Jane Lang

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Deutsch: This is Stephanie Deutsch. I am with Jane Lang. It is March 4th 2024 and we are at my house on East Capitol Street. Jane, it’s so good to see you. I wonder if we could start by you telling me where you grew up?
Lang: I was born in New York City in Queens. I’m a Queens girl. In 1947.
Deutsch: Same year as me. I think 1947 was very good vintage.
Lang: Yes, evidently.
Deutsch: What part of Queens, where?
Lang: I was born in Kew Gardens Hospital but we grew up in Jamacia and then Jamacia Estates.
Deutsch: Was that suburban, rural?
Lang: No. It was, I guess it was maybe urban-suburban.
Deutsch: Urban-suburban, yeah. Queens suburban.
Lang: Yes, Queens suburban. It was densely developed, but single-family homes. We could take the bus to school, which I did. Actually, walked to elementary school, but took the bus to junior high and to high school.
Deutsch: Did you have siblings?
Lang: I do. I have two brothers, two younger brothers. I was the big sister. Steve is an actor and David teaches in community college.
Deutsch: Is he a movie actor, a stage actor?
Lang: He’s a movie actor. He began as a stage actor. He’s known particularly for his role in Avatar.
Deutsch: That explains why I’m not familiar with it.
Lang: He played on Broadway in a number of productions. Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman and a number of other things before he switched to movies.
Deutsch: Wonderful. What were you interested in as a child?
Lang: Oh, reading. I took piano lessons from the time I was ten. But mostly I was an indoor girl and spent my time reading or doing craft projects.
Deutsch: What did you like to read? Did you read biographies?
Lang: I read whatever I got my hands on. I read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. My parents read to me also. My mother read to me the Honey Bunch series. My dad read me Robinson Crusoe.
Deutsch: That was exciting.
Lang: I went through the usual children’s classics and then into the Nancy Drew phase.
Deutsch: Did you have any extracurricular things that you did at school?
Lang: In high school I was a member of the Girls League, which was a community service organization. I had a job as a tutor. I played in the band.
Deutsch: What did you play?
Lang: I played the flute, not very well. And I’ve never been an athlete.
Deutsch: And back when we were girls, you didn’t have to be, for which I was always grateful.
Lang: Yes. I had no urge to be involved with sports.
Deutsch: I used to stand in the outfield in softball kind of cringing that maybe the ball would come my way and hoping it didn’t.
Lang: In punchball, they put me in the outfield because I was hopeless. I probably was.…
Deutsch: And that turned out to be a lifetime handicap.
Lang: No, I guess not. In a sense, maybe it did. It persuaded me early on that I had no skill as an athlete. So, I did not try. I went to a huge public high school where you spent most of the time getting into your uniform and having attendance taken. We played volleyball with 20 girls on a side, so it was—there were several hundred girls in a class. When I got to college, that was smaller than my graduating class in high school by quite a bit, --
Deutsch: Swarthmore.
Lang: Swarthmore, right. The head of the women’s athletic department decided I should not have to be on a team of any sort. I could do individual sports, which meant I could swim and then ultimately I took golf because you didn’t have to change into a uniform. [Deutsch laughs.] That’s the story of my athletic career.
Deutsch: Well, you’re not getting an award for athleticism. [Lang laughs.] I know you went to Swarthmore. Was that a family thing, or was that something you picked out?
Lang: It began with my dad [entrepreneur and philanthropist Eugene M. Lang], who went there on a scholarship and later became its greatest philanthropist. He became very attached to the school over the decades. I went because he had gone there and my parents thought I should.
Deutsch: Swarthmore has a Quaker heritage, right?
Lang: Yes.
Deutsch: Was that part of the appeal, or was that something that he was into, or was that just…
Lang: No. That’s sort of ancillary.
Deutsch: What did you study there?
Lang: I was a history major. I took a lot of literature courses, a lot of French courses and history. Then odds and ends for the rest of it.
Deutsch: Odds and ends. Was it American history, European history?
Lang: My focus was on American intellectual history. That was my greatest interest, but I took all kinds of history which was at the time, we’re talking 1960s, was not as specialized as it is now.
Deutsch: Yeah. That was sort of an emerging field.
Lang: Yes,
Deutsch: Did you have any famous professors?
Lang: I’m not sure they were famous outside academia.
Deutsch: What happened then? You graduate with an American history major.
Lang: I graduated with distinction and Phi Beta Kappa and went to law school at the University of Pennsylvania.
Deutsch: Straight into law school?
Lang: Yes. I’ve gone straight from nursery school through school into my career. I never stopped.
Deutsch: I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Lang: Well yes, I wonder sometimes. It never occurred to me to take a year off or to slow down.
Deutsch: Okay. Now you’re in law school at U Penn.
Lang: Right. I met my first husband there in my class, in a study group. I got married in the middle of my second year. I was 21. Then graduated in 1970.
Deutsch: So, you’re married.
Lang: I married and we moved to—the summer of 1969, we got clerkships at big law firms in DC as we sought to do. My then husband, Tom McGrew, went to Arnold & Porter and I went to Steptoe & Johnson.
Deutsch: Were you interested in similar areas of the law?
Lang: No, we were still in law school. We never were interested in the same areas, but areas of law were sort of identified by default––whatever needed to be done, you did it, and then you were the expert in doing it. That’s sort of how legal expertise developed, at least at the time.
