Brian McConkey Photography
Maria Dahman wearing a green sweater.
Maria Dahman
For more than 50 years, Broom Street Theater has been the hub of Madison’s experimental theater scene, offering affordable tickets for boundary-pushing productions in its small black box space. On July 1, Maria Dahman will take over as artistic director, leading Broom Street into a post-pandemic era that is more accessible than ever. “I look forward to continuing to produce inclusive works, bringing voices to live theater that aren’t typically heard, and supporting the expression of local artists,” she says.
A lifelong journey in theater has led Dahman to her new position. “I’ve pretty much always done theater — all through school. I took a year off when I graduated from college and started doing journalism work and research and then realized I needed to be back in.” She fell in love with new, original shows in 2001 while acting with the Bloomington Playwrights Project, a professional theater in Indiana dedicated to new works. In school she’d done mostly repertory theater — canonical productions by well-known playwrights — so participating in contemporary plays was refreshing, especially because they tended to be more inclusive. “For the first time, I was actually cast as my age. It was unusual in repertory theater to find a part for someone like me,” Dahman says.
She went on to attend a two-year acting conservatory program in Chicago, before moving to Zurich, Switzerland, where she joined an English-speaking (primarily British) theater. Dahman says she enjoyed “learning how different theaters are run, how people participate, and how people are able to express themselves artistically.”
When Dahman and her family were ready to move back to the United States, she researched the theater scene in Madison. She was drawn to Broom Street because of its commitment to new works by local playwrights. “I found Broom Street before I even moved here,” Dahman says. She got involved with the theater shortly after she arrived, directing the 2018 show Unpresidented, a series of short plays spanning 200 years of U.S. history.
Broom Street Theater was started by UW-Madison alum Stuart Gordon, who wanted more control over his productions after then-Dane County District Attorney James Boll deemed his anti-war, partially nude adaption of Peter Pan indecent and threatened fines and prison time. Though Gordon soon left Madison for Hollywood, where he went on to create films such as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Broom Street retained its avant-garde reputation. Joel Gersmann served as Broom Street’s artistic director for 35 years until his death in 2005, followed by directors Callen Harty, Heather Renken, and, most recently, Doug Reed.
Dahman joined Broom Street’s board of directors in 2020 and quickly had to adapt to a pandemic that shook the theater world. Luckily, Broom Street was in a good position to weather the period of lost revenue and uncertainty. “We were able to use a lot of the time for needed building maintenance,” she says. “We’re fortunate that we have minimal expenses and own our building. ”
Broom Street continues to adapt to post-pandemic realities. One such adjustment is adding more time between productions in case they need to postpone a show. “We wanted to be sure that if there is an illness in the cast, people aren’t just pushing through,” she says.
In her day job, Dahman works as a user experience architect, making computer interfaces more accessible. Her expertise in accessibility has led her to think about changes that, for instance, make it easier for caretakers to participate in Broom Street productions. “With a typical show, you have at least four weeks of rehearsal, and then four weeks of performance. If you’re any kind of caretaker, that’s a lot to ask. Last year we experimented with Laconia, which was a short, experimental piece that only had two-and-a-half weeks of rehearsal and then two weekends of performance, which was really successful. It had good audiences, and it was just the right amount of time for those of us involved.”
The role of artistic director itself is also changing. With two school-aged kids and a full-time job, Dahman is grateful that Broom Street’s current artistic director, Doug Reed, will be staying on as the managing director to take care of the theater’s day-to-day operations. That frees up Dahman to devote her time to “reading scripts, communicating with writers, and finding things that align with [Broom Street’s] vision.” She calls it an “evolution” of the role, not a compromise. Broom Street receives just over three general script submissions per week, plus additional submissions in response to topic requests. The group’s inbox filled with more than 500 submissions for Unpresidented, for example.
What’s not changing is Broom Street’s commitment to producing plays by writers in the Madison area. Dahman says she’s excited about a spring 2024 show penned by Madison spoken word artist (and Isthmus contributor) Charles Payne, Da Classroom Ain’t Enuf. “I really love it. It’s a choreopoem. It incorporates music. It’s experimental, emotional, and it’s really fun to read.” Dahman is also looking forward to the first installment of Our Home States, a series of seven-to-10-minute plays about all 50 states. The July 2023 installment will focus on the Midwest. (Dahman herself wrote the short about South Dakota, which was the only state that didn’t receive any script submissions.)
Dahman says that her vision for Broom Street “really aligns with the existing mission and vision, which is local, experimental theater that provides artistic growth and expression for people in the community.”
For more information about Broom Street’s upcoming shows, see bstonline.org.
