Emerson to launch theater center with program snagged from Arena Stage

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff

In a clear coup for Emerson College’s growing theater program, the school announced today it will launch an ambitious project designed to encourage the creation of new plays and serve as a hot spot for lively debate and discussion about the future of theater.

And Emerson won’t be starting from scratch. The college’s new Center for the Theater Commons is going to be run by David Dower and Polly Carl, two respected theater-world figures who are taking their developing project — and the popular webzine HowlRound — from the Washington, D.C.-based Arena Stage to the Boston campus.

Dower, currently associate artistic director of Arena Stage, and Carl, director of the company’s American Voices New Play Institute, have been examining how to spark new works, a mission that’s in line with the now two-year-old ArtsEmerson. The Emerson program has developed an ambitious slate of relationships with theater companies, here and abroad, to not only present works but take up residence at the college as they rehearse new plays.

“I’m thrilled,” said Robert J. Orchard, Emerson’s executive director for the arts, who is also executive director of ArtsEmerson. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and they’re the right people to do it.”

What’s more, Emerson gets Dower and Carl without picking up the bill. Their work is already funded, through 2014, by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In addition to HowlRound, Dower and Carl have been overseeing the creating of the “New Play Map,” an online database offering a window into which plays — and which producers — are doing works on any given day in the United States.

All of it is part of their attempt to create a new way of thinking about theater, moving away from a structure that depended on large, historically stable companies to produce works. As Dower said, that’s in large part why it makes sense to move away from Arena Stage, which is a member of the League of Resident Theatres, the largest professional theater organization of its kind in the country. He likened the potential for conflict to that of government watchdog agencies.

“How can the government be a watchdog and part of the institution at the same time?” he said. “It’s really a question of autonomy.”

Though he praised Arena Stage for always encouraging open conversation, Dower said the relationship was awkward. That’s why he approached Orchard last fall to explore moving under the Emerson umbrella.

Carl concurred, saying, “It feels to me like a university is set up for these kinds of investigations. Arena didn’t get in the way, but I think from the outside people wondered why Arena was exploring things that were about them.”