Deutsch: You graduated from law school and then came to DC to do these clerkships?
Lang:  The clerkships were the summer before we graduated between our second and third years. Then we were both invited by our law firms to come back as associates, which we did. So I returned to Washington in the summer of 1970 and have been here ever since.
Deutsch: Where did you live in the summer of 1970?
Lang: We initially rented, then bought a house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just off Connecticut Avenue near the 4-H Center. It was then summer of 1970, as you recall, just two years after the 1968 riots. The downtown was pretty quiet. I’d go down every morning to the office and come back. Also in those days life at law firms was a lot slower, a lot less pressure than it has since become.
Deutsch: Not the way it is now.
Lang: Yeah. I was the first woman in my firm and subsequently the first woman partner.
Deutsch: Wow. You say it was not as intense but I think of law firms––making partner is like this marathon of working really long hours.
Lang: It really wasn’t that intense at the time. We worked hard and there were situations in which you had to work longer hours, but it really was not like it is now at all. It changed over the years. While I was there, at least until I became partner. In those days most people became partners. It’s not like now where there’s a culling out where people don’t even expect to stay.
Deutsch: What kind of cases were you mainly dealing with?
Lang: Again, by default, I initially specialized in the regulation of legitimate narcotics. Not something I ever intended.
Deutsch: What did you say, the regulation of legitimate …
Lang: Narcotics. The importation of legitimate opium and the manufacture of derivatives like codeine and morphine. There were three companies that were engaged in that business and they were represented by my law firm. About a year after I joined the firm, the senior partner who I was working with left the firm to become president of the American Association of Railroads. The client, to everybody’s astonishment, including mine, said they wanted me to take over the representation.
Deutsch: That was flattering.
Lang: It was. It was hard for everyone to believe. Here was a 24-year-old girl. But they were quite insistent.
Deutsch: The must have liked you.
Lang: Turned down a male partner who had been peripherally involved. They just didn’t get along with him. So, that was my initial expertise and I continued that -- there was a new law enacted in 1970. I worked on the new DEA regulations testifying, working with the agency. I was an expert in the field, but the field changed. The industry changed.
So I then started working in the field of employment law representing employers in discrimination cases. For the most part I worked on affirmative action, advocating affirmative action on behalf of employers. We did a huge case, important case, the Kaiser case also known as the Steelworkers Case.
Deutsch: Steelworkers Case?
Lang: Yeah, which established the legitimacy of having affirmative action goals. That was decided just at the time that I left the firm to join the Carter administration. I became general counsel of HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development]. I was chosen by Patricia Harris [Secretary from 1977 to 1979], but I ended up serving under Moon Landrieu [Secretary from 1979 to 1981].
Deutsch: Interesting. Was Moon Landrieu secretary of HUD?
Lang: He became secretary of HUD when Jimmy Carter’s…
Deutsch: I didn’t realize that.
Lang: Yes. He switched around a lot of people. He moved Pat Harris to HEW [Department of Health and Welfare], which then became HHS [Department of Health and Human Services]. Califano [Joseph A. Califano] was out and Moon Landrieu was recruited to…
Deutsch: This was after he had been mayor of New Orleans, or was that still in the…
Lang: Yeah, after. Pat went to HHS and Moon opted to keep me and I was confirmed. I guess I should say I became partner at Steptoe before that.
Deutsch: So, you were a bit of a wonder child? I mean, are you 30 yet? [Laughter.] How old are you?
Lang: When I got to HUD, I think I was 32.
Deutsch: It’s an interesting career.
Lang: Yeah, yeah. Very interesting.
Deutsch: Intense. What’s your husband doing all this time or did you …
Lang: He was practicing law. We were divorced in 1985, which was after I served at HUD and actually had gone back to Steptoe. The period at HUD was exciting and new and I was very young and naïve, so it was a real education.
Deutsch: A real education in what?
Lang: Of political life, government decision-making. Housing, which I’d known nothing about when I became general counsel. So it was a lot to learn. I had just terrific people working for me. Five hundred people working for me and that in itself was extraordinary.
Deutsch: That’s a lot. What were the big issues then? I mean, this was when there was all the urban renewal and all that going on, wasn’t it?
Lang: It was a little bit after. Urban renewal was still going on of course, but under a different name. Urban renewal by then had sort of a bad reputation. Community development was the focus in the 1980’s including Urban Development Action Grants.We were also still dealing with the matter of integrating public housing and how that could happen, which really never did. We litigated two huge cases. One the Whitman Park case in Philadelphia, which resulted in the building of public housing, townhouse style housing.
Deutsch: What was that called?
Lang: Whitman Park, which had been opposed by the neighborhood, a white residential neighborhood, and was built and housed mostly African American families––who within a few years were all getting along just fine.
Deutsch: So, it was successful.
Lang: It was, but it was bitterly fought. It was begun long before my tenure. Then the Gautreaux case in Chicago which involved…
Deutsch: How do you spell that?
Lang: G A U T R E A U X. Involved providing Section 8 certificates, housing vouchers, to people on public housing lists in settlement of a public housing race discrimination case. That was also a major precedent setting case. Neither of them were cases that I began, but they were resolved on my watch as it turned out.
