One of Us

For Patricia Mitchell, new president and CEO of the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, returning to Minnesota was something of a homecoming. Though she was raised in Southern California and Texas, she spent her childhood summers here, and one of her first jobs after she graduated from college was at the Guthrie Theater. Mitchell left that job, and Minnesota, more than twenty years ago, however—and when she left, the Ordway wasn’t even built yet.

That Mitchell’s career path ultimately led to the Ordway seems logical and fitting in retrospect, partly because her connection to Minnesota runs so deep. When she was a child, her family spent every summer at a family cabin on a lake in Cass County. “My relatives were Swedes and wanted to find a place as reminiscent of Sweden as possible—pine trees and birch trees near water—and I loved it,” she says. “I decided, why live 2,000 miles from my favorite place when I could live only 200?”

For Mitchell, the Ordway is the latest stop in a remarkable arts career distinguished by the fact that she has not sought out any of the prestigious jobs she has landed over the years; she’s been recruited for every position she has ever held. And so far, the resident organizations of the Ordway—Minnesota Opera, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and The Schubert Club—have greeted Mitchell’s arrival with  enthusiasm. “I am a huge fan,” says Minnesota Opera president Kevin Smith, who has known Mitchell for more than fifteen years. “I have real respect for her. Her reputation is as a blue-chip, top-notch administrator.”

Demand for Mitchell’s talents began immediately after college when she was planning to move to Minnesota. She had a cousin who had been at Yale Law School at the same time that James Baakam, then-prop master at the Guthrie, had been at the Yale School of Drama. Through that connection, Mitchell was hired to be the Guthrie’s director of community services.

After two years at the Guthrie, Mitchell was hired away to work for Arts Development Associates, a firm doing development and marketing for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Opera, and other organizations. “In those days, SPCO was in the Crawford Livingston Theatre [now home to the History Theatre] and the opera performed in the Cedar Village Theatre on the West Bank [now the Cedar Cultural Center],” Mitchell recalls. “It’s amazing to see how those organizations have matured.”

Working for ADA all over the country, Mitchell became acquainted with all different types of arts organizations. But one day while she was in New Brunswick, New Jersey, presenting a feasibility study, she decided she’d had enough. “I was tired of feasibility,” she explains, “and the least feasible thing I knew of was an opera company.”

Counterintuitive as that reasoning may sound, it led to a job as company administrator of the San Francisco Opera, where she had previously turned down a job with Western Opera Theatre, SFO’s touring division. “Apparently, people remembered me,” she says.

After nine years in San Francisco, Mitchell went on to spend eleven years as executive director of the Los Angeles Opera. According to the Minnesota Opera’s Kevin Smith, “Los Angeles Opera began as a $10 million company. It experienced major growing pains and ran big deficits. She was brought in two years later and was key to the company’s [eventual] success.”

In 2000, Mitchell was recruited to join the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she was intimately involved in the construction of the new Frank Gehry–designed Disney Concert Hall, as well as with the refurbishment of the historic Hollywood Bowl, the 18,000-seat outdoor amphitheater where Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and hundreds of other artists have appeared over the years.

After leaving the Philharmonic, Mitchell spent several months volunteering for the John Kerry presidential campaign, where, Mitchell says, ruefully, she “came to experience politics as blood sport.” She then took a year off. “I went to Italy and Scotland, Paris for Christmas, New York for the Gates [the Christo installation in Central Park], Chicago for the Ring Cycle [Wagner’s operas]. I love to repot myself from time to time,” she explains.

When it was time to reenter the work force, she did so as president of the Literacy Network, a national nonprofit dedicated to literacy issues. “Because of the election, I wanted to do something closer to the ground, in health care or education or the environment,” Mitchell says of her decision to take the job. “You have to be a wonk to have much impact on health care. And in the environmental movement, people seem to be mad all the time. That didn’t suit me personally.” Literacy is an issue she is passionate about, so when the Literacy Network came calling, she answered yes.

