You’ve seen the social-media buzz, the breaking-news story in The New York Times, maybe even the follow-ons at DC Theater Arts and NOTUS. Hard to have missed the news, in other words, but if by some chance you did: Hana S. Sharif departed Arena Stage on June 30, three years into a tenure as artistic director that was meant to last at least five.
My own take on the transition was published in Washingtonian this week, pulling together allegations and observations from roughly a dozen conversations with Arena insiders.
Backstage tales have continued to surface since I filed that piece, too.
Some of the questions I’d still like to ask are for people like Catherine Guttman-McCabe, who chaired both the Arena board and the search committee that hired Sharif, and Karen Zacarias, who served on that search committee and (presumably) worked closely with Sharif when she staged Zacarias’ adaptation of The Age of Innocence in 2025.
I’d also very much like to talk on the record to someone else who’s had their hands on Arena Stage’s books, because my very strong instinct is that the last shoe hasn’t dropped in that department.
For the moment, I’m sitting back to catch up with other stories. But y’all know how to reach me.
One of the things people keep asking me about this story is "Which side is right?" And there's no answer to that.
I believe the people who say they've seen Hana Sharif do genius-level work. And the people who say she's been warm and supportive to them.
And I believe the people who say she made them feel small. But then I'm old, and I've learned that I've made people feel small myself when I didn't mean to. We could all do a little better on that front, I expect.
Here's a thing I came across in my reporting: Sharif, in her own words, explaining why she saw herself as a good fit for a job as high-profile and high-pressure as the one at Arena.
At Hartford Stage, she recalls, her boss designated her "the artistic liaison to every department" -- marketing, education, the board, production, every last piece of the machine.
"It was one of the greatest gifts of my career, Sharif says, "because part of what I needed to understand is if the artistic part of an organization is the heart and the mind and the vision of the organization, then the most impactful artistic director is going to be able to translate that vision into the language that each and every other department understands.
"And what he saw in me that I don't even think I had fully recognized or registered was that I had a facility with being able to understand the language that the person in front of me spoke. And then I have a facility of being able to understand that language and then translate vision into that language, right?
"So finding the ways that I can meet a person where they are. Understand what motivates them. And then speak to the part of the vision that connects with the core of who they are. And that has brought such rigorous, deep meaningful discourse into my life. And it has made the pathway -- when you're trying to build something of service to people, then you have to start with what the people need. And that begins with understanding and being in community with the people that you're trying to serve. Instead of coming in and saying, I know, who you are and what you need, from on high with my 'grand art.' It's actually, how is your artistic life being filled? ... That ability to empathize and hear and understand someone who's vastly different from you. And then speak to that need with who you are and what you bring authentically to the table. [That's] one of those [skills] that I value most, and one that I think we are desperately in need of in this moment in the world."
None of the angry Arena people I spoke to gave even a hint that they'd ever detected that kind of facility, that kind of ambition to understand across difference, that level of desire to translate and empathize and connect.
Wondering how and why that skill broke down for Sharif -- or how and where within Arena it ran into sheer intractability -- just makes me sad for everyone involved.
Source: "The Power Within" podcast, hosted by Arena Stage board member Alethia Jackson. Episode link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-power-within/id1808762838?i=1000712785301