Deutsch: During this time, have you dipped your toe in the whole world of philanthropy or giving?
Lang: No.
Deutsch: You’re too busy.
Lang: I always made contributions because that’s what my parents did. I was not actively involved in philanthropy. When I was at the law firm, I was involved with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the Women’s [Legal Defense Fund]. It’s now called the National Partnership for Women & Families. I was involved with pro bono work. But I was not involved with philanthropy in the sense that I have since become involved …
Deutsch: Now you’re not with HUD anymore [after] Jimmy Carter left.
Lang: I left and went back to Steptoe and I had a couple of housing-related clients of my own, but that was not enough to sustain me so I started working again in the field of employment discrimination. And I was involved with a huge race case in Chicago, which is how I met my second husband, Paul Sprenger.
Deutsch: What was his connection?
Lang: He was the lead plaintiff’s counsel. I was defense counsel.
Deutsch: I suppose that’s a no-no to get involved with the lawyer for the …
Lang: We were not involved during the course of the litigation. It was just how I met him. [Laughter.]
Deutsch: That’s how you met.
Lang: Yes. We settled the case and subsequently became romantically involved.
Deutsch: When did you get married?
Lang: I was divorced in 1985 or ’86 and married in 1990.
Deutsch: Tell me a little bit about Paul.
Lang: Paul was from Minneapolis. He had his own firm there, small firm. He did class actions, ultimately focusing on employment-related class actions, which is how he happened to be suing the Burlington Northern railroad. He was widely regarded as a terrific negotiator and someone who did not anger and was very low key, very Minnesota, if you will. [Deutsch laughs.] He ultimately opened an office in DC and I left Steptoe and opened an office with a couple of other friends. We had a building just north of Dupont Circle.
Deutsch: So, you opened your own office?
Lang: Yes. Then in 1989 I merged it with Paul’s practice and it became Sprenger + Lang. Sprenger with an E. We specialized in class actions, plaintiffs’ class actions. We had the huge case against Pepco which was settled in 1993 -- for race discrimination and gender discrimination. We settled that for 40 million dollars and a lot of affirmative action, I guess it was called then. It was a big case in DC at the time.
We subsequently had an age discrimination case against First Union [Bank], which has since morphed into several other different banks. Had a case against the Department of Labor. We had several cases in Minneapolis. One against Control Data. An age case against Northwest Airlines, it was a race case. Pillsbury was a race case. These are big cases that would go on for years and then settle for millions of dollars in virtually every case. Our last case was an age case on behalf of TV writers. Probably the most significant case we had was the Eveleth Mines case, which was a sexual harassment case. A movie was made about that, actually, called North Country featuring Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson.
Deutsch: Did you like the movie?
Lang: In some ways. It was a kick.
Deutsch: Was Charlize Theron playing you?
Lang: No, she was playing the lead plaintiff. But Woody Harrelson was playing Paul. [Deutsch laughs.] That was a big case. Our last case was an age case against, oh, about 15 or 20 TV networks and agents and studios for age discrimination against television writers.
Deutsch: You wouldn’t think you would discriminate against a writer. The writer doesn’t have to look good in front of the camera.
Lang: No, but their theory was––well there’s two things. One, that if you were old you couldn’t write about young people, the things that interested young people, which was a huge miscalculation. The other was that they thought older people wouldn’t want to work for younger people. That the older writers, as they brought new people in, show runners, would not work well with younger supervisors. Of course, the industry changed radically after that anyway. Everything was different. I think we settled that in 2011.
Deutsch: So, about this time you must have gotten interested in the Atlas at some point in here.
Lang: Yeah. I produced a play based on the Jacob Lawrence migration series. We commissioned a play and I produced it in 2000. It was called Leaving the Summer Land by Karen Evans [founder Black Women Playwrights’ Group].
Deutsch: Oh, I know her. I feel like I met her. Leaving the Summer Land.
Lang: Yeah. Leaving the Summer Land.
Deutsch: You commissioned her to do a play based on the …
Lang: On the paintings, the series of paintings done by Jacob Lawrence about migration.
Deutsch: Yes. I think I met her somehow through CHAW [Capitol Hill Arts Workshop] or …
Lang: That’s entirely possible, that’s probably …
Deutsch: Yeah.
Lang: She was active with the young playwrights group.
Deutsch: Where was the play produced?
Lang: We rented Theater J at the JCC [Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th Street, NW]. That was when I learned that there were no theater spaces available to rent. If you didn’t have a theater, you really couldn’t get a theater.
Deutsch: Let me just ask you the idea of commissioning a play. How did that…
Lang: Take one step back, then. I went to see an exhibit of the full Migration Series. MOMA [Museum of Modern Art] and the Phillips Collection each owned half of that series. They put them together in an exhibit. That would have been about  1995 that I saw it.
Deutsch: Did it again more recently.
Lang: Yeah. Just a few years ago [2015]. This was [where] I first saw, first heard the name Jacob Lawrence, first saw the series and when I looked at it, I said, literally I said, “This is a play.” I talked to a friend of mine who was at Levine School [of Music]. I was very active at this point with Levine School. I was on the board. She took off running and started to write a play which didn’t really work out. We ended up commissioning Karen to do it. It just sort of took on a life of its own. We had a foundation, Paul and I at the time, the Sprenger Lang Foundation. We created an offshoot of that, Tribute Productions, and we produced this play. We had two Helen Hayes nominations and we won one of the Helen Hayes awards for set design by Tony Cisek.
