Creating Inclusive Arts Communities
Jorge Silva ’08 combines business acumen, social justice and creativity in his theater work
BY JANA F. BROWN
Most days put the problem-solving skills of Jorge Silva ’08 to the test. As the director of business operations and managing director at Northwestern University’s Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts, he oversees a slate of 40+ productions per year — and he’s usually got a hand in every detail.
“I’m trying to produce a show on a regular basis while figuring out how to overcome hurdles,” says Silva, who’s been in his role since 2022. “A lot of my day is figuring out how we get a director at a certain time; how we do something when we don’t have the money; or how we apply a certain policy. We also don’t want to forget we’re part of a community and want to serve our audiences.”
A self-described producer, storyteller and activist, Silva’s career has evolved into one that uses the power of narrative and collaboration to drive social change. He grew up on the south side of Chicago, attending public schools before receiving a scholarship to St. Paul’s, where he discovered an affinity for theater, especially after finding community through a Fiske Cup production of “The Full Monty.”
Life at SPS was challenging at first for Silva, the only child of a close-knit Latino family. His culture shock, however, was met with support from his teachers, who encouraged intellectual curiosity.
“I wanted to be this crunchy, angsty, left-leaning kid listening to Rage Against the Machine,” Silva recalls. “And whereas that seemed weird to lots of people, they were like, ‘Cool, how do we build on that?’”
Silva went on to study government and theater at Cornell (with minors in Latin American and Latino studies). His decision to pursue multiple subjects allowed Silva to explore how they informed one other. He found that many of his classes on topics such as politics in Latin America and gender/sexuality were able to translate directly to the stage.
“I saw overlap and synchronicity between politics and theater,” Silva says, “because politics is one big show, and there’s a lot of politics in art. But I was also in a bit of a denial about whether I was going to be a theater artist, because I’d started on the pre-law track and my parents thought, ‘Great, he’s going to be a lawyer. We can relax.’”
Although he changed course, Silva has done anything but relax. After Cornell, he joined a touring theater collective in South America to study global performance methodologies. That experience set up his next move to Washington, D.C., where he spent three years as an actor and then production manager at the Smithsonian Institution’s Discovery Theater.
After struggling to find acting roles beyond Latino stereotypes, Silva transitioned to full-time work as a producer. In 2015, he returned to Chicago, where he initially worked as producing coordinator for the Goodman Theatre, a multifaceted role that included oversight of its play festival. He was then recruited to serve as executive director of the Neo-Futurists, an experimental theater company, where he learned to balance the artistic and operational demands of running a nonprofit. He also experienced the challenges and benefits of consensus-based decision-making, a model of “participatory and procedural justice” he’s now integrating into his work at Northwestern, with the hope of making the arts pipeline in Chicago more inclusive.
Silva also found time to pursue an MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he was a Neubauer Civic Scholar, while also completing a Global Arts Management Fellowship at the University of Maryland. His background in arts and activism shaped his current role at the Wirtz Center.
“I don’t feel like art lives in a vacuum,” Silva explains. “If we’re speaking to ideas, we also have to be willing to act on those ideas.”
That philosophy manifests in Silva’s work, which includes teaching in the graduate program at Northwestern while producing thought-provoking theater that grapples with social issues. He remains driven to create more equitable arts practices that aspire to reach underserved communities. While Silva’s focus remains on the arts and nonprofit management, he’s entertained the idea of entering the political arena.
“The motivation is wanting to see this cultural fabric that’s economically vehement to the city of Chicago,” he says. “I want to see it improve, grow and have meaning. And I also want to be able to reach people it’s not currently reaching, which felt like me for many years.”