Sunday, June 06, 1999
Playhouse plans to move on to next stage
Stern wants to push theater to first tier
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It's been some season: Playhouse in the Park passed the 20,000-subscriber mark, had 207 sellouts, played to 92 percent capacity, propelled its production of Thunder Knocking on the Door toward Broadway and closed the door on its long-term debt, which at the beginning of the '90s hovered above $1 million.
Past Rosenthal New Play Award winners were showing legs: Scotland Road had an off-Broadway run; Coyote on a Fence and In Walks Ed continued to have good play at regional theaters across the country.
Shelterhouse hit Nixon's Nixon from fall '97 was reconstructed for a run at Old Globe in San Diego and is waiting for the ink to dry on contracts for planned revivals for the Edinburgh Festival and London.
So, Ed Stern, what's the plan after a championship season? Are you headed for Disney World?
“You know,” ruminates Playhouse in the Park's ever-contemplative producing artistic director, “this is as much cause for concern as for celebration.”
He means it.
What if, he puzzles, this encourages people to “perceive our success through statistics?” Particularly statistics that leave most of the nation's other regional theaters somewhere in the dust.
Statistics are beside the point, Mr. Stern says as he happily adds up his numbers. The Playhouse goal is “artistic excellence and fiscal responsibility, and on those bases, it's been the most successful season ever.”
Those successes lead to Mr. Stern's next goal. He wants to see Playhouse make the leap to the top tier of the nation's regional theaters, a move that would fit nicely to his motto of “Cincinnati first.” A top reputation would “make it easier for more directors and actors to be here, to see it as a good career move.”
The way Mr. Stern calls it (and he's not alone), Playhouse is positioned at the top of the second tier. Most of the handful of resident theaters considered as the nation's best — Arena Stage (Washington), South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, Calif.), the Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles), Long Wharf (New Haven, Conn.), American Repertory Theatre (Boston) among them — are clustered on either coast. Chicago's Goodman is arguably the only Midwest theater included.
Part of it is a matter of recognition. Cities in America's heartland barely make the radar screen for the people who make the judgments and the buzz. They're mostly clustered on the coasts, too.
So Playhouse went quietly (and largely unremarked) about its new business for most of the '90s, until a couple of years ago when those ever-improving stats and reports from visiting actors, directors and designers started catching the attention of theater pros across the country.
Winning "Wit'
In case you haven't noticed, there's been a lot of action on the Playhouse hill in the past five years. Along with the cha-chinging box office, there's been a successful $8 million capital campaign; Charles Towers was hired as associate artistic director; the MFA-candidate intern company was reinstated; the facility plant has been upgraded, and Adopt-a-School was founded. “We're working on a lot of fronts,” Mr. Stern says.
If there's one statistic Mr. Stern loves, it's the 75,000 students the Playhouse reached in 1998-99. “Playhouse has the best, most varied, aggressive educational program (among resident theaters) in the country,” Mr. Stern says flatly.
The theater's reputation is grow ing. Playhouse was the first regional theater in the nation to obtain productions rights to Pulitzer Prize-winner Wit (when Mr. Stern refused to send the season brochure to the presses with a “TBA” attached.)
Playhouse already does business with lauded Arena Stage, which asked to partner a co-production of Thunder Knocking on the Door and was eager for another partnership in 1999-2000. (It didn't quite happen.)
The idea of a place among the nation's acknowledged first-tier theaters isn't a pipe dream, it isn't even necessarily a long-term goal.
To make it happen, it will require more than the best efforts of the Playhouse. It will require a community will, our desire to be counted among the best.
Home for playwrights
There are some things the theaters accepted as the best have in common, beyond artistic excellence and fiscal responsibility.
“First tiers exist (almost exclusively) in communities with lots of professional theaters. That forces healthy artistic competition and makes for a savvy audience,” Mr. Stern says.
“There are commissions, premieres. It's what we need to do. I want a major playwright to look on the Cincinnati Playhouse as a friend.
“We are clearly a home for great actors, designers, directors. We need to be a better home for playwrights. It's creating an environment in a community that wants that environment.”
Oh, how Mr. Stern wants to start those commissions and new play workshops. That was one of the dreams attached to the capital campaign, but for all the eagerly given dollars, no one designated dollars to invest in the art.
There were hopes for endowments that would support a large-cast stage classic every other season, a regional play festival, a nationally recognized guest artist.
“I want to have the luxury of talking to playwrights, commissioning playwrights. It would be one way of lifting the theater higher. The point is to have them done here and enjoyed here. If shows start here and move on, great. We can help our audiences and help American drama.”
With the long-term deficit at last paid off, can't some of those dollars be directed toward the dreams?
This season's profits are being poured into the Marx Theatre's ventilation system and a new hearing aid system for the Shelterhouse.
This season, he points out, didn't have any “big” shows. Next season has Much Ado About Nothing, A Little Night Music and Wit. (Most people think Wit is a one-woman show. It actually has a cast of nine.) Figure $12,000 per actor. Even with great box office, added costs equal subtracted profits.
The solution is reliable dollars in the form of artistic endowments, Mr. Stern says, not the gamble of good box office.
Anyone interested in making an investment in the art form, in today and tomorrow's audiences and in Cincinnati's national reputation, give him a call. Please. (345-2242)
Jackie Demaline is the Enquirer's theater critic and roving arts reporter. Write her at Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; fax, 768-8330.
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