Deutsch: Helen Hayes award for set design.
Lang: Tony Cisek was the designer. The lighting designer had received a nomination. That was very exciting and I really loved producing it. I thought, “I’d like to do that again.” There really were no places. We sort of had to make an extra contribution to Theater J to get them to let us use the space. We could only use it in June, at the end of June when nobody really wants to go to the theater.
Deutsch: Was it the space on Q Street?
Lang: Yeah. Paul agreed that I could look for a space to renovate as a small theater that would be available for rental by small, non-profit theater companies. Not having spaces available to rent really puts a lid on how much growth there can be in performing arts. I just thought that this would be a good resource. I looked at a number of spaces. I was introduced to people who were involved with the city development, community development. They showed me some spaces, but none of them seemed appropriate for what I wanted. Then I was shown the Atlas. I had never been to Northeast. I’d been to the train station but I didn’t even know that was Northeast to be honest. I was very stuck in Northwest. You might say I was under a rock.
Deutsch: I won’t say that but I know what you mean.
Lang: I really had no—I travelled around the world but I never left Northwest. This was mind blowing to me and was definitely not what I wanted.
Deutsch: And it was at that time all boarded up.
Lang: All of H Street [NE] was either boarded up or behind metal gates.
Deutsch: Yeah. It was a mess.
Lang: Ninety buildings had burned down during the [1968] riots and there were many vacant lots left. There had been no redevelopment except for a really cheap strip mall between Eighth and Tenth Streets on H [Street NE]. It was a very dangerous area. There were whole blocks of housing that were vacant, many were crack houses, and there was a particularly horrific crime. They built the mall and the mayor told the developer, “Build something, build anything,” because they wanted to erase that terrible history. And the Atlas was very big. It was not like a building that…
Deutsch: An intimate little theater space.
Lang: Right, yeah. So, I went home and I told Paul about it and said, “It’s not what I would want. Done.” Literally I went to sleep and had a dream and I woke with a new idea. It sounds flakey, but I’m not making it up, it’s true. I decided that we could renovate this as a performing arts center and lead the way to revitalize H Street. I cannot tell you why I thought I could do that.
Deutsch: Did your husband say, “Darling, you’re crazy!”? [Laughs.]
Lang: He said, “How much would it cost?” He came and he looked at it and he wasn’t … He was accustomed to dreaming big dreams. He didn’t take little dippy cases. He wouldn’t take individual cases. He only took big, risky …
Deutsch: So, he was used to thinking big.
Lang: Thinking big and risky.
Deutsch: What year are we now?
Lang: This is 2000, fall of 2000.
Deutsch: You have the dream.
Lang: I have the dream and we go back and Paul says, “Can it be done for under 10 million dollars?” This person from the city said, “Absolutely.” That was a slight misrepresentation.
So we spent some time the next months negotiating, creating a new nonprofit, the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Our foundation, Sprenger Lang Foundation, signed a contract to purchase it. Then we assigned that to the Atlas.
Deutsch: How much did they charge for it? There can’t have been a lot of people clambering to buy it.
Lang: No. It was $1.4 million as I recall. I’m pretty sure that’s correct. We put down the cash plus the city took back a mortgage that was going to be payable with community benefits, no cash.
Deutsch: What does that mean?
Lang: That meant that once we opened, every year we were going to have to demonstrate that we had provided community benefits worth—it was a ten-year mortgage at the time. I think it was $700,000-some-odd dollars.
Deutsch: Tickets made available, space made available.
Lang: Tickets made available, free rentals or discounted rentals. Ultimately when we did another financing in 2013 I’d learned enough and we had a long list of things that qualify as community benefits now. It’s a very detailed list of all the things you can do that benefit the community to get credit. That was the first time, as far as I know, that DHCD had done something like that.
Deutsch: HDC?
Lang: DHCD, DC Department of Housing and Community Development. They didn’t own the property. It was owned by the H Street Community Development Corporation. We paid for the property and HUD and DHCD gave us a mortgage and in effect paid the balance for the property. Now I’m thinking it was $1.1 million. I can check that for you because I believe the mortgage was $700,000. I believe we put in $400,000. That’s how it happened.
There were a lot of legal issues from prior owners. People had different dower rights [a common law provision that entitles a widow to a portion of her husband's estate in the absence of a will]. I had to chase people all over trying to get releases. We did all that and we closed on the purchase in June or July of 2001.
Deutsch: Was something beginning to take shape in your mind of exactly what you were going to create?
Lang: We hired a consultant in New York actually to design something which ultimately was not what I wanted, so we fired them and hired a local architecture firm and then two designers, Tony Cisek, and Dan Covey was the lighting designer. They worked with the architectural firm, CORE.
Deutsch: The architectural firm was called CORE.
Lang: C O R E, all caps. They worked to create a design. I worked with them, so I got a design that I really liked, which is what you see today––four theaters, three dance studios.
Deutsch: Are you still working at the law firm during all this?
Lang: We settled the Eveleth Mines case in December 2000 and I settled another case I had against AFSCME [American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees] around that time, so I didn’t have any more cases that I was working on. So I devoted myself completely to the development of the Atlas for eight years.
