Theater |

Richard M. Parison Jr. is back at home with Great Lakes Theater

Richard M. Parison Jr. grew up in Leroy, tucked away in the southeast part of Lake County, and recalls an area theater group performing at his elementary school’s cafetorium.

“I raised my hand at the end of it,” he says, “and I said, ‘How do I do that?’”

And although there would be some acting in his future, that was never the goal for the man who recently began his new gig as the executive director of Cleveland’s Great Lakes Theater, a professional company that produces a whole lotta Shakespeare but at the moment is finishing a run of contemporary musical, albeit one based on a small chunk of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” — “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” (Written by Lakewood native Dave Malloy and helmed by veteran Northeast Ohio director Victoria Bussert, the production of the Tony Award nominee finishes up Oct. 8.)

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“I am of the theater,” says Parison, 53, sitting inside Great Lakes’ home, Playhouse Square’s Hanna Theatre on a recent Friday morning, hours after he was inspired by witnessing “teams of people” fill Playhouse Square for the partner organization’s splashy Marquee Moments event to unveil the lighting of its theaters’ new signage and hours before the next performance of “Great Comet.” “I have always said, ‘Wherever I am around the world, I can walk into a theater — in Italy, London — and immediately feel at home.’”

He certainly feels at home at Great Lakes. After graduating from Riverside High School in Painesville Township in 1987, studying theater management at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and teaching some classes at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland — theater history and acting among them — he was hired by what was then the Great Lakes Theater Festival.

He fondly recalls working under people such as then-Artistic Director Gerald Freedman, Parison serving as his assistant and graduating into other roles as time passed and referring to himself as “a jack of all departments.”

He would move on to Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre, where he was the assistant producing artistic director; then to the Barrington Stage Co. in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he served as producing director; and finally to the Richmond Performing Arts Center and Center Stage Foundation in Virginia.

“They always say that south of Fredericksburg is where you start to say ‘y’all,’ and it’s absolutely true,” says Parison, who could be accused of having picked up a bit of a Southern drawl. “And you say ‘soda,’ not ‘pop.’ I now have started to come back to saying ‘pop.’”

Although he still has some extended family in Northeast Ohio — his mom is deceased and his dad lives in South Carolina, he says — he really hadn’t felt a pull to come back.

“When I left to go to Philadelphia,” he says, “I did not look into the rearview mirror at all. I thought, ‘I’m never going back to Ohio; I’m moving on.’ Well, you learn very quickly, as they say, never say ‘never.’”

He first saw that Great Lakes was looking for a successor to the only recently retired Bob Taylor in 2022.

“I thought, ‘Interesting,” he recalls, but quickly concluded he wouldn’t get strong consideration. “‘No, I couldn’t possibly apply for that.’”

When it was reposted this year, however, he adopted a different attitude and reached out to the recruiter working on the position.

“And he said, ‘You were on our list to reach out to’ — because they had placed me a number of years before,” Parison says. “I said, ‘Well, the stars have aligned to at least put my hat in the ring.’”

No, he hasn’t moved back to the suburbs, instead settling in The Lumen at Playhouse Square, close to the Great Lakes offices.

He says a “surreality” surrounds his return and speaks of “sheer joy” being around the staff.

“They gave me a first-day present, which were these educational posters from the time that I was here. And not only did it choke me up, but it made me realize that I’m part of a legacy that goes back, you know, not to the ’60s when it started, but part of a legacy that is ongoing.”

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Before he began in Cleveland in early September, he spent time at sister organization Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival in Nevada, where he holds the same title and will spend much of his time.

“It’s a painful part of the job,” he says with a smile, “but, you know, I’ll stomach through it.”

The two theater companies share resources with each other, of course, but also with a third, the Idaho Shakespeare Co., in Boise. He has no purview with the latter, he says, but also has visited there to see the production “Great Comet” run in a 1,200-seat outdoor amphitheater — a great contrast with the more intimate and indoor Hanna.

He credits the “brilliance” of the strategic alliance with being one of the reasons Great Lakes has emerged from the pandemic in strong financial shape.

“There is a misconception that … art people don’t know how to run a business,” Parison says. “We do not talk in terms of ‘profit and loss’; we talk in terms of ‘surplus and deficit.’ And when we make a surplus — when we have more revenue than expenses — we’re taking that surplus and putting it back into the company. We’re not dividing it among shareholders. … We’re putting it back into the company, back into the people that are producing art and supporting the art and the artists.”

The man still sitting atop that aspect of Great Lakes is Producing Artistic Director Charles Fee, who’s been with the company for more than two decades.

“His vision creates the art onstage,” Parison says. “His focus is on generating and creating art, and my focus is on advocating for that and providing the resources to support and maintain it.”

Still, as a passionate theater fan, might Parison not try to nudge Fee into picking this or that show to produce?

Short answer: yes.

“Charlie is the most collaborative partner,” he says. “We are not a siloed organization. People don’t stay in their lanes.”

Parison’s lane largely will take him here and there advocating for Great Lakes — in other words, working to raise funds.

“I need to constantly be getting out into the community, with stakeholders, with donors, so that I can re-introduce, post-pandemic, Great Lakes Theater,” he says.

He sounds like he has the pitch down already.

“The design of this theater was created for intimacy and for close contact with the artists. This is a small community right here in the theater, and it lifts people up,” Parison says. “Life imitates art; art imitates life. The pitch is to give people an understanding of how the art that we are doing speaks to the various constituencies and to understand that this is Cleveland’s living room. This is the artistic living room of Cleveland.”

Editor’s note: This article was corrected at 2:07 p.m. Oct. 3 to correct the middle of initial of Richard M. Parison Jr. and again at 4:16 p.m. Oct. 3 to correct the status of the Walnut Street Theatre.