Denver Center Playwrights’ nirvana
- January
- 20
2:28 am Live Literature
The Denver Center Theatre Company is no longer hoping to become a leader in American new-play development. By launching three new world-premiere plays in three consecutive weeks, it is one.
And not just any new plays. “Our House,” “Lydia” and “Plainsong” are commissioned works, meaning the Denver Center is the reason for their very existence. The company not only hired writers Theresa Rebeck, Octavio Solis and Eric Schmiedl, but it has also sheperded their plays from epiphany to opening.
In fact, the DCTC now has 15 playwrights, including big names like Lee Blessing and Steven Dietz, in various stages of writing new plays for possible staging here one day.
Schmiedl, Rebeck and Solis find themselves in a kind of shocked nirvana to be birthing their plays side by side, with resources that exceed those of many Broadway theaters. Schmiedl, of Cleveland, calls his time here “a uniquely wonderful experience.” Solis, one of the nation’s leading Latino writers, says it’s “really unusual and very freeing.” To Rebeck, “it feels like working at The National Theatre in London.”
The three new plays are being staged simultaneously so that when theater professionals from around the world visit artistic director Kent Thompson’s third Colorado New Play Summit Feb. 14-16, they’ll get to see all three plus readings of four more scripts in the pipeline.
“One fully staged premiere a year won’t attract a large industry audience,” said Thompson. “And attracting a large industry audience is very, very important for the future life of these plays not to mention our national standing.”
There are bigger festivals, namely Kentucky’s 32-year-old Humana Festival, which mounts six new works each spring. But Thompson already is halfway to matching that output in three years.
If the DCTC were a sports team, you’d say it’s just stepped into the major leagues.
“Everyone pays lip service to this whole idea of doing more new plays, and nobody ever does
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it,” said Rebeck, whose “Our House” a scathing satire of reality TV and the media was first to open Thursday. “There are other companies that are famous for commissioning new plays to be written, but never producing them. What’s remarkable here in Denver is the follow-through.”
A key part of Thompson’s plan to revive the DCTC’s once nationally acclaimed new-play program, which was dismantled in 2002 by budget cuts, was to fully stage up to three commissioned world premieres by the fifth year.
“We’ve obviously done that sooner than we expected,” he said. “It’s riskier and more challenging, but that’s what will distinguish our new-play efforts.”
That risk both financial and artistic is the main reason more companies don’t, or can’t, follow the DCTC’s lead. The artistic risk is three-fold: No matter the writer, just paying for a script to be written doesn’t mean it will be worthy of being staged one day. So, many get written but are never staged.
It’s also always harder to attract audiences to plays they don’t know. And Thompson isn’t playing it safe when it comes to content.
The financial risk is knee-wobbling. Thompson estimates it’s one-third more expensive to produce a new play than an existing one. So last year, the Denver Center board expanded Thompson’s budget by $1 million, to $11.9 million and that’s when he was staging only one new play, Jason Grote’s thrilling “1001.” This year, the figure will be $12.6 million.
“When you are working with unknown titles, your risk goes way up,” said Denver Center chief financial officer Vicky Miles. “A few years ago, we wouldn’t have been in a financial position to take that risk.”
But a few years ago, Thompson wasn’t artistic director, Daniel L. Ritchie wasn’t chairman, and board member Jim Steinberg (of the Steinberg Trust) was not yet regarded as perhaps the single largest supporter of new-play development in America. He’s personally committed $300,000 to the company over the past three years.
And the Denver Center had not yet launched the Women’s Voices Fund, which asked women to commit $5,000 each for new-play development. That initiative already has raised more than $650,000.
“We’ve been really lucky,” said Thompson. “The support has been extraordinary.”
The additional expenses only begin with paying writers to write. The playwright also must be present at design meetings, casting, rehearsals and performances. Marketing costs go up.
But no corners are being cut here. The DCTC has even taken on the extraordinary expense of bringing in (and putting up) two entire casts (”Lydia” and “Our House”) that are new to the company.
“Plainsong,” a sweeping epic based on Colorado novelist Kent Haruf’s bestseller, is the least risky, but most expensive, effort. Solis says no American playwright is writing plays today that require much more than five actors not with any real expectation of having it produced.
“Plainsong” has 21.
“That’s unheard of,” said Rebeck. “That’s phenomenal,” said a giddy Schmiedl.
The audience plays a key role in fueling these efforts. Last year, Grote’s “1001″ sold to a jaw-dropping 85 percent of capacity, while the simultaneous “King Lear” drew 81 percent. But it doesn’t matter whether audiences prefer the old or the new as long as they are coming to either, they are supporting the new. Last month, the old-fashioned “White Christmas” drew a staggering 107,567, “and that’s directly helping support ‘Our House,’ ‘Lydia’ and ‘Plainsong,’ ” Thompson said.
It’s also no accident that Thompson’s troika of writers represent a troika of underserved interests: Women, our majority ethnic minority and plays of local interest. Is that calculated or common sense? Both.
“I think it’s common sense and brilliant, because I think common sense often is,” Rebeck said. Surveys consistently show women make up about two-thirds of all theater audiences, but before Thompson, the DCTC had staged just eight plays by women writers in 26 years.
“The continuing discrepancy in the (national) numbers is just stupid and poor business at the same time,” Rebeck said. “That’s why it was electrifying for me to hear Kent stand up two years ago and say, ‘It’s ridiculous that half the community is not being represented here in any meaningful way.’ And then the board came up with more money than he had even asked for.”
