The leadership of Playhouse Merced appears to be stuck in a bitter standstill one week after police officers responded to an attempted Board of Directors meeting that quickly dissolved into chaos as community members expressed anger and frustration — some getting into shouting matches accented by harsh, even offensive words, along with accusations of racism.
Yep, it’s true, we are talking about Playhouse Merced — the beloved arts venue that brings us shows like “Oliver Jr.” and “The Holiday Follies.”
The real-life, adult drama played out on the evening of Sept. 10 inside the Main Street venue. On the meeting’s agenda was the “reaffirmation of automatic removal” of three board members, including Sheilah Brooks, president; Lynn White, treasurer; and Carolina Meraz.
At the leadership table were board members Sam Yniguez, Debbie Bier, Brooke Gutierrez and Stacie Guzman. However, standing to the side were Brooks, White and Meraz.
As the meeting commenced, Brooks began reading a statement about rule violations, an unauthorized meeting, adjourning the proceedings, and trespassing. Audience members, in turn, begin to comment out loud, criticizing her statements. Some cat calls were heard.
Multiple people already had cell phone cameras rolling. A member of the Merced County Times staff was in attendance.
In less than 2 minutes, Allen Brooks, the husband of Sheilah, stood up from his seat in the audience and started shouting, “She is the president! … She is the president!”
Allen Brooks, who is the president of the Merced County NAACP, was wearing an NAACP shirt. He also serves on the board of the Merced City School District.
Seconds later, Bertha Perez, a former Merced City Councilwoman, stood up alongside Brooks, and started shouting, presumably in support of Sheilah, though it was hard to hear everything clearly because other members of the audience raised their voices too.
It wasn’t long before Perez was dropping F-bombs and pointing at the audience saying, “Look at all the white privilege!”
Several wide-eyed children in the building were immediately escorted away from the adult noise.
Perez is known in the community for being outspoken, especially at public meetings and on social media; however, she is not a regular attendee of Playhouse meetings, according to multiple local theater supporters that spoke to the Times.
Things did quiet down for a moment as the four sitting board members attempted to continue the meeting with public comment. Longtime Playhouse supporter Mikee-d Love-asenjo started to read a statement with fiery emotion, at one point saying “There are board members in this room — and you know who you are — who are not showing up with the passion, the care, and the responsibility that this organization deserves. … You shut down ideas, dismiss suggestions, refuse to allow relations. You have made it difficult, even impossible, for people to support this theater, including donors and community members who have tried to get involved but were either pushed away or ignored.”
Then Allen Brooks went to the front of the room and raised his voice to the repeated tune of “Bla, bla, bla” as if to drown out what the other speaker was saying. He later commented that the crowd was doing the same thing toward his wife.
More shouting erupted, and at least four people at the meeting, including one sitting board member, called the Merced Police Department. Minutes later, five police officers showed up to address and de-escalate the situation. Eventually, all the attendees were encouraged to disperse until such time a peaceful meeting could be held.
That same night, a video of the meeting melee and a statement appeared on the Facebook site of the local NAACP. “The treatment Sheilah Brooks received was unequal, unjust, and rooted in racial bias,” it read. “This is not just about a disputed meeting. This is about racism, privilege, and the silencing of Black leadership.”
The Times received a copy of a petition that has been circulating in local circles, affirming support for the removal of Sheilah Brooks, White and Meraz from their board positions. Among several reasons cited were:
• Withholding of essential funds and resources needed to complete productions. Refusing to share crucial financial information with the entire board.
• Failure to payout signed contracts, and failure to follow through on unsigned contracts that support staff, guest artists and teachers.
• Preventing other board members from carrying out their responsibilities.
• Leaving the staff, volunteers and guest artists without a hired leadership to serve and protect, resulting in abuse by neglecting production, and the loss of long-standing donors and potential sponsorships.
• Creating conditions that forced productions to open without necessary sets, props, costumes or lighting, risking a weak reputation and future reduced patronage of Playhouse Merced productions.
The Times is reaching out to Allen and Sheilah Brooks for additional comment and viewpoints on the Playhouse situation, but was unable to make contact prior to this week’s press deadline. Several community members who reached out to the Times echoed the sentiments expressed in the aforementioned petition, but refused to go on the record with their names.
The Times did conduct interviews with Sam Yniguez, who serves as the Playhouse Board secretary, and Playhouse staff member Emily McSwain.
