In 2019, Oakland native Nataki Garrett was appointed artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, one of the most influential nonprofit theaters in the country. She became one of the country’s few Black female theater leaders, working in a town, Ashland, Ore., that’s approximately 90% white.

Four years later, she has a new title: interim executive artistic director, which means she’s now running the place without a co-leader. That structure, highly unusual in the theater world, is a result of cutbacks related to pandemic recovery.

它不好玩宣布裁员;俄勒冈州的年代hakespeare’s annual budget is $4 million to $6 million shy of its pre-pandemic $44 million, with a staff of 200, 125 fewer workers than it had in March 2020. But this year, Garrett has weathered more than economic challenges; in September,NPR reportedthat the theater hired security staff to escort her in public after she received death threats.

The Chronicle spoke to Garrett about what these changes have meant for her and how she makes sense of them.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Oregon Shakespeare announced you as interim executive artistic director in January, and Anyania Muse, who’s also a Black woman, is now your second-in-command. How does it feel different at OSF now?

A:The reality of recovery has set in. Surviving a crisis is one thing. Surviving a recovery is a completely different thing.

Q: How so?

A:幸存的允许您至少有一个危机adrenaline of the need to get through the event. Whereas recovery … when I broke my ankle and I had to go to physical therapy, there’s a moment in physical therapy where I was like, “I’m fine. I’m recovered.” And then I sprained my ankle again two weeks later. Recovery actually takes the fortitude to be able to stick with what it takes to recover.

People are coming back into our theaters — over time. But do we have the bridge to get through that time?

Q: In arecent interview with American Theatre,you talked about inviting older audience members to be ambassadors to younger audiences. How do you make that happen if the older generations are reluctant to take on that role?

A:I have to question the reluctance. To those people sitting in houses (where audiences) were smaller than they had before — like, if you’re looking around and you’re saying, “Where are all the people?” — I say, “Well, I need your help to bring those people.”

I keep reminding people that I came to the theater predominantly with my grandmother, outside of being one of the kids that was bused in to Berkeley Rep from Willard Junior High School (now Willard Middle School in Berkeley). If you want your grandkids to understand the importance of this work, you actually have to embed the importance so that it becomes a natural part of their experience.

Unfortunately, what we’ve done as an industry is we’ve opted out of giving people the tools to help continue (the theater). We don’t want to disturb our patron base by telling them that they’ll have to share the space with other people. What I want to do is disturb the notion of disturbing. What’s the point of the shared experience if you’re in your own bubble?

Q: This is the million-dollar question that every theater’s wondering about: How do you truly invite the younger generation?

A:The biggest thing about the invitation is inviting people. Over and over. “Hey, Lily, you and five of your friends really should come to my theater, and I really want you to be here, and it’s important for me that you’re here.” I need to be able to say it to you and know that you may not come and just still say that there’s a door that’s open for you. What we’ve done is we’ve said, “Well, we invited this group of people, but they didn’t come, so we’re going to close the door.” What I want to do is say the door is always open. When you’re ready, you’ll come through.

I know people who do feel anxious about walking into a theater because they’re afraid that they’re going to be admonished or shushed or glared at. How do I let them know that this is a positive place? You might be challenged from the stage, but the experience in the room is for you.

Q: Last year NPR reported that a security detail started following you to public events following death threats you received.

A:I’ve had people bandy about, “Well, I’ve received bad letters, too.” It was a verbal threat, and I have no reason to believe that it’s not real. The only way you find out if it’s real or not is to have the experience.

Q: How has having security around you all the time changed your mental state?

A:It’s not what I signed up for. The thing that’s the most disconcerting is that recently there have been some people who have problematized the fact that I need security. What I’m not hearing from those same people is that they wish that I didn’t need to have it. It’s devastatingly hurtful.

There are a lot of people in (Ashland) who will stop me and say, “We support you, and we want to make sure you know that if you want us to walk with you, we’ll walk with you.” But it’s this minority group of people that have the loudest voices, and can have the more hurtful way of behaving that reminds you that the reason why you needed security is that you weren’t welcomed in the first place.

I don’t take my child to school. We don’t walk to the park. We don’t go get an ice cream. I don’t want her experience of me to always have to be with another person there, making sure that we’re safe.

Q: Then how do you have an unmediated experience with your child?

A:I have it in my backyard. Or we leave town together.

Q: Do you ever think that it’s just not worth it anymore?

A:I’m super stubborn, and I come from revolutionary stock. My dad started the San Francisco State strike, the longest student strike in American history, to fight for ethnic studies. I raised $19 million by myself to save this organization during the pandemic. I’m known for having doggedness. This is my mandate. When it’s time to pass it on to somebody else, I want to set up the next generation of leaders for this place to be able to do more than just make it survive.

Q: How do you measure your own success?

A:My mandate is to support the artists. I think that we’ve sort of gotten ourselves into a pickle as an industry where our organizations have flipped the necessity: We ask the artist and the art to be responsible for making sure that the organization can exist and thrive, as opposed to asking the organization to make sure that the artists can thrive. I did not expect the level of vitriolic pushback when I started to say the endeavor here is to center and support the artist.

Q: What kind of vitriol?

A:“Where’s the audience in this?”

Q: When I first spoke to you, back when you were about to take the job at OSF, you told me that no one had previously asked you to direct Shakespeare. Have you gotten to feel like an artist much in the last few years?

A:When I directed “Confederates” last year, I sat next to the technical staff as they asked me for the specific details of how a curtain should move: “Is this how you want it? It can go slower. It can go faster. These things can move in a different way. Is this the poetry we’re all seeking together?”

I have felt nurtured in my conversations with the props team around the specificity and the detail, how somebody is going to use something, what they’re touching and why.

Q: You’re about to start rehearsals for “Romeo and Juliet.” Tell me about your approach.

A:我认为Shakespeare uses the romance as a way to get us to reflect on the actions of the adults. He’s like, “You’re going to care about what happens to these kids, and then maybe you’ll take a look at how these adults set these rules. Then you’ll also see yourselves reflected in these adults, in their behavior, and you’ll do something about it.” The real impact of that story is: Is this the world you want to create for your progeny?

Q: There’s a lot of leadership turnover in Bay Area theater right now. Do you have any advice for women of color, especially Black women, considering leadership positions?

A:Organizations put their money where their desires are. Your questions always have to be around whether or not they’re willing to activate the things that you need to be successful. That actually might have come right out of (American Conservatory Theater artistic director emerita) Carey Perloff’s mouth. How your highly resourced donors support the organization is how it supports you, and if that is not intended to support you, you will know it very quickly.

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com