Deutsch: Pretty much at this point it’s financed by both of your…
Lang: We had created this foundation after we settled the First Union case. But it also became clear that it was going to be beyond our means ultimately and I started fund-raising, which I’d never done. I had a friend and then a friend of a friend who were experts in that and they worked with me. We hired them. They were terrific. I would not have had a clue what to do.
Deutsch: This is big. You need to raise pretty big money to do this.
Lang: Yeah. Ultimately it cost at least 24 million dollars, but actually more than that because things kept happening the first few years that cost more and more. We and my father put in a lot of that. I also raised a lot of it from the major philanthropic families in DC. Meyer Foundation, Cafritz Foundation, Kiplinger Foundation, the Kogods were very generous. Prince, Fannie Mae.
Deutsch: Prince?
Lang: Prince Charitable Trust. There were a lot of them that stepped up. The Meads of course, Gil and Jaylee Mead––they were terrific supporters.
Deutsch: You didn’t find a lot of people saying, “That’ll just never work. That’s the wrong part of town.”?
Lang: I did, I did. It was very hard to get the first donors. The Hechinger family … He wrote me a letter and said, “Investing in H Street is like flushing money down the toilet.” Another developer, I guess I called him at the suggestion of somebody, said, “Don’t fall in love with a piece of property. You don’t want to develop anything in DC. It’s a nightmare.” So, I ignored both of them.
Deutsch: You did. What gave you confidence? Are you still coasting on the dream?
Lang: Pretty much. I mean, I had no reason to believe that  … I didn’t really know what I was doing. I had really good people working with me but I was the one who … I didn’t even have a building committee because the organization was so new. I think there were three and maybe ultimately five members of the board. Gradually by the time we opened in 2006, we had a board of maybe 12 people. I was the building committee. I had to sign off on everything. The key to that was Tishman, the Tishman Company.  John Tishman in New York was a friend of my dad’s. They were on the board of the New School together. He agreed to provide construction management for the project with no fee. Which saved us just about a million dollars.
Deutsch: Wow. That was huge.
Lang: Now, we were charged for time and materials and that was not cheap, but we had the best. They ultimately did Strathmore [The Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland] as well. They were just the best. They were so generous to me in guiding me along the way.
Deutsch: Were you spending a lot of time down here? Did you come down every day or did you have an office down there?
Lang: You couldn’t really have an office because it was a disaster area and then it was a construction site. Tishman built a trailer inside of what became the Sprenger Theater, but I didn’t have an office. I just came most days of the week in those years. I was doing tours for donors. I took my dad around early on and he didn’t say anything. It was very unlike him, I should add. I asked him, “Dad is something wrong? You haven’t said anything.” He said, “No. I’m just impressed by your imagination.”
Deutsch: And he meant it honestly.
Lang: He meant it honestly. Yeah, and he always was––I was very lucky––he was so supportive and continued to be until he developed Alzheimer’s. That was a few years later.
I just committed myself to doing it. At one point, it seemed sort of hopeless. We had enough money to do the façade and the dance studios and the two small theaters, but I had no idea where the rest was going to come from. Kathy Freshley from the Meyer Foundation said, “Well let’s just look at this.” So, I rolled out the plans and we looked at it and she said, “Well, why don’t you just do that part of it  as the first phase and get it done and then people will be encouraged to believe this is happening and you’ll be able to entice more donors.” So, that’s what we did.
We went ahead with it and in March 2005 we were able to open that first part ––Including the dance studios and the two lab theatres.  [Actress and dancer] Debbie Allen came and cut the ribbon. It was a little bit of publicity and then I continued to raise money. We actually had stopped the renovation for a little while because we just didn’t know where it was going to come from. Then we picked it up again. We got some more money.
Deutsch: You had to have staff, quite a bit of staff to process all this and keep …
Lang: No, I had one person.
Deutsch: You’re kidding! Processing all these donations and sending out the …
Lang: He and I did everything. Scott Kenison.
Deutsch: What was his name?
Lang: Scott Kenison. I met him because he was the husband of my high school friend, David Shapiro, who was the head of the Burke school.
Deutsch: Edmund Burke?
Lang: Yeah. I re-encountered David. We’d been in junior high together. He introduced me to Scott, who was looking for a job. He was looking for a job at the Levine School, which is why he wanted to meet me. But, I said, “How about something different?” He came to work for me and we did it. He was very good with using—you know, computers were relatively new in 2000. It seems hard to believe. I could do Word and I could do Excel, that was it. But Scott could do graphic stuff. He was a good designer. So he worked on that. He and I did all of the publicity materials. All of the accounting. We had an outside accountant who would audit it. Yeah, that was it. Scott and me.
Deutsch: Wow.
Lang: This is why I have very little patience sometimes when I see the lists of people who performing arts organizations hire. It’s not really my business I suppose. I did it the way I could afford to do it and the way I wanted to do it.
Deutsch: When it opened, what was the first production?
Lang: We first opened the two small theaters and dance studios, so there were no major productions. We had different performances by small companies and Joy of Motion has run the dance studios ever since we opened. Then in September 2006 we opened the whole thing and we had days of celebration, including a production that we commissioned also to tell the history of H Street. That was a musical. It was pretty good. [Coming Home to H Street by David Emerson Toney.] There were just six or eight performances of the production. It was great. It was really uplifting and the audiences loved it. I would say more for the energy and the feeling about it.
