Ms. Artown

Beth MacMillan came to Reno to dance in a show years ago but fell in love with the city and never left. She is now the executive director of Artown and PLANS the event throughout most OF the year.

When did you come into Artown? And how long has it been going on?

Why did you get involved with Artown?

I’ve been involved with the arts since I was 3 years old, so it seemed like a natural part of my evolution. I had my own business teaching children’s dance classes and then I ran the ballet company here in town. That was how I got my feet wet in the nonprofit industry. And after I left there, Karen Craig from Artown called me and asked if I would like to join this organization. It just seemed like a really good fit.

What's different about this year's Artown?

Every Artown is totally different from the one before, the one before that, and the one that’s going to come next. And Artown is huge. I mean, we’re all over the Truckee Meadows. It used to be basically downtown, but now it has spread out all over. The footprint has grown tremendously. The number of people coming down to our event is tremendous. It can’t really grow bigger, but it becomes more important to our community every year. It becomes more significant on a deeper level as opposed to just getting bigger. I think that I’m starting to notice that change. I also know that we are really trying to focus on who we are as a community right now and staying relevant to who we are as a community. We’re not the same community we were 20 years ago. The makeup of the community is different. People’s behaviors are different now. You’ve got a lot of grandparents coming down to the park with their grandchildren, and you’ve got a lot of people who are from different cultural backgrounds coming into this community. And we want to make sure that all those cultures are celebrated. We want to make sure that new cultures are introduced to our community. We really try to focus on that when we create our festival, and this year, we have what I think is the best opening nights we’ve ever had. This year is Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon’s 40th anniversary. This amazing group of musicians—Corey Glover, Melvin Gibbs, Karl Denson and a bunch of others—are coming together, and they’re going to play the album in its entirety. And opening for them is Jelly Bread, so it’s really nice. We always try to have our local and national or international juxtaposition of talent. So I think that is going to be huge this year.

Is that what you're most excited about?

You know what I’m always so excited for are the ah-ha moments that happen that you just don’t know are going to happen. I’m very excited for the World Music Series. I’m very excited for our Monday Night Music Series—on the 15th we have the Glenn Miller Orchestra coming, and we’re doing that as a tribute to Roy Powers who was one of the trustees of the Robert Z. Hawkins Foudnation. He passed away last year, so that’s going to be a very important night to our community because he was a great artist and just a really great person in the community. And our closing night, we’re bringing in the legendary Shuggie Otis. I’m really excited about that. We’re bringing in Pete Escovedo, who’s a Latin jazz percussionist. He’s coming here with his daughter, Sheila E. Sheila E. was the percussionist for Prince. The father and daughter are coming together, and they’ve never come together in Northern Nevada. I’m excited for our Family Series. One of the really great things we’re bringing is Story Pirates, which is a group of improvisation artists from Los Angeles, and we’ve reached out into the school district here and children have written stories. They’re going to review those stories and act them out on stage at the Family Series. So really, two of our students in the Family Series are going to become playwrights overnight. I’m really excited about that. Discover the Arts is every single weekday for 6 to 12 year olds. We have them discovering all kinds of art, and they get to do projects with recyclable materials. … What makes me excited is that I really believe we have put on this festival offering something for everyone. It’s not just one thing. It’s the fact that anybody in this community can get excited about something at this festival, and that’s really the goal.

So how do you go about planning all of this and choosing who to perform?

It’s a lengthy process. I start typically in September. We try to get a little bit of a rest in August. I go to a conference in the end of August, actually. I really network with a lot of people who do what we do, other festivals around the country, other people on the west coast that do presenting. And we start working with local artists in November … if you look at the board behind you, that’s how we put it together. I mean, it’s all with stickies. It’s very old fashioned really because it’s all done in patterns and rhythms. And I network with different people I know and find out which artists are relevant, which artists have new projects, which artists are touring, which artists are around but haven’t been around for a while, which projects are exciting, which artists are hot right now, and can we bring them in? I mean, what is so great is that some of these really great, really interesting artists—Red Baraat is one of them this year, amazing fusion with bhangra and all kinds of stuff—we get to do them as a free event. Our community can come down at no cost to them and experience a new artist. Whereas, in other communities, you have to buy tickets to Red Baraat. How many people are going to buy tickets to something they don’t even know? We have the opportunity just to put it out there and have all these people get to know a new artist. It’s really great.

It's gotta be fun for you to get exposed to all these different things.

It’s very exciting. I get to see things that make me go, “Wow. That’s really happening?” I do. I get exposed to a lot of different things. It’s really probably the funnest job in the whole wide world, but right now, in June, the pressure is huge. It just feels like my responsibility to this community is so enormous because the expectation is huge. I think it’s great that the expectation is huge, but I feel so indebted, such a responsibility, to this community, and that’s a big responsibility when you think of the size of this community and an entire month? It’s not just a weekend gig. It’s a whole month where you have to keep chugging along, and you have to keep making sure that it’s correct for this community. … And the stories that we hear—there was an estranged father and son a couple of years ago, and they decided to meet in Wingfield Park on opening night. On closing night, they came to me and told me the story. They gathered together in Wingfield Park about three times a week during the month of July and bonded again because of Artown, and they hadn’t spoken in years. So is that not worth the whole job right there? You know? You hear these magical stories of how a park like Wingfield Park in downtown really connects our community, whether it’s friends, families, meeting new people, whatever it is. It’s magical.

What's your favorite part of your job here?

My favorite job is being able to make a difference to the community that I live in. Without Artown, July would be July, right? And I get to help make a whole month in this town, this city be ignited. Even if people don’t come down to Artown, everybody knows that it’s happening. Everybody’s encouraged and enthusiastic about it. Everybody loves July because it’s Artown, whether you’re down here every day or you’re down here once in the month, whatever it is—everybody knows that Reno is Artown in July. And that’s the part that makes me most proud and makes me so grateful to be able to have this job.

What's the most difficult part of it all?

I would say the most difficult part actually is to make sure that I program the festival—even though it’s the best part, it’s also the most difficult part—is making sure I program the festival for this community to be the dream festival for this community. And that’s difficult because I think Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is going to be fantastic. We’ll see on the first of July, right? So the most difficult part is programming it and making sure you’ve done it right. And that always sort of falls out when it’s happening.

Anything else that people should know before coming to Artown?

If you have not come to Artown, come on down—parking is a perceived problem. It’s not a real problem for the most part because it’s in the evening. There’s something for everyone, and you definitely will have a tremendous experience if you come down to Artown. The other thing I would like to say is that there’s the stage, and there’s the dance floor. And then the first area has always been low-back seating and blanket seating. We’re changing it up this year, and this [first] little area here is for blankets only. Then the next area is for low-back chairs, low-to-the-ground seating, and then all the rest is any kind of seating you want. It can be blankets, high chairs, anything. We’re just doing three tiers instead of two. Ω