The Rep Rebuilds
Steven Woolf put his three hats back on. And went to work as The Rep's artistic director a mere eight weeks before first rehearsal for the 1986-87 season.
"We selected Steve," said Peter Bunce, who was then president of the board of directors, "because he knew our audience, and that is vital for a regional theatre."
"It's a highly literate audience with a good grasp of theatre...It's a caring audience, a group of people who really believe in the theatre," Steve Woolf told local papers. He inaugurated The Rep's 20th season with a highly praised production of All My Sons on the Mainstage. And the audience began to come back.
"What is exciting," he has written, "is that the theatre is an interactive art form. The audience can't just sit in the dark room -- the nature of the art form asks for involvement and active playgoing...We keep telling stories in the theatre and it is these stories that make our communities.
"We rely on the telling of tales to create a culture and to give it a base of common experience to build from...art can ennoble a human, art can redefine a person, art can civilize a nation, art is important to a culture...We need the connections that art brings to us - it is part of the binding fabric of our society. Yes, it may be coarse at times, at times disturbing, but it is also funny and moving and enriching and elevating. It is complex, as is humanity."
It is also communication. The theatre's glossy newsletter, On Cue, was eliminated in a cost-cutting move in 1986, and was replaced with a letter which Steven Woolf writes and which reaches subscribers before each Mainstage play opens. People who settle down to read the letters have a chance to learn a great deal about the play they are going to see and about backstage activities.
Steven Woolf has not ducked controversy. "The nature of theatre is never going to please every person every time... But that's part of the experience. There's nothing wrong with disliking a show. If it leads to discussion or argument, that's healthy...St. Louisans recognize quality when they see it. If a play is slightly off-the-wall and the acting, direction and production values are wonderful, St. Louis will respond.
"Off-the-wall" could sometimes describe plays that appear in the Studio, Rain. Some Fish. No Elephants., Lucky Lindy and Beyond Here are Monsters might qualify for that description.
"Our work in the Studio is just as polished, just as professional as anything we do on the Mainstage," Steven Woolf explains. "But the plays we do there really seem to want a more intimate space. Once in a while, as we did with Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, we bring a play upstairs that we once did downstairs, or vice versa as with Waiting for Godot. The Studio may be experimental or risky, but it is not necessarily so.
"On the other hand, the Mainstage has to have wider appeal, has to play to a bigger audience. It can't be as extreme. But it has to be very, very good. Whether it is a classic or contemporary, a musical or a mystery, it has to be convincing and fit a large space."
A production which demonstrated the interesting choice between the Mainstage and the Studio is A Walk in the Woods, with a two-man cast. It might have seemed the right size for the Studio, but the play's scope and subject matter, Soviet-American arms negotiations, required the large space of the Mainstage.
"We have done premieres on the Mainstage," Woolf reminded us in a 1991 interview. "Offshore Signals was a world premiere. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas was a premiere and Precious Memories had only been performed on one other stage. We have done some very challenging, very demanding Mainstage work. Last season for example, Our Country's Good was a stretch for some of our audience. So was The Heidi Chronicles.
"So, in the Studio we do work that needs a small space. Tomfoolery in a cabaret setting could hardly have been as much fun upstairs as it was downstairs; its run was extended a week, and it sold out every night. Billy Bishop Goes to War would have died on the Mainstage."
Sometimes the work presented in the Studio is very new. Premieres have been Amazing Grace, A Quiet End and Rain. Some fish. No elephants. There have been plays, such as Dog Logic, with entirely new endings when performed at The Rep.
"In essence," Steven Woolf says, "I like to think of a Rep season as a nine-play season. The mix is a whole institutional producing statement. That's what feels complete to me."
By far smaller and much more experimental than the Studio is The Rep's Lab. Created in 1989, the Lab nurtures playwrights with time and guidance while they are in the process of developing new work.
The Rep's associate artistic director, Susan Gregg, works with the playwright for a full month of rewriting and revising, and Equity actors rehearse as the work progresses. Finally, with small invited audiences, there are two sheltered performances, and guests are invited to comment afterwards. These projects have given playwrights a chance to see how their work unfolds without the pressure of reviews or full-scale productions.
One Lab project, The Last Song of John Proffit by Tommy Thompson, graduated to a complete production in the Studio. Impassioned Embraces by John Pielmeier has been published and Thin Air: Tales from a Revolution by Lynne Alvarez was fully produced at another theatre following development in The Rep's Lab.
