The American Repertory Theatre Presents a New Season

By Susan Peterson

Gazette Staff

For a new holiday experience filled with drama and joy for the entire family, the American Repertory Theatre (ART) is presenting Carlo Gozzi's The King Stag on the Loeb Main Stage, in repertory through Jan. 19.

"It's our Nutcracker," joked Rob Orchard, managing director of the ART.

The King Stag will be joined by Six Characters in Search of an Author for the holiday season, after a successful joint tour to Taipei last year. Both productions are in repertory with Ibsen's The Wild Duck.

Celebrating its 18th year in Cambridge, the ART launched its current season with eight plays -- three of which are world premieres.

Orchard explained that the ART's new season is a combination of classics, new works, and new theatrical approaches that are appealing to a broad audience.

"The important thing is that artistic enthusiasm rather than financial expediency drives the season," Orchard said. "Audiences here are so engaged and responsive. Our work may be controversial at times, but that's what live theater should be -- it should stimulate discussion."

The season began in October with a vaudeville musical romp called Punch and Judy Get Divorced at the C. Walsh Theatre on Beacon Hill. The Loeb season began with Ibsen's The Wild Duck, often considered to be his greatest work. It is both a tragedy and comedy, exploring the destruction of a family's peaceful existence.

For a theater experience that combines humor with "a heartbreaking romance gone awry," Georg Buchner's play, Woyzeck (Jan. 31 to Mar. 16) is based on the true story of a Leipzig barber who murders his mistress in a jealous rage.

The world premiere, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Feb. 21 to Mar. 22), is a three-dimensional theater adventure using a computer-generated soundscape with film and slides. The multimedia production blends a variety of styles for a very different theatrical collaboration.

David Mamet's The Old Neighborhood premieres in the ART's annual New Stages series at the Hasty Pudding Theater in April. The play explores family relationships of husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, and best friends in "a quilt of remembered experience," according to the ART. It will be presented with the world-premiere production of Sam Shepard's When the World Was Green.

The season concludes with George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, in a "hilarious cocktail of Victorian farce," (May 9 to June 8). Said to be one of Shaw's finest and wittiest comedies, the play is "the tragi-comic love chase of the man by the woman."

The ART is committed to producing a blend of new works and the classics that aren't being done anywhere else, says Orchard, who has been with the company since 1969. The ART first came to Cambridge and began its Harvard affiliation in 1979, under the auspices of ART Artistic Director Robert Brustein.

"Most regional theaters today are doing last year's New York or London hits," said Orchard.

Brustein, who teaches dramatic literature at Harvard, explained that the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded the ART a larger grant than any other theater in the country.

"By association with Harvard, the ART has a mission to teach both undergraduate and graduate level students through the ART Institute for Advanced Theatre Training," Brustein said.

In keeping with its teaching focus, the ART provides an information phone line that audiences can call to find out the synopsis of a play's plot, or to hear from the director about his or her concept, and a response line where the artists respond to frequently asked questions about the plays.

"For example," said Orchard, "someone may wish to know about the symbol of the wild duck in Ibsen's play. It's mentioned 64 times. On the telephone line, actor Jerome Kilty provides an answer."

"I believe strongly that seeing the play is only part of the experience," Orchard said. "We try to engage audiences well in advance -- to provide an interactive arc of experience that starts before attending a work and lasts well after the final curtain."