Solis said it makes sense for the Denver Center to reach out to the local Latino population, “but it makes a brilliant kind of sense to serve them without giving them the prescriptive formula of what a Latino play is supposed to be.”
He describes “Lydia” as “a nasty family drama” about an illegal and disintegrating 1970s Mexican family in El Paso. With apologies to Upton Sinclair, Solis warns, “there will be blood.”
“This is a lot edgier than what theaters of this size generally do when it comes presenting a Latino work,” he said. “A lot of times they are afraid of offending the community so they play it a little safe. This isn’t safe.
“That’s why I don’t feel like I am just writing for Latinos. I am hoping everyone else isn’t going to think, ‘Oh, that’s for … them.’ I want this play to include everyone.”
That, said Rebeck, is what makes the scope of Thompson’s vision not only ambitious, “but intellectually ambitious.”
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
Denver Center Theatre Company world premieres: Plays and playwrights
Theresa Rebeck, “Our House”
Jan. 17-Feb. 16, Space Theatre
Rebeck is an Ohio-born, New York mother of two with several family members living in the Denver area. She’s written more than 20 published plays and is best known for the one-woman comedy “Bad Dates,” which had three Colorado productions last year. She’s also a novelist (”Three Girls and Their Brother”), TV writer (”Law %26 Order”) and last year had her first Broadway production, (”Mauritius”), which was a bigger deal to all those around her than it was to her. “People kept saying, ‘You’ve made it!’ and I was like, ‘What have I been doing all this time?’ I’ve always felt successful. Because I’m an American woman and I write straight plays, it’s always been sort of assumed I would never be done on Broadway. But that was never the goal.”
Her work: The New York Times said Rebeck’s plays are about “betrayal and treason and poor behavior. A lot of poor behavior.”
“Our House”: Merv, who’s seriously addicted to reality TV shows, finds himself a character in his own surreal “reality” TV show, one that’s being broadcast from his own house and hosted by a TV news anchor he loves. Or hates. One or the other. Or both.
In Rebeck’s words: “The play is really about the way we all become desensitized to the glamorization of violence. The more I watch it, the more I believe that all of these people out there shooting people in their schools, and all these serial killers, are fed and encouraged by the TV set. That seems to be an uncomfortable and shocking truth about America.”
Warning: “Our House” contains explicit language, violence, sex.
Images from “Our House” by Terry Shapiro.
Octavio Solis, “Lydia”
Jan. 24-March 1, Ricketson Theatre
Solis, born in El Paso and now living in San Francisco, is one of the nation’s leading Latino voices, perhaps best-known for “Santos %26 Santos,” a shocking look at a real Mexican-American crime family that dominated both sides of the law in 1970s El Paso.
His work: While the most-often produced Latino stories are educational tales celebrating heroic and historic stories of struggle and triumph, Solis tells far more fully fleshed, complicated and dangerous stories. “Having been raised in El Paso, the Texas-Mexico border has been a crucible for much of my work,” said Solis, who is most often produced in the West. “I don’t get done in New York, but I don’t think it’s a good match,” he said. “But I have foot in a few little garage theaters in San Francisco they keep me honest.”
“Lydia”: The play is about the disintegration of a 1970s Mexican immigrant family after an accident leaves their undocumented, 15-year-old girl with severe head trauma on the eve of her quinceanera.
In Solis’ words: “This play is told from the girl’s perspective, so we are inside of her, even though she’s locked-in. It has aspects of realism, but it really opens up after that. I wouldn’t say politics like the war and immigration are at the forefront, though I think you feel them.”
Warning: “Lydia” contains explicit language, violence.
Images from “Lydia” by Terry Shapiro.
Eric Schmiedl, “Plainsong”
Jan. 31-Feb. 23, Stage Theatre
Schmiedl, who lives in Cleveland, happens to have worked as in intern in the Denver Center’s literary office in 1991. He was chosen to adapt Colorado novelist Kent Haruf’s 1999 best-seller.
His work: Schmiedl has adapted several works for the Cleveland Play House children’s theater program. He is currently working on a rock ‘n’ roll adaptation of “Treasure Island.”
“Plainsong:” It explores the people of a small ranching community in eastern Colorado, including a single father struggling to raise his two sons alone, and a 16-year-old girl who gets adopted by two gruff old ranchers who live together on a farm 20 miles outside of town.
In Schmiedl’s words: “It’s about how these diverse people eventually come together, and how we can create a new family and a new community. We’ve tried to maintain authenticity and honesty to the spirit of the book, its issues and most important, to its characters. What’s so beautiful about the novel and hopefully the play is that it is so specific to that community that it then becomes universal.”
Note: Images from “Plainsong,” which does not open until Jan. 31, are not yet available.
Other playwrights currently under commission by the Denver Center
Lee Blessing
Connie Congdon
Jose Cruz Gonzalez
Steven Dietz
Ami Dayan
Jason Grote
Kent Haruf
Steven Cole Hughes
Michele Lowe
Julie Marie Myatt
Rogelio Martinez
Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder
Compiled by John Moore
Ticket information
Where. All shows presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company at the Denver Performing Arts Complex.
Times. All shows 6:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays.
Cost. $36-$46.
Contact. 303-893-4100 or click here to go to the Denver Center’s home page.
Contact John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
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