More than a decade ago, Phillip Chavira ’06 started his New York City life.
“I moved there with my car packed window to window,” he said, “and a dream of finding theater work that would pay me.”
A few months earlier, in the spring of 2006, Chavira had graduated from IUP . That summer, he traveled with other IUP theater alumni to Ohio, where they performed outdoor theater.
“It turned out to be a terrible company to work for,” Chavira said. “But I pushed forward because of my close IUP network, and I learned a great deal about tolerance and patience as a lower-level employee.”
Now, in New York, he found work in and out of the theater and eventually started a small, nonprofit theater company called Partly Cloudy People.
“I quickly realized I needed some solid financial education to run my company effectively and efficiently,” he said. “I needed to become the best leader possible. I realized an MBA would do that.”
Chavira received his MBA from Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business in 2014. That same year, as a graduate student, he said he “met my future employer, via an internship, and was offered an associate producer position at a highly respected Broadway production company.”
Chavira stayed with the company through 2016. By that time, he was a partner in the firm and had added a Tony Award nomination for a groundbreaking Broadway show to his resumé.
The show was Eclipsed, for which Chavira served as producer. Starring Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o and set against a backdrop of Liberia’s Civil War, it was the first Broadway show to feature an all-black female cast, playwright, and director.
“Entertainment has a lot of definitions for ‘producer,’” Chavira said, “and as a theater manager I search for the next production I think will bring successes. Success to me includes profitability, how well received the production is to critics, and the quality of audience feedback.” As 2017 began, Chavira accepted a new job in a new part of the country. He is now executive director of Seattle’s Intiman Theatre and is the first person to hold that position. The venue was recognized with a 2006 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater.
New York and Seattle are both a long way from New Mexico, where Chavira was born, and Arizona, to which he moved as an elementary school student. He had already started his college career when he first heard of IUP.
“I was the program director for a children’s community in southern Arizona in the summer of 2004,” he said. “Our musical director was also directing You Can’t Take It with You at IUP that fall. He talked about how open the faculty there was to new students, how involved he was in the program, and how he’d made lifetime friendships.
“He was a terrific IUP ambassador, and before I knew it, I was on a plane to Pennsylvania that August to experience my first blizzard, perform in my first mainstage production at Theater-by-the-Grove, and make my first East Coast friends.”
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