This Is Who We Are: Tory Bailey

This Is Who We Are is a series featuring Columbia University School of the Arts’ professors, covering careers, pedagogy, and art-making. Here, we talk with Professor Victoria ‘Tory’ Bailey about loud and noisy classrooms, the challenges facing students, and the importance of bringing theatre to audiences.

A life in theatre never felt like a decision for Tory Bailey, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice in the Theatre program. Her passion for the stage was more second nature than conscious decision, and she can’t remember a time when she wasn’t drawn to the craft.

“It sounds really silly, but I don’t know,” Bailey admits, when asked for the impetus that drove her to theatre. “From the beginning, I think I knew I wanted to work in the theatre, and I can’t tell you why.”

In speaking with Bailey, she is the consummate professional, an engaging ambassador for theater managers and producers who wants nothing more than to invite you into the conversation. Her love of theatre remains as inherent as it was four decades ago, when she got her start supporting regional venues and working the box office. 

After getting her B.A. in History from Yale College, Bailey began a campaign that will be familiar to many students. “I wrote a lot of letters,” she recalled. “I was quite certain I was never gonna find a job.”  

The effort soon paid off, and she spent a year working in Manhattan. “My very first job was working for a service organization that provided technical assistance to emerging theaters,” recalled Bailey. Then it was back to Connecticut, where she spent two years running the box office for the Yale Repertory Theatre, an experience she still values today. “I’m a huge believer [that] anyone on the management-producing side, I mean almost anyone, should sell tickets, because it’s where you learn about the audience.”

She then went on to spend the next 20 years at the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), starting in the business office and ending as the General Manager, followed by 22 years at the Theatre Development Fund (TDF). In some ways, this role was a return to her box office roots, a focus on the audiences she had grown to love. “TDF came along and I thought I’d be there five years, because I thought I’d miss producing too much, and I got to TDF and I fell in love with the mission; completely, absolutely started thinking all the time about audiences, and how people get access to the theatre, and how important it is, and where it fits in to the civic life of a community.”  

For Bailey, theatre is more than a calling, it’s a service; and everyone should be invited. “We have to make it available, we have to make it accessible, we have to be good at what we do, and we have to respect the people who come to see us.”

It’s a mission that extends to Bailey’s pedagogy, where she urges incoming students to think seriously about their role in the artistic landscape.

“The first thing I tell them is that they need to figure out what kind of work they want to produce.  What kind of work do they want to enable, what kind of work do they want to be involved in?” 

Bailey’s classroom is one that encourages questioning everything, herself included. “It’s always a fun moment for me the first time a student says, ‘Well, that’s not what professor so-and-so said, they said the opposite.’” She considers this give and take essential in the arts, where finding your voice is so important. “You have to decide what’s right for you,” she said.

For Bailey, this discourse is particularly inherent to the stage, that rare place where forming convictions and remaining open to new ideas aren’t exclusive dictums.

“It’s finding the time to be quiet and think, and then have a loud and noisy debate about it, because it is, after all, the theatre, and it lends itself to loud and noisy conversation.” Bailey also encourages students to make the most of their time at Columbia. “Embrace the fact that you’re being given permission for two years to ask questions, to challenge, to learn.”

Bailey is also focused on the new challenges facing her students, many of them exacerbated by the 2020 pandemic. “Changes that were already in the air were accelerated,” said Bailey. “I actually think traditional theatre-going audiences were shrinking before the pandemic.”

“When I was coming up, the nonprofit theatre movement was still relatively young, people were still starting theaters,” continued Bailey, reflecting on her start in the industry. “It’s not the same world now. As we train theatre-makers to go out into the world, I think we have to be cognizant of that…How do you live in this field, how do you navigate the field?

“We’re in a retrenchment period now," she continued. "Some theaters are closing and it’s harder to find a job, and it’s harder to think about how you want to move forward, and I think school helps a lot,” said Bailey. “One of the things you get from going to a graduate program, in addition to the skills and the training, which we’re rigorous about…is entrée, and that makes a big difference. Going to a program like we have at Columbia, I think it’s really helpful. I think it’s important, I think it opens all sorts of doors, you meet all sorts of people.” 

The challenges are many, but students can count on having Bailey in their corner. “I’m not interested in retiring, you know, fading away into the night. I love teaching, I love learning, and here I can do that.” She remains committed to the craft she loves, and has always loved. “I think it’s incumbent on us who work in the theatre to keep making plays.”