Meet Zach Davidson | Artistic Director, Coin & Ghost

We had the good fortune of connecting with Zach Davidson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Zach, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
As an artist, I’ve always been keenly interested in the idea of “finding my people,” of carving out our own little corner of things. Even in high school, I was always trying to build infrastructure around my favorite collaborators.

More than pursuing excellence project-to-project, what excites me most is the prospect of fostering a deeply engaged community and creating a long-term relationship between that community and the work. Starting a theatre company offers several interrelated opportunities to do just that.

On the artistic side of things, a company gives you a home base for your artistic family. It creates a space to gather, to support and amplify each other’s unique voices and talents, and to push each other towards risk, towards growth. On the audience side of things, a company allows you to build a brand, by which I mean: you have the opportunity to establish your consistent, unique artistic voice. If you can do that — if you can really hone in on what makes your company unique — then your audiences will find you. And they will KNOW that you are the company to go to, when that’s the kind of work they want to see. On the business side of things, having your own company means never having to wait for the next gig to come around. Agency. Your ability to build, to improve, to create is entirely up to you.

Having my own theatre company, building my own artistic home was always in the cards for me; it was just a question of “when.” And in 2017, my wonderful wife gave me a gentle nudge: “you realize that you’re already doing all of this company-building for other people’s organizations — why not do it for your own?”

It was time. Shortly thereafter, Coin & Ghost was founded.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I spend most of my time building/creating with my theatre company, Coin & Ghost (LA’s theatrical home for remixed mythologies).

We landed on the name “Coin & Ghost” as the most concise way to describe both the aesthetic of the company and our particular mix of permanent and ephemeral. We define “mythology” as “any set of stories that simultaneously SHAPED and WAS SHAPED BY a culture.” So traditional Greek and Roman myths count, sure, as do any culture’s creation myths — but when viewed through this lens, Shakespeare has a clear mythology to it, as do comic books, American history, and other folklore. The sandbox we’re playing in is our collective understanding of the stories we tell ourselves as a society.

When the pandemic hit, we were a week away from opening our latest project, “Mama Mama Can’t You See,” which I was directing. The show — written by Cecilia Fairchild and Stan Mayer — is based on Mayer’s real-life experiences as a Marine veteran. The play explores a particularly harrowing moment of his first deployment, and the implications of that moment across the boundaries of death, sex, and love. It’s a metaphysical journey in which the experience of war becomes a shared identity among four Marines in Iraq and four sex workers from the American Civil War, who find themselves crossing paths in the space between life and death. The play is bizarre, unique, and absolutely sensational — we can’t wait to share this project with the world.

As a company, we’re known for our blend of craft, aesthetics, and social commentary. We’re known for taking huge risks and attacking them fearlessly. Most importantly, we’re known for taking care of our artists. Every member of our admin team has worked on projects before where our work, our time, and our input have been disrespected, and we vehemently reject the notion that any theatre – including and especially intimate theatre – needs to be run that way.

To make the only kind of work we are interested in – risky, fierce, and dangerously imaginative – we must collectively agree to work from a place of bravery, trust, and gratitude. We take care of each other, and the artists who work with us have come to expect that. That’s the thing we’ve accomplished that I’m most proud of, and a reputation we will always strive to maintain.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?

Same Same (Thai Food, Silverlake); Ye Rustic Inn (Los Feliz); Bar Verdugo (Glassell Park); The Pie Hole (DTLA/Arts District)

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Shawn Hann, my teacher/director throughout high school. Ms. Hann gave me opportunities that allowed me to step into my own voice. She placed her faith in me over and over again — as an artist, a leader, and a human — in ways that challenged me, fostered my love for the craft, and taught me what it means to be a theatre professional. Looking at the timeline of my life, it’s very easy to pinpoint the moment when theatre became the focal point, and that was exclusively because of Ms. Hann.

PersonalZachDavidson__

Website: coinandghost.org

Instagram: instagram.com/reeve.ghost + instagram.com/coinandghost

Twitter: twitter.com/reevedotghost + twitter.com/coinandghost

Facebook: facebook.com/coinandghost

Image Credits
Kendall Johnson, Niki Armato, Cody Skylings, Julián Juaquín, Eli Carpenter