Michael Jenkins’ name is synonymous with Dallas Summer Musicals. For 21 years, Jenkins has been president of the Fair Park-based arts organization that has been bringing touring Broadway shows to Dallas for 76 years. Jenkins’ career with DSM started as an usher when he was 14. At 17, he became assistant to the managing director. As an investor in Broadway productions, Jenkins has earned nearly two dozen Tony Awards. So it is a bit of a surprise to hear that he is leaving the organization not amidst the fanfare of a retirement farewell, but because, the Dallas Morning News reports, he was fired.
The story is a little fuzzy. In an interview he gave the DMN a week ago, Jenkins described his ousting as “a palace coup,” and said through tears that he felt unfairly dismissed because of his age and an unpaid loan the former DSM-chief made to the organization. In a statement from Dallas Summer Musicals published on the website Theater Jones, the DSM board says they are looking for a “new generation” of leadership, citing the desire to find a bridge builder who can create partnerships within Dallas’ arts community and maximize the use of the DSM’s home, the Music Hall at Fair Park.
From Jenkins’ loan to the DSM press release’s repeated references to squeezing more revenue out of the Music Hall at Fair Park, it is not too difficult to read between the lines in both of these statements. Theater Jones’ Mark Lowery writes that since the opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center in 2009, DSM has had stiff competition with the ATTPAC’s Lexus-sponsored Broadway series:
But it’s no secret there has been some hand-wringing within the organization as AT&T Performing Arts Center has come onto the scene with a competing Broadway series that has been programming more of the newer and edgier tours that Jenkins, who has been adamant about booking only family-friendly fare, wouldn’t book (such as the blockbuster The Book of Mormon).
Dallas Summer Musical’s struggles are just the latest chapter in an old Dallas arts story. Beginning with the move of the Dallas Museum of Art out of Fair Park to the new downtown Arts District in the late-1970s, the city has cannibalized its old arts district, Fair Park, to the benefit of its new one on Flora St. In recent years, the Nature and Science museum left for its new home in the Perot Museum, and the ATTPAC’s rival Broadway tour has clearly had an impact on DSM. And while you can argue that the city and the organizations themselves are better off with new facilities and new competition, the problem is Dallas and its cultural patrons never bothered to come up with a real plan for using a Fair Park devoid of resident organizations.
Now the city is scrambling to come up with that plan, proposing a privatization of Fair Park. The conversation around how to manage Fair Park should include those who have experience operating organizations in the park alongside the State Fair. With Jenkins out at DSM, no one will be able to match his experience, longevity, and familiarity with the complications of operating in Fair Park. And outside of the DSM, there really aren’t any organizations operating in Fair Park anymore, which creates a kind of political vacuum.
Including Dallas Summer Musicals, the city lists only six organizations in Fair Park, including the city-run radio station WRR and the City of Dallas Parks and Recreation Department’s Fair Park Administration. There’s also the State Fair, of course, and Friends of Fair Park, which is headed by former city council member Craig Holcomb, who also runs the pro-Trinity toll road Trinity Commons Foundation. Finally, that leaves the Dallas Historical Society, which quietly named its own new interim director a few months ago. The new interim director of the Dallas Historical Society is none other than former city manager and State Fair of Texas board member Mary Suhm.
