, providing exciting opportunities for cross-cultural and cross-generational collaboration between some of classical music’s most talented musicians.

On Music
“My mom always wanted me to become a pianist from a very early age; I just loved playing the piano. When I got to be about 12, I was really bitten by the folk music bug and loved Peter, Paul and Mary, The Kingston Trio, but especially Joni Mitchell. She was just too cool. And I really wanted to be Joni Mitchell. So I said, ‘Mom, can I take guitar lessons?’ And so that’s when I started with that. And then I realized, ‘I want to be able to sing better, so that I can sound better when I’m playing these folk songs on my guitar.’ That’s when I started taking some voice lessons. One thing led to another and I discovered this whole world of Italian art songs and French art songs. It’s really exquisite when you listen to the piano and the voice, interweaving and expressing the poetry in a very intimate way. To me, that was the ultimate. I loved it.”

On Manchester Music Festival
“We’ve started to put Manchester Music Festival on the map as a household name in the world of classical chamber music. Because of these wonderful performers who are faculty members for our program, we can attract even better young artists from all over the world. We want to continue to attract the artists who perform on the world’s finest stages, [and] attract people from the broader region to come to Manchester to experience this. We want to really make it a destination. We’re trying to market this to some people who might come from a farther distance [and] say, ‘Okay, I’m going to spend a week there, and I’m going to also sample the fine theatre that we have—Dorset Theatre Festival, Weston Playhouse, the wonderful Southern Vermont Arts Center’—all of the other things that the Manchester region has to offer.”

On Balancing Music, Law, and Family
“There was a turning point for me in my life—I had been told repeatedly that for me to take my vocal career to the next level, that it was advisable for me to move to Europe and sing in the many little houses in Europe and work my way up that way. But I had decided that I really wanted to start a family. So, I thought ‘I’ve always wanted to explore the other side of my brain anyway, and I’d like to get a day job.’ So I [took] the admissions test and [applied] to law school. I went to The University of Chicago Law School, and it did open up a lot of doors. As time went on, I was very fortunate that people accommodated my little growing family. I was first at Sidley and Austin in Chicago, which is now called Sidley—it’s actually the firm where Michelle Obama started out—I was in commercial litigation and then switched over to health care law, because the hours were a little bit better. Then, I was offered a job in-house at the American Dental Association working with another woman [who also worked part time]. Between the two of us, we gave them much more than one full time [person]—it really was an enlightened time. Our general counsel was a woman. She had a family too. And she did appreciate that we were so loyal and that we gave her our all. It was fabulous.”

On Balancing Music, Law, and Family
“There was a turning point for me in my life—I had been told repeatedly that for me to take my vocal career to the next level, that it was advisable for me to move to Europe and sing in the many little houses in Europe and work my way up that way. But I had decided that I really wanted to start a family. So, I thought ‘I’ve always wanted to explore the other side of my brain anyway, and I’d like to get a day job.’ So I [took] the admissions test and [applied] to law school. I went to The University of Chicago Law School, and it did open up a lot of doors. As time went on, I was very fortunate that people accommodated my little growing family. I was first at Sidley and Austin in Chicago, which is now called Sidley—it’s actually the firm where Michelle Obama started out—I was in commercial litigation and then switched over to health care law, because the hours were a little bit better. Then, I was offered a job in-house at the American Dental Association working with another woman [who also worked part time]. Between the two of us, we gave them much more than one full time [person]—it really was an enlightened time. Our general counsel was a woman. She had a family too. And she did appreciate that we were so loyal and that we gave her our all. It was fabulous.”

Listen to the full audio interviews at
oldmillroadrecording.com/vt-voices


More Information
Immerse yourself in the joy of the arts throughout the year.
For more on our wonderful local arts organizations:
Dorset Theatre Festival dorsettheatrefestival.org
Manchester Music Festival mmfvt.org
Southern Vermont Arts Center svac.org
Weston Playhouse westonplayhouse.org