Boston Globe, MA
Nov 25 2004
Eustis tookTrinity in a new direction
Departure for Public marks end of an era
By Ed Siegel, Globe Staff | November 25, 2004
>>From the time George C. Wolfe announced he was leaving New York’s
Public Theater last February, it was inevitable that Oskar Eustis
would be considered a front-runner to be the fourth artistic head of
the house that Joe Papp built.
In his 10 years as artistic director at Trinity Repertory Company,
Eustis has brought the theater artistic glory and financial
stability, managing to build the audience while pushing the envelope.
Or perhaps prodding the envelope is more accurate. While Eustis’s
roots were in experimental theater, his programming in Providence was
deliberate in terms of rebuilding an audience and gradual in its
inventiveness.
Thanks to Adrian Hall, who led the company from 1964 to 1989, Trinity
established itself as one of the foremost regional theaters in the
country. But with the boom in regional houses in the 1980s, Trinity
lost some of its luster. Bostonians, for example, had the American
Repertory Theatre and the Huntington Theatre Company, beginning in
the early 1980s, so why travel to Providence when there was theater
of the same caliber locally?
To be more distinctive, Trinity named avant-garde director Anne
Bogart to be Hall’s successor. While some have fond memories of her
bold work (she hired both Eustis and ART artistic director Robert
Woodruff to direct), Providence audiences started voting with their
feet.
When Eustis became artistic director 10 years ago he inherited a $3
million debt, an acting company that was getting older and not
better, and audiences skeptical that Trinity was meeting their needs.
What he brought to the company, though, were impeccable artistic
credentials (he was the original director and dramaturge for Tony
Kushner’s ”Angels in America”) as well as schmoozing abilities like
nobody’s business. In fact, schmoozing abilities are part of the
business now. As corporate and private funds are harder to find, the
ability to woo donors is part of the job description.
One of Eustis’s prize catches was the former mayor of Providence,
Buddy Cianci, who realized how essential Trinity was to revitalizing
that part of the city. He not only came to the rescue by refinancing
and restructuring the company’s debt, but helped restore the area
around Trinity, clearing out some of the peep shows and helping more
upscale restaurants move into the area.
In a way, the financial turnaround was easier than the artistic one.
I have to admit I was not a huge fan of Trinity in Eustis’s early
days. Productions such as ”A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” were
markedly inferior to those by other regional theaters, such as the
ART. The company seemed tired. New plays such as ”Ambition Facing
West” were OK at best.
Eustis was clearly reaching out to the Providence community, bringing
on local high school marching bands to appear in ”The Music Man” and
members of Rhode Island’s Armenian community to perform folk dances
in the so-so play, ”Nine Armenians,” in 1998. For someone who had
cut his teeth on the New York underground theater scene of the 1960s,
this had to be a big comedown, no?
No, said Eustis in a 1999 interview: ”Theater went through a period
from the late ’60s through the late ’70s where it thought it could
institutionalize a countercultural impulse, and I think that didn’t
work. For the most part, the institutions that are surviving are the
ones that have been able to convince people that what they are doing
is vital to their lives. . . . If they don’t want to come, nothing is
going to stop them. It’s a much tougher world than it was even 15
years ago.”
It seemed as if he were saying to the Providence theater community,
”I’ll give you an audiencefriendly piece like A.R. Gurney’s ‘Sylvia’
if you’ll stretch for Dario Fo’s ‘We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!’ ”
Meanwhile, each season was getting slightly more adventurous than the
previous one; Eustis was enlisting younger recruits to join the
acting company; he forged a relationship with Brown University; the
audience was growing; the deficit was shrinking.
Eustis was getting some of the best playwrights in America to develop
their work at Trinity. One of his mentors, the late Spalding Gray,
workshopped ”It’s a Slippery Slope” at Trinity. Paula Vogel, who
teaches at Brown, premiered ”The Long Christmas Ride Home” there
after productions of some of her other plays. Kushner developed
”Homebody/Kabul” three years ago with Eustis directing. And Eustis
was bringing along new playwrights as well, such as Rinne Groff with
last season’s intriguing ”The Ruby Sunrise.”
These are all productions that fit snugly into the Public’s
aesthetic. Eustis and Wolfe have similar tastes in theater, though
Wolfe is the flashier director. In fact, there was a temporary rift
between Eustis and Kushner when Kushner dropped him in favor of Wolfe
for the Broadway run of ”Angels in America,” which added more bells
and whistles to Eustis’s spartan production.
That rift has been mended and contemporary playwrights will have an
open door, or at least an open mind, at the Public. Whether Eustis
has the ability, or desire for that matter, to maintain a high
commercial profile for the Public is another matter. Papp scored
commercial paydirt with ”A Chorus Line” and Wolfe had ”Bring in ‘Da
Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk” as well as the recent ”Elaine Stritch at
Liberty” one-woman show. The flipside, though, is that Wolfe also
lost tons of money with failed Broadway productions of ”The Wild
Party” and ”On the Town.”
Eustis shares Wolfe’s determination to reach out to more diverse
communities. He is close to Suzan-Lori Parks and will be coproducing
”Topdog/Underdog” at Trinity and the New Repertory Theatre in Newton
this season. ”Topdog” premiered at the Public and went on to win the
Pulitzer Prize.
Where does all this leave Trinity? Associate artistic director Amanda
Dehnert has won raves for her bold reimaginings of everything from
”Annie” to ”Othello.” But she does not necessarily inherit Kushner
or the rest of Eustis’s rather amazing Rolodex. And even if she
matched him as a dramaturge, director, or developer of talent, she
could probably never be his equal as a fund-raiser. In fact, Eustis
probably doesn’t have many equals in that department.
Nevertheless, since Dehnert will be filling in as acting artistic
director, she’ll have some time to impress the powers-that-be in
Providence as they ponder the situation. Should they look for an
artistic director at a similar-sized institution? Look for someone
with a similar sensibility at a smaller theater company? Rick
Lombardo’s arc at the New Rep has been remarkably similar to Eustis’s
at Trinity, though on a smaller scale. Or promote Dehnert from
within?
“I think they’ll look for another strong leader,” says Nicholas
Martin, artistic director at the Huntington Theatre Company.
”History has taught that it’s very rare for theater companies to
promote from within, and because Oskar has led them back, I would
think they would want someone who is charismatic and also a
first-rate director.”
In his cameo in the film version of ”Angels in America,” Eustis can
be seen ushering folks into heaven. Without Eustis Trinity would
probably not have reached the promised land. Now it has to find the
person to keep the company there.