Staff Spotlight: Meet Ian Driver

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background in the Arts.

I grew up in the UK and trained as an actor in a London conservatory that became part of the Central School Of Speech and Drama. I returned to Central later in my acting career to study Applied and Educational Theater as I became increasingly interested in the ways theatrical (or artistic) practice can generate powerful transferable skills that make it an important part of K-12 education. After moving to the US in 2004 I increasingly focused on theater education and worked in variety of K-12 settings alongside my work at Purchase, which began a couple of years after I moved to Westchester.

What drew you to Purchase College?

It was a series of things really: I first heard about Purchase while I was living in London. My wife is from Yonkers, but we met and lived in London for many years initially, and she would often tell me about the history of SummerFare and the creativity of the Purchase campus. Just after we moved to the US, by coincidence, a friend of mine was in a British touring production of A Passage to India that was presented at the PAC, and that was the first time I attended an event here. Very soon after that I was asked to present a series workshops for teachers in the PAC’s K-12 Shakespeare Festival (sadly the Festival is no longer going) which introduced me to the Arts-in-Education department in the building, and that led to my initial position working in the AIE department.

What’s a fun fact that people might not know about you?

Well, in spite of my British parentage and background I was actually born in New Rochelle, and for the first 4 years of my life I lived in Glenville, CT (about a 10 min drive from campus). I didn’t know this until recently, when my mother visited and wanted to see the house we’d lived in back in the day, and when we found it I realized I hadn’t traveled as far in my life as I thought!

What is your vision for the PAC as we continue to move out of the pandemic era? How do you see the PAC’s role on our campus?

Everyone knows that The PAC was hit very hard by the pandemic - as was every performing arts venue - and it’s taken a lot of work by many people from all across the campus to help us get to where we are today after such a long shutdown. However, I believe in that experience lies a key to our future: the Performing Arts Center is embedded within a creative community that it both benefits from and sustains. Therefore, we need to equally celebrate and promote all aspects of the artistic activity that happens in The Center as they all support the artistic, academic and financial ecology of the building and the community it serves.

In other words, SOA performances, campus events, PAC Series presentations, and rental activity all serve the building’s mission in one way or another, and together they can generate a sustainable business model that will allow The PAC to thrive within the academic environment it serves.

I like to give this scenario to illustrate what I mean: let’s imagine that a local Westchester K-12 student comes to see an Arts-in-Education (AIE) event here (let’s say a dance performance for young people), and is so inspired by the event they go home and join a local dance studio; that dance studio then comes to The PAC and the same student performs in a Recital on one of our stages; as the student’s craft develops they apply to study dance at Purchase and are accepted and then while studying on campus they engage via a masterclass with a leading choreographer or dance company that’s on site performing in the PAC Series; after graduation the same student is engaged as a dancer in the same company and then returns to Purchase for a public performance and the cycle begins all over again. In each touchpoint of this scenario - be it the AIE, COD, the rental dance recital, or the PAC Series performance - the mission of the building is being served. It’s all part of the wider creative continuum that makes up the community that thrives in the building. Yet traditionally, these separate components - the rental event, the AIE event, the PAC Series event and COD academic work- have been treated as distinct yet separate entities conceptually. I’d like us to begin to focus on the whole journey laid out here and begin to talk about the building as a generator of creativity, professional craft and artistic learning across all aspects of this spectrum and not just about the individual events that we present.

What’s something our PSC members may not know about the PAC?

I think many people would be surprised to find out just how much activity is taking place in our building this semester. Our Series has been very successful this spring, but as the number of Series events is not as large as it was pre-pandemic many people assume that building is not being used as much, but it’s actually been used nearly to the scale it was before in other areas. If you’d dropped by The PAC any day in the last few weeks you would have found all of our stages and lobby space being used at the same time. In fact, I think the volume of events we’ve been able to hold has been amazing given the operational and staffing challenges that we still have, and it’s testament to the hard work, resilience and ingenuity of the PAC, and other campus, staff that we’ve made such strides. I’m very grateful to them.

Another thing not everyone knows is the large number of part-time staff that work the PAC, particularly as Production Stagehand crew. Our Production Stagehands are a vital part of our activity and many of them work many hours on all types of the activity I describe above, and often have done so for many years. It’s been particularly rewarding for me to get to know them a little professionally since I became the interim General Manager and its another example of how important professional staff are to our operations.

Finally, I believe that the PAC is one of the largest student employers on campus, offering work for students in the Box Office, Production, Front of House and Company Management areas. I’d like to see that fact continue to grow in the years to come as well.

Are there any upcoming events you’d like to highlight?

We’re hoping to announce next season very soon, but I can tell you that it will begin on September 21 with Step Afrika who will be in residence with us for three days, including multiple opportunities for class and campus engagement before their public performance on the evening of Saturday, September 23 in the Pepsico Theater. I look forward to sharing more with the community as soon as we can!