Art Kedzierski, Managing Director
The next member of our executive team is our Managing Director, Art Kedzierski. Patrons with a good memory and a keen eye will recall Art in the role of Douglas Mallory in the 2013 production of XSR:Die! or as Grady in the 2013 reading of A Degree of Death! That’s because Art is a talented actor in addition to having a strong business sense. He is, in fact, quite the Renaissance man, having:
- A degree in Theatre Performance and Management;
- A day job as an IT professional; and
- Experience as an editor, a choral director, an academic advisor, a consultant, an actor, and now a theatre managing director.
In yesterday’s blog we talked about WHAT the Managing Director does. Today we’ll tell you HOW! Watching Art at work is like watching a force of nature. If you’re working with him, you need to sort of grab on to something and hang on for the ride.
That’s because Art’s mind seems to be in constant motion. And he likes nothing better than to solve intractable problems. Art has a talent for rooting out kinks in a system and fixing them. And when I say “fix them”, I mean “right now”. The speed at which he works can cause red shift if you aren’t expecting it.
A perfect example: North Texas Giving Day (NTGD) fell on September 18th this year. We had decided to participate but we hadn’t come up with a good marketing plan to get the word out in a way that wouldn’t alienate our audience.
On August 30th Art approached us with a brainstorm. (Mind you, he wasn’t even Managing Director yet.) We should use two of our strengths to advertise NTGD: our flair for comedy, and the video production talents of Phil Allen, our Producing Director.
Art’s enthusiasm was infectious. One week later we had nine people lined up to help us videotape a series of vignettes that explained in a comical way why a person should donate to Pegasus Theatre on NTGD. A few days after that, Phil had molded the raw footage into several short videos that got the message across with a dose of humor.
We posted the videos on Facebook and our website, and we received some very generous donations on September 18th. I believe the videos made a real difference. From start to finish, a major undertaking was executed in just over two weeks.
Obviously we couldn’t have done this without Phil’s skills, or the acting talent and willingness of those nine people to give up part of their weekend. But it was Art’s idea and energy that got the project off the ground.
And that tells you much of what you should know about Art! He is also an amazing cook. We hope this is the beginning of a long and productive collaboration.