Deutsch: And the neighborhoodliness.
Lang: Then we were open. The African Continuum Theater Company was in existence, ACTco. Jennifer Nelson was the artistic director. They did several shows for a few years at the Atlas.
Deutsch: What I remember loving that I saw at the Atlas, but I can’t remember when is was … The show about the translations…
Lang: Truth in Translation [directed by Michael Lessac]. Yes. That was fabulous, yeah.
Deutsch: Truth in Translation, yes. That was stunning.
Lang: Very powerful, really kind of hung over on me.
Deutsch: That was probably early on. I think it was a long time ago.
Lang: Yeah, it would have been probably around [2007] maybe. Mosaic [Theater Company] came in 2013 I believe, and that was before. There were various companies. ACTco was the only theater company that was an Atlas Arts Partner at the time. But there were various companies that performed there. It was very hard to get people to commit to perform there because it was not clear you could get people to come as audiences.
Deutsch: But right from the start, how were the audiences?
Lang: Not great. H Street had such a terrible reputation for one thing.
Deutsch: It still does in come contexts.
Lang: Yes. I think that’s because people don’t go there and experience it, but that’s not a thing. It was very difficult getting the momentum going and then the city adopted a plan to redo H Street and that was adopted in 2003. Then soon after we opened, they started digging up H Street to do a new streetscape, which was sorely needed and very much appreciated in the end, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. So we were just barely open and the next thing you knew there were chain link fences everywhere. Streets were dug up.
Deutsch: Oh gosh, so people have another excuse not to go.
Lang: There was absolutely nowhere to park. There was no reliable public transportation. That was a big setback. Then that was finished and everything looked great and then they tore it up again for the streetcar. It was just maddening. It was very difficult to really create momentum. That was going quite well by 2018 I would say. Took more than ten years. Things were looking very good. Then came the pandemic.
We’ve had all these challenges. They would be challenges for anybody whether you were running a restaurant or a school or a performing arts center, but when you’re new and you’re relying on people who have to come there, it’s just doubly hard. There were times that were very discouraging and I thought we would never have a balanced budget and everything cost more. It was very hard to make it work. Ultimately, Doug Yeuell became executive director in 2014. [Yeuell left in 2024, succeeded by Jarrod Bennett.]
Deutsch: Yeuell, E W E…
Lang: No. Y E U E L L. He had been the head of Joy of Motion, so he knew the space really well and he had a couple of decades of experience as an executive director of an arts group. He was great. But he struggled. We had a lot of deficits that had to be overcome. But by 2018 we did have a balanced budget.
Deutsch: And then boom.
Lang: Yeah. Now Doug has just announced that he’s leaving. We’re looking for a new executive director. But we have just some fabulous organizations that produce and present at the Atlas. We have our own programming that has been, I think, unique and successful.
Deutsch: So, your own programming is what?
Lang: We present. We don’t produce. We don’t create new shows, but we present and we do have an education program, City at Peace.
Deutsch: Right. I think I visited them when they applied for a grant. This was years ago.
Lang: Sand[ra] Holloway runs that. She works for the Atlas. That’s a program for youth, young adults mostly. Late teens, mid and late teens dealing with the problems that face them in an urban environment and they create their own musical every year. That’s, I think, a very meaningful and unique program. We have Mosaic. We have Solas Nua. We have Prologue,
Deutsch: Is Mosaic sort of the resident theater group?
Lang: They’re resident, yes. ExPats performs only at the Atlas. Solas Nua performs mostly at the Atlas.
Deutsch: What was the last thing you said?
Lang: Solas Nua, an Irish company. S O L A S  N U A. Prologue has produced at the Atlas, I think twice a year. Sometimes the In Series performs there. There’s just a wide range. The Capital City Symphony. We have our own resident orchestra. They moved in when we opened our doors and they’ve been successful all that time. They moved from Georgetown. It was a big commitment. Big act of faith.
Deutsch: I’m sure there was some grumbling among the musicians about that.
Lang: No doubt.
Deutsch: “I’m not going to Georgetown tonight. I’m going to H Street.”
Lang: They started out doing a holiday concert that––I say it sells out, but it’s free. It’s packed every year. You can’t get tickets after it’s been online for a while. We have a couple of dance companies. We do a silent movie series which is very cool with a pianist who is fabulous. Step Afrika! was with us for about 12 years. They moved on because they got too big for the Atlas. That’s a great success of the Atlas that we were …
Deutsch: The incubator.
Lang: The incubator. We were sized right for them at the time and we enabled them to grow and they’re world-famous now.
Deutsch: What was his name?
Lang: Brian Williams is the executive director. Well, he’s the [founder and executive producer]. I’m very proud of our part in that. We also have now kind of a more formal incubator program called the Atlas Arts Lab. We provide stipends to three or four artists a year and give them performance space and then they have the opportunity for a performance with our lighting and sound experts and space.
Deutsch: Wow. What a thrilling thing.
Lang: Yeah. This year we’ve got some really outstanding people.
Deutsch: You must have a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. I’m sure there’s always stuff.