Mitchell admits that her personal life has taken a back seat to her demanding career. At sixty, she remains single. “I’m a lady with cats,” she says. But she has no regrets. “There are so many wonderful things in my life that I do have. I don’t think of what I don’t have. Why would I?”

Mitchell still loves going up north and even built a house next to her grandparents’ cabin. “[The house] is insulated so a girl can go in the winter,” she says. “I actually like winter. I guess it’s my Viking genes. I like weather. In California, we had climate. It’s very tedious.”

Mitchell did not plan her current return to Minnesota. The firm hired by the Ordway to conduct the search for a successor to David Galligan, who resigned as president in 2006, was familiar with her. She was contacted and encouraged to apply. “Talented people are well known in the field,” says Sarah Harris, vice chair of the Ordway board and head of the search committee, who admits she was impressed with Mitchell from the first interview. “She fires on all cylinders, which is very exciting,” says Harris. “She also brings a unique combination of skills: Expertise in the performing arts. She’s a dynamic presenter—she can get people excited about the Ordway’s mission. And she has excellent management skills.”

“The partners liked her right away,” says Sharon Carlson, interim executive director of The Schubert Club, who participated in the interview process. “She has a pleasant, spirited personality and a real sense of humor. And she really listens, which is a wonderful quality. With her Minnesota roots, she had a different flavor. She fits in very well. She’s one of us.”

Mitchell is excited about the challenges presented by the Ordway. “I like puzzles, making all the pieces fit,” she says of the competition for space between the Ordway and its primary tenants. “You can’t schedule a toothpick between Labor Day and Memorial Day,” she says. “But we’ve had to become a producing organization to generate enough income to keep the lights on. That’s meant sacrificing our tenants.”

As Mitchell moves forward, one of her top priorities is to focus on a more philanthropic model for the organization. “We need to make that part of our mission more clear. The public perception, with all our Broadway shows, is that we’re a for-profit enterprise. We need to correct that and get better at making our case for funding.”

Barely two months after she arrived, Mitchell’s job changed significantly with the formation of The Arts Partnership, a hard-won agreement between the Ordway, SPCO, Minnesota Opera, and The Schubert Club to work together rather than fight each other, which has happened all too often in the past. “It’s an overarching agreement among the partners for a mutually arrived at schedule, a long-term agreement on the rental rate structure, and a formal agreement to enter into joint fundraising,” Mitchell says. “Predictability and planning are key.”

“The partnership gives everyone a role in the decision-making,” says Harris. “It truly allows the Ordway to focus on becoming a performing arts center, rather than having to spend energy being a landlord.”

The plan was largely in place before Mitchell was hired, but she celebrates the effect it already has had. “The process of reaching the agreement has changed the relationship between the partners more than the agreement itself,” Mitchell says. “The relationships have changed both in tone and in substance.”

Smith credits Mitchell with many of those positive changes. “She knows the business and she has no baggage of the past, of who did what to whom in the unhappy history of the Ordway, or the financial issues involved,” says Smith. “The impression you have of her is fun, bright, accessible, and as smart as she can be.”

Jon Limbacher, vice president and chief operating officer of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, concurs: “When you work with Patricia, you come away with the impression that she is a great collaborator, that she is going to be a good partner. She oozes competency.”

Mitchell takes all the praise with a self-deprecating grain of salt. “I’ve only been here six weeks,” she says. “I haven’t had time to piss people off yet.” And yet, she has already put together a wish list for the Ordway's future development. “I would love to be able to find a way to expand programming, find a balance between producing and presenting so that we can work collegially with more organizations not in residence. But I don’t want to lose our family focus with planet Ordway. And the Ordway has been the number one cultural destination for Minneapolis and St. Paul schools for ten years running. I’d like to continue that.”

Further enumerating her wish list, she says, “I would love to see more festivals, such as a jazz festival with a headliner in the main theater, something more cutting edge in the McKnight, and a free concert in the park. We could do that with world music as well. And I would love to showcase more dance.”

Her vision and enthusiasm are proving infectious. “We gain tremendously from her presence,” Smith says. “She is going to be a great asset to the community.”

Reach William Randall Beard at randybeard@hotmail.com.