Dan Hunter | Hunter Higgs, LLC

What fun it was to run into witty and engaging Dan Hunter at Pon Restaurant just before the COVID-19 lockdown. Dan and I first met years ago as colleagues teaching in the arts administration program at Boston University. Dan is a playwright, songwriter and the founding partner of Hunter Higgs, LLC, an advocacy and communications firm. He also invented H-IQ, an first assessment of individual imagination and ideation. He shared the following answers to my questions:

1. What in your life got you on the path of caring about and working in an arts-related field?

When I was 19, I lived in Appalachia where singing and songwriting were in the air.  People wrote songs about their lives, their work and their mountains.  I wondered who was writing songs about Iowa.  So, I did.  I became a playwright later by accident.

2. What is most pressing in/about your work at this moment in time?

As artists, we need time and space to work.  But we also need the connections that bring our work to the public—publishers, galleries, theaters, agents and so on.  These connections have evaporated for the time being.  The long process of waiting for a publisher’s decision has become even longer.

3. How has COVID-19 impacted your work?  What are yout thoughts about the role the arts? 

I told a fellow playwright that I was self-isolating.  He said, “Really?  How is that any different?”  The quarantine has dropped me into a revolving door of days.  I lose track of the day of the week.  Each day comes and goes indistinguishable from yesterday or tomorrow. However, I have time to devote to writing and composing, which feels like a sinful luxury.  I have resurrected ideas and projects from the back of mind. 

We create narrative through the arts.  In these communicated narratives, we develop meanings—the meaning of self, society, history and so on.  Narrative or story telling is fundamental to Homo Sapiens.  Every individual weaves a narrative with or without art.  Art serves as a bridge from an individual narrative to communal narratives.

4. What is your hope for the arts in the city of Boston?

I hope that the cultural community can look beyond its own needs to identify ways that we can help the people of Boston.