Lang: Yeah, there’s always stuff. At the moment there are no leaks anywhere. I consider that a real turning point for us. When I go as I did this weekend, last weekend, I like to go there I should say for many reasons, but including that we have the most accessible performing arts space in DC. There are touchless doors to get into the space. Touchless doors to get into the rest rooms. Touchless doors to get from one space to another. For someone using not just a wheelchair, but a walker or a cane, you don’t realize how many obstacles there are in the other performing arts venues. I’m very proud of that. Doesn’t get enough attention in my view.
I like going there because I see these weekends of the Intersections Festival. We do that every year too. This is our 15th year of the Intersections Festival. All kinds of people from all kinds of places. There was Silk Road, a dance group from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Who knew there were so many Uzbeks and Kazakhs who live in this area? That’s just very exciting to see the diversity of our population and to sit in a theater that’s full and think, “You know, if I hadn’t had that just crazy idea, this wouldn’t be here.”
Deutsch: This wouldn’t have happened. Yeah.
Lang: Would have become a shopping mall as the community development corporation had planned.
Deutsch: At what point did you decide to move over here?
Lang: Well, Paul died in December of 2014. I just had to move. I had to get out of the house. I just couldn’t bear it. Some people kind of hunker down and never want to leave a place where they had their happiest years. For me, I just couldn’t bear being there by myself.
Deutsch: This was still in Chevy Chase?
Lang: No, we had moved to Cleveland Park in 2000. I’d been there for 15 years. I loved the house. We backed on to Tregaron [Conservancy]. It was a big house. Beautiful. People, my kids could visit, but it was … I just couldn’t bear it. So I decided to move. Being near the Atlas was comforting to me.
Deutsch: That’s where so much of your energy had gone. That’s where so much of your …
Lang: This was not too smart of me at that point, but I bought a four-story townhouse on Maryland Avenue [NE]. I had serious back problems, so as I said, it was not a really good move, but it was hard. There were not many condos around that area at the time. A lot has changed in ten years. I bought that and I could just walk over to the Atlas and hang out. I had a little cubical there of my own. It was comforting. Then I subsequently, some years later, met Bob Kapp who is my partner now.
Deutsch: How do you spell his name?
Lang: K A P P. We moved in together at the Residences at Eastern Market as they call it now.
Deutsch: Which is a lovely location.
Lang: Oh, it’s a fabulous location. It’s just so great.
Deutsch: You said something about children? Do you have children, or are these Bob’s children?
Lang: I have two children and three stepchildren and 14 grandchildren. It’s a good family.
Deutsch: Anyone close by?
Lang: I have two grandchildren who do live close by. One graduated from Maryland and one from AU [American University] who live in the area. That’s been fun. One of them, he and I are exploring Ethiopian restaurants in the area, trying to find the best one. The other enjoys going to various performances. We go to opera or theater, so she’s fun. Bob has ten grandchildren and four children, so we have visitors.
Deutsch: That’s different from the 14 of yours?
Lang: Yeah.
Deutsch: He had how many children?
Lang: He has four children and ten grandchildren, two of whom live in the area.
Deutsch: You wouldn’t want to get all the grandchildren together, that would be terrifying.
Lang: Overwhelming. I can’t even … Paul and I used to have family reunions. After he died, I actually did one myself and took everybody on a cruise to Alaska. It gets impossible.
Deutsch: That’s a lot. Just the other night I went to the Duck and Peach [restaurant near the Residences] and it was wonderful. It always looked sort of unprepossessing from the outside. My sister lives not in your building but in the building on C Street that’s next to the book store. We went in there and it was very, very good. And it’s all flat. Her husband is the one who uses a walker and I said to her, “I think he could navigate this. There are no stairs, there’s nothing…”
Lang: We go there for brunch periodically. It is very accessible and works for us. And of course it’s easy. “Come downstairs.” [Laughs.]
Deutsch: You wouldn’t even need a raincoat practically. So, what’s next? Anything?
Lang: I have a very full life.
Deutsch: You sure do.
Lang: I manage my dad’s foundation as the chair of the board. I’m still on the Atlas board and very involved with various aspects, although I try to stay out of things that are not my business. And I’m still on the board at Swarthmore College. Then taking care of our little household. Then we have a lot of stuff to do with my family still.
Deutsch: Just sending a birthday card to 14 grandchildren is quite a…
Lang: Yeah, right. I have that on my calendar. Every year I write it in and highlight it. I’m very lucky. They call me for things.
Deutsch: That is nice.
Lang: Some of them have more issues than others.
Deutsch: Oh, thank god. If they all had a lot of issues it would be impossible. [Laughs.]
Lang: A lot of issues, I couldn’t do it. Yeah. [Laughs.] I’m in touch with almost all of them. With my brothers and their kids too, so things that I didn’t have time for when I was working full time. I do now. That’s been very rewarding. Once I figured out that that was actually a life, that you didn’t have to have a big project or a big case to make your life meaningful and full.
Deutsch: That is interesting. Especially as women I think we sort of feel guilty if like we’re not doing something that’s sort of recognizably out in the world. Tell me about your dad’s foundation. We must have mentioned it earlier on, but I want to make sure I get that.
Lang: My dad established a foundation I guess 60 years ago at least. He was very generous in education in particular. He created the I Have Dream project and that was ultimately spun off.
