For seven years, Debbie Shapiro has been at Rowan University, whether as an adjunct professor teaching “Producing and the Arts” or serving as the director of Community Engagement and Presenting with the College of Performing Arts.

Today, Debbie Shapiro is the Artistic Director of the Marie Rader Presenting Series, a curated performing arts series made possible by the Henry M. Rowan Family Foundation, that since 2008 has brought influential performing artists right here to Rowan.

This year alone, through Shapiro’s work, the Marie Rader Presenting Series has brought four world-class performances to Rowan, with two more on the way in April.

Before her time at Rowan, Shapiro was no stranger to the world of performing arts. Growing up, she was a dancer and by high school, was dancing every night of the week. When it was time to choose what to pursue in college, Shapiro was stumped. 

“I think, like a lot of people, I didn’t know about arts administration. Certainly, I knew you could either become a professional artist or you should figure something else out, and I just wasn’t aware of other options,” said Shapiro.

She started her winding path to being Artistic Director by pursuing a degree in business. It wasn’t until she moved to Israel and lived with friends in the performing arts industry that she became acquainted with the process of working with arts non-profits and organizing events and performances.

She found a passion for this work but felt like she should return to the United States to pursue it further.

Shapiro left Israel and returned to Philadelphia, where she enrolled in Drexel University’s master’s program in arts administration.

In 2006, while pursuing her degree and networking with people working in dance professionally, Shapiro met Melanie Stewart, founder and director of Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre, who hired her part-time to aid in grant writing.

Over 10 years later, Shapiro came to Rowan in part because Melanie Stewart was a faculty member here in the College of Performing Arts.

Today, Shapiro’s job as artistic director has a lot of moving parts.

Rowan University is a venue that presents artists, and to present an artist requires that they tour.

“Performing arts touring requires lots and lots of advanced planning and coordination because it’s really only viable for an artist or a company or an ensemble if they are working with lots of presenters. They’re thinking about dates, which takes a lot of thought in and of itself […] and routing,” said Shapiro.

Shapiro works with agents and touring professionals to coordinate the dates of events, to ensure that it’s viable for artists to stop and perform at Rowan on their tour, but that’s only one facet of coordination.

Presenters like Rowan University’s Marie Rader Series have front-of-house operations that need to exist in order to support showcasing artists, such as box office workers, and creating promotional materials to bring in audiences.

They also need to coordinate with the artists to make sure their needs are met on the back end. Ahead of a performance, Shapiro receives something called a “hospitality rider” or “technical rider,” which details the needs of the tour.

Riders have information ranging from the technical needs of the performance to the physical needs of the performers and crew members.

“It’s everything from how the lighting is set up, how the sound enhancement is set up,” said Shapiro. “Sometimes, the lighting or the sound that we have on the stage is not physically owned here at Rowan. So I’m also working with a group of outside vendors to get whatever it is I need to rent.”

She also says that hospitality is included in these requests. While some people might associate hospitality requests with green M&M’s or other “absurd” asks by pop or rock stars on tour, most touring groups just ask for reasonable accommodations to ensure they’re fed and watered before and after a show. 

It’s up to Shapiro and the Pfleeger Concert Hall staff to make the requests on these riders–from the technical to the hospitable–happen.

As for who Shapiro brings in to perform at the Marie Rader Presenting Series, it all comes down to research.

“That’s just constant, constant research. I go to see as much work as I can, I have relationships with agents, and I talk to faculty and students as much as I can. Some faculty and students aren’t aware of that, but I’m very responsive, my door is always open or my Zoom and the idea is that I am reflecting back to the community the conversations that we’ve had through the curation of the series,” said Shapiro.

Through her work bringing performing artists to Rowan, Shapiro helps to support arts communities. 

“The arts, they don’t make money. They indirectly impact economic systems and activity, but they do really, really important things for human beings and society, and they only do those things if we have paid professionals in the mix,” said Shapiro.

Since joining the artistic team for the Marie Rader Presenting Series, Shapiro’s favorite performance is actually one of the most recent, Philadanco. That said, she says that with each performance that she watches, she finds it impactful.

“I tend not to do the same thing over and over again, and so it makes me feel like each performance is different and special,” said Shapiro. “I tend to host an artist for four days or a weekend, and I tend to leave always feeling like, ‘That was the best thing that has ever happened.’”

This year, there will be two more performances in the Marie Rader Presenting Series: “Composing for the Natural World: A Conversation with Majel Connery and Anthony Plog,” and “Chanticleer: Music of a Silent World.”

While there is no guarantee that anyone will come away from those performances thinking it’s the best thing that’s ever happened, there is a guarantee that it will have been carefully planned and executed, from the moment the artists were selected, to when they step out on a stage with lights and sound, to the food they eat backstage after the show.

To keep up with the Marie Rader Presenting Series in the future, visit the website or call the Rowan Box Office. 

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