Stage directions
With cast changes at the top of two big local theaters, what does the future hold?
Let's imagine that we're in two theaters at once, watching a Chekhov play. On one side of the stage, as the cellos and violins die away, a scrim with a delicate projection of cherry trees slowly rises. We see an exquisitely rendered drawing room of faded magnificence, bathed in a fin-de-siecle glow. At its center stands a beautiful actress whose face we know from somewhere. She carries herself elegantly in her fur-trimmed traveling suit and coquettish hat, and she speaks with the kind of bright insouciance that signals intelligence and charm in women onstage.
The other half of the stage feels like an abandoned warehouse. Gloomy shadows lurk at the back, behind an industrial-looking metal framework holding a ghostly scrim (no cherry blossoms here). Actors in slightly disheveled, vaguely 20th-century costumes gesture and talk behind the scrim, while another perches on a lone, dilapidated divan in front. There's some weird thrumming music, and we can't always catch everything the actors are saying.
If you are a devotee of the Huntington Theatre Company or the American Repertory Theatre, you may recognize these scenes from the current "Cherry Orchard" or last season's "Three Sisters," respectively. Chances are you also have strong opinions about which one you prefer. You may find the Huntington polished and professional, the ART bewilderingly idiosyncratic and opaque. Or maybe you'd say the Huntington is staid and conventional, the ART daring and raw. Either way, you know what these theaters are and what they're trying to do.
You also know, if you keep up with theater news, that both companies have recently announced they'll be looking for new artistic directors. Robert Woodruff leaves the ART at the end of this season; Nicholas Martin steps down as the Huntington's AD after next season, though he'll remain in an advisory role for two years after that.
And just what does that news mean for the future of these local institutions, to say nothing of the larger Boston theater scene? Well, that nobody knows for sure.
It does seem likely that both theaters will continue along the general paths they've set so far; it's hard to imagine the Huntington choosing an avant-garde experimentalist like Woodruff, whose guest artists have included drag queens and guitarists, or the ART going for a Broadway-centric show - businessman in the mold of Martin. But it's also inevitable that whoever replaces Woodruff and Martin will come with their own visions, biases, and connections, and that those details of personality and taste will change the companies in ways both subtle and not.
Beyond that, whatever changes come to our two largest companies will naturally affect every other theater in Boston. The ART and Huntington aren't the only defining players in town -- especially not in the past decade, with the rise of solid midlevel companies such as the New Repertory Theatre and the Lyric Stage Company, and with the bubbling up of a whole new and exhilarating crop of smaller troupes. But the way a whole theater season feels here -- tired or fresh, lively or flat -- depends greatly on the choices made by these two big companies, with their university ties (the ART at Harvard and the Huntington at Boston University) and their multimillion-dollar endowments.
That's especially true as the Theater District continues to evolve. The old days of Boston as a tryout town for New York are long gone, but the downtown houses that served that market are still struggling to define their mission in whatever you'd call our current era. Sure, we get a "Wicked" or "I Am My Own Wife" or "Doubt" every year, but the dark patches between shows only seem to grow longer -- or to be filled with dance and stand-up comedy and the Rockettes, not plays. As with many other cities around the country, the most interesting theater is now locally grown.
But, again as with many other cities, regional theaters here are also struggling. Audiences are generally getting older; season subscriptions are down and single-ticket sales unpredictable, and theaters no longer feel confident that government or corporate funding will close the gap. In short, no one has figured out a new way to maintain consistently healthy budgets.
More abstract, but just as troubling, is the loss of a sense that theater lies at the heart of civic discourse. Passionate theatergoers still know that a play can change our lives -- or even change public life, as when "The Exonerated" raised fresh questions about the death penalty. But there aren't as many of us as there used to be. Eavesdrop on a few people discussing that great thing they saw last night, and you're likely to hear that they saw it on a screen, not a stage.
All that is the backdrop for the decisions that now face the Huntington and the ART. The leaders they choose will tell us a lot about the solutions they favor. That makes this an excellent time for everyone who cares about theater in Boston to think -- and speak -- about what we believe it can and should be.
So here's what I want. I want an ART that continues to embrace the messiness of experiment and risk, that collaborates with many different kinds of artists from many different cultures, and that insists on taking a fresh look at the great works of the past. To get that, I'm willing to risk the occasional train wreck; I'd rather be baffled than bored. But I'd also like an ART that draws more regularly on the deep pool of local artists who would revel in the chance to do provocative, unexpected work. And I'd like to see the company impose a little more discipline on some visiting artists, so that their big, wild ideas have a chance to gel into coherent form before they end up onstage.
As for the Huntington, I treasure its excellent design and production values. I'm grateful for the company's commitment to developing new plays, and I'm delighted that it gave the city the varied, if imperfect, new spaces of the Boston Center for the Arts. Now I'd like to see it build on those commitments by developing a more coherent artistic vision. Sometimes the Huntington's seasons feel driven more by a New York star's availability for a given project than by a passion for doing particular work. Celebrities from Nathan Lane to the current headliner, Kate Burton, have turned in excellent performances, but I'd get more genuine excitement from watching a relative nobody in a play that a director feels driven to stage.
I'd also love to see both these companies find more ways to work with other theaters in town. With the BCA and the ART's new Zero Arrow Theatre, both companies have the space and the opportunity to nurture smaller players -- and pay some bills, too. They could also use their new spaces to increase outreach to local schools, which are, after all, the source of the next generation of theatergoers.
Of course all this takes money. The good news is that both theaters enjoy the support (and, admittedly, the restrictions) of Harvard and BU. If these academic sponsors feel uneasy about maintaining or (dare we dream it?) increasing their commitments, you have to wonder: If a wealthy university can't be counted on to appreciate, foster, and help pay for the arts, then who on earth can?
Well, ordinary theatergoers can, too, of course. But if the ART and the Huntington want to attract more of them, I'm convinced that there's only one way to do it. Don't hire a focus group or a marketing team. Find artistic directors with vision and passion, and tell them to put on the plays that they just can't live without.
That's what I want. What about you?
Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com. 