Alumna Launches Theater Company, Opens Door for New Artists

Since performing in a church musical at age eight, Hope Chavez (Media, Culture, and the Arts ‘14) knew she loved the stage. Now, she runs her own theater company in New York City, Lyra Theater, which aims to change the way the theater industry views and treats early-career artists.

Growing up in the Dallas suburbs, Hope was involved in community theater and high-school theater programs. Only after she came to The King’s College did she discover her skill set as a producer and realize that she had been self-producing those high-school shows. At King’s, Hope minored in Business Administration and was the Managing Director of The King’s Players for five semesters.

Alongside Artistic and Producing Directors Grant DeArmitt (Media, Culture, and the Arts ‘14) and Kacey Gritters (Media, Culture, and the Arts ‘15), she formalized the goals and membership structure of The King’s Players, setting a foundation for students to come.

After graduation, Hope worked and mentored under Broadway producer Marc Routh. In March 2016, a mutual friend connected Hope with two Yale University graduates, Noam Shapiro and Kyle Michael Yoder. Noam and Kyle had a vision for starting a theater company but they needed a producer to help with business development. A short email exchange revealed that Hope shared Noam and Kyle’s artistic aims, and they began the legal process of forming the company. As Managing Director of Lyra, Hope juggles logistics and paperwork. Kyle and Noam are the Artistic Directors, choosing the season, scheduling programming, and bringing on artistic collaborators.

Lyra draws its name from the constellation associated with the lyre of Orpheus, a poet-musician in Greek mythology. Lyra Theater is a constellation of artists that produces its own shows while providing a framework for new playwrights, directors, and actors to get started in the theater world.

Traditionally, young theater-makers must apply to festivals and spend years in expensive programs that promise little reward. To rewrite this script, Lyra offers space for new playwrights, directors, and actors to develop their work for free, and the team is creating an online platform where artists can submit a resume and references to pursue paid work with the collective.

“We are democratizing the submission process in a radical way that larger institutions don’t offer,” Hope said. “If you’re a recent graduate and you don’t know where to begin, you can start by sending your work to Lyra. Even if we can’t hire you right away, we will bring you into our constellation and connect you with other artists who might be inspired to create more art with you.” Lyra also runs a partnership with The King’s Players, which offers internships and assistantships to students of The King’s College.

Hope’s work with Lyra is motivated by her Christian faith, as she seeks to tell stories that spark conversation and build bridges between people who may otherwise be divided by presuppositions. Hope believes that the theater industry is fertile ground for this work of reconciliation, as theater communities breed mutual trust and respect. “I’m constantly broadening my mind and stretching my capacity for empathy,” she says.

Looking back on her formation at The King’s College, Hope says that professors Chris Cragin-Day and Dr. Bleattler were instrumental in helping her become a producer. “Cragin-Day gave me the hands-on training and professional opportunities to hone my skills. Dr. Bleattler gave me the encouragement and flexibility to do all of that while I was in school. The greatest gift King’s gave me, though, was the environment to be an entrepreneur. No one held my hand or told me that I had to help run The King’s Players, but the administration and faculty were extremely supportive when I did.”

Through both the infrastructure and the independence of a King’s education, Hope was able to student-produce, for the first time in King’s history, a sold-out musical written by a student (her classmate Grant DeArmitt) in an “off-off-Broadway” theater house in New York City.

As she exercises her entrepreneurial giftings with Lyra, Hope continues to provoke self-evaluation and develop empathy among other artists even as she pursues these goals herself. “Great art does more than entertain,” Hope said. “It drives people to shape culture, and that’s what we want to do.”