Deutsch: I Have a Dream?
Lang: I Have a Dream. A person adopts a class and then sees them through from elementary school all the way through college. He created that concept of working with a cohort of kids and seeing them through. He created similar programs at the Museum of Natural History and New York Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, which are just brilliant programs and continue. He was a major donor at Swarthmore and there are a number of buildings that he made possible. When he died––actually a few years before he died because he had Alzheimer’s––I became chair and there are seven of us trustees. We have been giving out three to five million dollars year. We will wind down. In about eight or nine years we will sunset.
Deutsch: Sunset. You’re going to sunset?
Lang: Yeah. That was my father’s wish. That takes time but it’s really interesting.
Deutsch: Totally satisfying.
Lang: It’s enabled us to do some important things, to see some organizations flourish that otherwise wouldn’t have.
Deutsch: I think I know the answer to this question, but do you like living on the Hill?
Lang: Yeah. I love it. I love that it’s like living in a small town in a way.
Deutsch: Your errands take twice as long because you bump into people you know and you have to stop and chat.
Lang: Sometimes I count the number of good mornings I’ve said that day and that makes me feel good. I know a lot of dogs considering I have my dog.
Deutsch: Yes, that’s nice. What kind of dog is it?
Lang: A toy poodle. I love being able to walk everywhere. There’s nothing I can’t get or even have to go out of my building if don’t want to with Trader Joe’s there. I do go over to the market several times a week. I never get tired of browsing through the weekend market. It’s been great. It’s alive. Our building is terrific. It’s a good mix of people including a group of older people who are active older people and it doesn’t feel like …
Deutsch: It’s not like an old folks home.
Lang: That’s right. Most people are young and there are some children. Yeah, it’s been great. I love having my dry newspaper delivered to my door and being able to go online to say, “You know, there is a drip in the guest bathroom. Can somebody come up?” An hour later somebody is there.
Deutsch: Yeah. That is kind of nice.
Lang: After all those years living in old houses.
Deutsch: Right, where there is always something wrong.
Lang: Always, always.
Deutsch: I always say that a house is like a child pulling on the back of your [skirt]––there’s always something that needs attention.
Lang: Yes. And it’s only a question of how long can you go without having actually to resolve it. Now it just gets taken care of.
Deutsch: It’s perfect.
Lang: Yeah, I do love living here. It suits me.
Deutsch: I think it’s such a lovely story that you discovered the Atlas and through the Atlas came to the Hill.
Lang: Yes. It totally changed my life. The performing arts will do that to you.
Deutsch: Yes. Anything else I should know about? I will not mention the episode when your pocket was picked. [Laughter.] That was the downside.
Lang: It was. But that was totally my fault in a sense.  I was wearing this jacket with this pocket.
Deutsch: It’s a little too …
Lang: Ridiculous. I wasn’t thinking. Anyway, that was the only bad thing, I guess.
Deutsch: It’s so good that you’re going to be part of this [Capitol Hill Community Achievement Awards].
Lang: I appreciate it very much. It really is a lovely way to be embraced by my new neighborhood, my new community.
Deutsch: Well, of course we’ve always been thinking about you because the Atlas was such a dramatic thing to take on. It’s nice to know that it worked. That it’s happening.
Lang: As long a people keep coming. That’s the key thing.
Deutsch: Keep coming. Yeah. I loved the Emmett Till Trilogy. I probably told you that. I didn’t see the third one. I somehow didn’t.
Lang: That was fabulous. They did a great job with it. That set, too, was just terrific, beautifully staged.
Deutsch: The performance I was at of the second one, Simeon Booker’s widow was there, who I had met, Carol. [Booker was a journalist who covered the Till murder.] She was there. It was like, this is what neighborhood should be and this is what theater should be.
Lang: It’s not just because it’s the theater I began that I say this. We have enjoyed more things at the Atlas than at any other space.
Deutsch: Do you go to other theaters?
Lang: Oh yeah. We have subscriptions at Signature and Arena. We’re going to get a subscription to Shakespeare next year and think we’ll give up Arena because that has been a disappointment.
Deutsch: Has it? Although I saw something I loved at Arena this year, Swept Away. Did you like that?
Lang: That was the only thing there this year that I liked. Bob loved that. I thought it was very good. The set was…
Deutsch: The set was remarkable.
Lang: Astounding. It was worth going for the set.
Deutsch: [My husband] David grew up spending summers on Nantucket so whaling is something that I’ve thought about a lot. I knew the story. It captured so much. Yeah, I thought it was good. It’s hard for a theater to consistently produce something you want to see every time.
Lang: That is actually why I think having a space, a shared space, is important so you don’t have that pressure that you have to do all this all of the time. I think it must be really hard to run Arena Stage. That’s a huge place and a huge financial burden. So you’re driven to do things for reasons …
Deutsch: That might not … I just went a couple nights ago to the Folger, first time since they [reopened], to see the one woman show, Where We Belong, about a native American Mohegan woman, yeah. It was interesting.
Lang: I haven’t been there since they reopened. I guess they’re not officially reopened yet.
Deutsch: Not officially reopened, but they will be. I have your email. As I write this, I’m sure there will be questions.

END OF INTERVIEW
Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project
Jane Lang Interview, March 4, 2024

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