In Pursuit of Possibility
September has always been my favorite month. The smell of new notebooks, the crispness in the still-warm air. A season full of unknowns, full of possibility. This year, the back-to-school season presents a different riff on unknowns to be sure, but I am still filled with a sense of excitement at the possibility that awaits.
People who are open to seeing possibility have a powerful competitive advantage. They notice opportunities others miss. They discover new ways forward that others may not have imagined or may have written off as impractical.
Tony Petito was a man who saw possibility.
While growing up in New Jersey, Tony’s love of theatre was a puzzlement to his family of plumbers. Undeterred, he organized extravagant musical productions, earning him a commendation from his town’s mayor. He went on to earn an MFA in directing from the Goodman School of Drama of the Art Institute of Chicago and pursued a theatre career in Chicago and New York.
When he was offered an unexpected opportunity to work in management consulting, he took the leap. While it drew him away from the theater, his time with Booz, Allen & Hamilton took him on adventures across Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore and provided a secure life for his growing young family.
In Singapore, a community theatre approached him seeking an artistic director. Where others might have dismissed the role, imagining nothing more than staging Gilbert & Sullivan musicals for local expatriates, Tony had a vision. What if it were possible to transform that theater, leveraging its staff and supporters, to create a professional, international company?
Under his leadership, the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) changed not only the face of theater in Singapore, but the entire landscape of theater for Asians worldwide. In a world where Western theatre productions typically limited actors of color to roles written explicitly for their ethnicity, SRT would produce an international repertoire ranging from Stephen Sondheim musicals to Athol Fugard dramas exclusively with Asian actors, cast from across the globe.
By the time I joined SRT, we were attracting serious international star talent: Lea Salonga, Pat Morita and Nancy Kwan were all on the roster that year. I count myself ever so lucky that Tony saw enough possibility in me to hire me as his general manager. I was 22 years old, and I had no idea how to manage people or run an organization. He was very patient, taking the time to train me and invest in me. I spent 3 years there, marketing productions, raising money from corporate sponsors, and managing a small staff. Just before I left, we raised the first major capital contribution that would allow SRT to build its permanent home, with plenty of space for new possibilities to flourish.
I learned from Tony that amazing opportunities can present themselves in the most unexpected ways. Are there any ideas you’ve had that you’ve filed away as impossible? What would happen if you revisited them with a different mindset? As this fall approaches, rife with uncertainty, I am deciding to greet it with great expectations. I am making myself a Wall of Possibility: “impossible” ideas on post-it notes that I can noodle on to see if there might be a new way of thinking about them. I am reminding myself that you never know what you might find, and that that is half the fun.