It was a year ago when Yniguez sat down with the Times to discuss public outrage over an anticipated board meeting that was held privately, along with prospects for cancelled programming during the 2024 holiday season. At the time, Yniguez expressed optimism that the board was heading in the right direction and needed time to reboot and pursue new initiatives.
Today his optimism has turned to serious concern. He told the Times that over the past year troubling issues have surfaced with regard to the three board members in question, critical Playhouse business has not been addressed, a vice president position remains unfilled, and transparency about financials and related board matters has been diminished.
“Any board can go through rough patches,” he explained, “and normally they go through certain avenues to settle their differences. So when it became apparent that some of these time sensitive issues weren’t going to be done in an efficient, timely manner, that’s when the special meetings were called.”
As secretary, Yniguez used his authority to call for special meetings that were duly noticed. At each of the three scheduled meetings, Brooks, White and Meraz failed to show up.
The bottom line, Yniquez pointed out, there are functions and bylaws that board members have to follow, and the Playhouse bylaws specifically state that any board member who is absent from three successive meetings is automatically removed from the board.
“It’s not even a discussion,” he explained. “It’s not even something we can vote on. It’s automatic.”
Yniquez said that after he alerted Brooks about the removal, he and other board members were locked out of key access to the Playhouse building, as well as access to certain electronic information.
As far as accusations of racial discrimination, Yniguez, who is Hispanic, said he was caught completely off guard by the thought and called it unfortunate. “Race has nothing to with why these board members were removed,” he told the Times. “This is about a violation of the board bylaws.”
He added, “I heard a board member’s husband tell members of the community that they were not wanted inside Playhouse. … I have no explanation for that.”
Among those present at the Sept. 10 meeting were longtime Playhouse supporters who Yniquez and McSwain consider “diverse.” They included Sandra Hay, Haley Paulissian, Cheney McGee, Claudette Asenjo, Rhonda Batson, Jessica Dimpel – Alvarez, Jane Dimpel, Heather Harrison, Jared McCeary, Justin Hicks, Corey Strauss, Davin Soehnen, Madison Mitchell, Abigail Roe, Rich and Jenell Barnes, Heike Hambley, Rachel Wolander, Rachel Battisti, Chris Battisti, Marcelle Griffin, Melody Howell, Niecy Irby, Sal Lopez, Hannah Maulden & her partner, Alyssa McCabe, Debbie Fierro, Zane Fierro, Rose Pino, Jenni Hannon, James Jardin, Dennis Brown, Katy Uyeno, Brian Bier and Edgar Martinez, among many others.
For her part, McSwain spoke to the Times without fear of retribution regarding her job as Box Office associate and Social Media manager for the past three years. McSwain has also been involved with Playhouse since she was a child involved in the conservatory.
“Current working conditions have not been great at all,” she said.
McSwain agreed with many of the bullet points put forth in the aforementioned petition, and in addition noted that she and others at Playhouse have been restricted from graphic design software that the theater company uses to produce posters, playbills and social media posts.
McSwain also alleges to have seen evidence that Sheilah and Allen Brooks, White and Meraz have obtained free tickets to see Playhouse productions since March, and in a manner that has not been consistent with past procedures. McSwain said she noted that Sheilah Brooks and Lynn White had more than $200 in tickets comped in their names. Other board members were “not doing this” and purchasing their own tickets, according to McSwain.
McSwain said the idea of multiple comps including family members was frustrating at a time when Playhouse is facing financial difficulty.
Among other things discussed, McSwain added: “Some are claiming there is a lot of racism going on, but as far as productions go, we had quite a bit of people of color in ‘Six.’ We had two Black leads in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’ A lot of our leads in ‘Into The Woods’ were people of color as well. … And this is something that we have been striving for in the last couple of years. … They are claiming these things but it’s just not adding up. That room that Mr. Brooks and Mrs. Perez was yelling at was not just a bunch of white people. There were Black people, Hispanic, Asian, Pakistani, lots of different cultures.”
Said McSwain, “On a personal level, this is a place that I have grown up in — a place I have called home for 25 years now — and to see how it has been handled for the last two years under Ms. Brooks, and now Ms. White and Ms. Meraz., it’s just been unreal.”
Editor’s note: This story will continue. More interviews need to be conducted and others need to be redacted. If anybody wants to contact the Times about this issue, please email: [email protected]. Stay tuned.