Remembering our Founder, Julia Miles

Remembering our Founder, Julia Miles

I’m writing to you from my apartment, but on a normal day, I would be writing to you from Julia’s office, a space it has been my privilege to occupy since 2014, and a space first nervously walked into in 1997, when Julia interviewed and then hired me to be the Literary Manager at the Women’s Project—my first paying job in the theater.

I wish I were sitting in Julia’s office right now, as I share the news that WP’s founder and chief boundary breaker, Julia Miles, passed away on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 18th, after a long illness. I would be grateful to be in the space where she worked for so many years, fearlessly changing the face of American theater since WP’s founding in 1978, surrounded by posters and photos that show just a fraction of her legacy of art and artists.

Like so many of us right now, I am thinking of the generations of artists who thrive and make work because Julia carved out a place for them—the seasons of new plays at WP, the Tony Awards, MacArthur “Genius” Grants, Pulitzer Prizes, Emmy Awards, and more won by artists whose work she fostered, in programs she dreamed into being. The avalanche of creation that she made possible is impossible to overestimate.

As you can imagine, I’ve been making calls to some of Julia’s nearest and dearest to share the news of her passing, and through our sadness it has also been a joy to swap stories and laugh and cry together. I’ve marveled with friends and colleagues over the genius of Julia’s mentorship and moxie, of Julia’s glorious fashion sense, her tenacity, which allowed her to move mountains at a time when women weren’t allowed to do such things, the way she instinctively understood artists in their work. Artists she worked with reminisced about all the ways, large and small, that Julia smoothed the process for them—by hiring a nanny, showing up with an emergency check to buy one crucial set element, by just listening.

We are working with Julia’s family to find a time, when we’re all allowed to gather again, to celebrate Julia’s unparalleled life and legacy. We look forward to sharing more news as we have it. She deserves a celebration as extraordinary as she was.

Julia made all of us. The debt all of us women who make theater owe her can never be repaid. We must take her example and do our best to make spaces for artists who aren’t given space, and to shout loudly for those who aren’t given a voice. If we can do that, we will give back a fraction of what we’ve been given. It has been my joy to try.

We will miss you, Julia. I am grateful to you every day.

Lisa