Rising Stars: Meet Taylor & Austin Leader of Grand Rapids, MI

Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor & Austin Leader

Hi Taylor & Austin , thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Theatre has been a part of our lives since we met in high school. Austin shared his love of storytelling on the stage while Taylor kept things running behind the scenes. After high school, college, and our wedding, we quickly discovered the reality of adulting and were by default, spending less time in arts spaces and focusing more on career building. After a few years, Austin had the opportunity to direct his first play for our old middle school, and from that moment on we have been back in theatre spaces taking on a variety of roles from directing to set, costume, and lighting design. During the first few years of Austin directing middle and high school shows we would spend most of our weekends at the school set building and decorating with little resources and lots of determination! Once Austin accepted a full time theatre and communications teaching position, we moved from southeast Michigan to the westside where the inspiration for Leader Theatre began. The Grand Rapids area is filled with visual and performing arts, so much so that we found it challenging to keep up with all of the show dates. Taylor started to keep track of upcoming local theatrical performances which we initially shared on instagram and now have a dedicated space on our website (leadertheatre.com) for Michigan theatre performances and audition opportunities. In addition to highlighting resources, and supporting the arts we share our theatrical adventures on social media.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest challenge that we face is that the reality of adulting has never gone away, instead we have learned to prioritize keeping the arts and specifically theatre a big part of our lives. We both have full time jobs while also creating content for Leader Theatre and keeping our Michigan Theatre calendars updated. Currently, we update the Michigan Theatre Performance calendars and the Audition calendar on our website by hand which is quite time consuming. We have divided Michigan into six different regions where we search through the websites of over 175 (and counting) theatre programs in the state of Michigan. We have found that some Michigan theatre websites are easier to navigate than others, while some do not have websites at all and rely solely on social media. This has made for a lot of our time spent researching, and although time consuming, we find it worth it to help increase awareness and audience attendance at performances. We are extremely thankful for it all though, because if it wasn’t for Leader Theatre these past few years, we would have missed out on meeting some incredible people and being in the audience to witness life changing stories on stage.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Leader Theatre is our social media presence and creative outlet where we share our theatrical adventures, applaud artists and spotlight local theatre communities. Our content is a mix of attending performances, theatrical skits, DIY projects, and lots of costumes! We have become known for dressing on theme to events and productions, as well as sharing our “Theatrical Thoughts” (reviews). Partnering with organizations has definitely been one of our highlights! Through our partnerships, we have been able to see a side of local arts organizations that we couldn’t have even dreamed of. Backstage tours, inside scoops, media events, opportunities to learn from industry professionals, then being able to report back to our theatre community is the best feeling! One of the things that we feel sets us apart is that anywhere we go, we try to remain a positive and encouraging force. At times the theatre community can feel harsh and leave a lot of room for doubt. We know what it takes to put on a production, the love, sweat, tears, and energy spent, and because of this we seek out the accomplishments and become your hype team! When we started Leader Theatre, we wanted to always remain true to who we are, so we share photos and videos that feel authentic to us with a little theatrical flair. We get to have fun making content that helps local communities succeed, it just doesn’t get much better than that!

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
The advice we have for both beginning content creators or theatre creators (actors & techies) is to “take the leap”. Prioritize the time to start learning through classes, workshops, YouTube videos, and possibly most importantly, learn by personal trial and error. Throughout the learning process, don’t forget to find and embrace your authentic self because your uniqueness is what captures the viewer/audience attention!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://leadertheatre.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadertheatre/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@leadertheatre

Image Credits

Images by Rachel Britton Photo