Globe Could Take Lesson From Seattle Workshop

The Old Globe Theatre came tantalizingly close to presenting two Pulitzer-Prize winners in its upcoming summer season.

Last year’s winner, Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisy,” begins June 29. August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” scheduled for a May 4 opening, was one of three plays jousting for this year’s prize. The winner, Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles,” now on Broadway, nudged out David Henry Hwang’s Tony award-winning “M. Butterfly” as well.

At a time when a nasty flap has arisen over Tony eligibility applying only to Broadway productions (off-Broadway shows such as “The Cocktail Hour,” despite rave reviews, are not eligible), it’s important to note that the Pulitzer considers all American plays.

The big question is not which theater presents the winners--most theaters desire that pleasure--but which houses can be counted on to cultivate and deliver Pulitzer contenders.

The answer, as usual these days, lies not on Broadway but in regional theater. The Yale Repertory Theatre produced Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning “Fences.” The Actors Theatre of Louisville produced Pulitzer victories in Marsha Norman’s “ ‘night, Mother” and Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart.”

San Diego has sent its share of shows to Broadway in the last five years but has yet to produce a single Pulitzer winner. Still, “A Walk in the Woods,” which journeyed from the Yale Rep to the La Jolla Playhouse under the direction of Des McAnuff, the playhouse artistic director, was in the running the year that “Fences” hit the big home run.

The award to “The Heidi Chronicles” heaped well-deserved praise on the Seattle Repertory Theatre, which developed the Wasserstein play in its Other Season, a new play series that dates back a decade to the time that Daniel Sullivan became artistic director.

Seattle’s is a costly program, budgeted this year at $1.6 million. It seeks to develop four workshop productions a year, in addition to main-stage shows. The theater makes no money on the plays, which net four performances apiece to sold-out audiences--of a mere 120 patrons. The program is strictly a long-term investment, but look how it’s paying off.

Bill Irwin’s “Largely/New York,” produced in last year’s series along with “The Heidi Chronicles,” will open May 1 on Broadway. Some of the new scripts pouring into the program--2,000-plus this year--have evolved into main-stage shows: “Eastern Standard,” a critical success that journeyed to Broadway; the Tony-award winning “I’m Not Rappaport,” now a record hit for the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre; Arthur Miller’s short-lived “The American Clock,” and William Mastrosimone’s “Cat’s Paw,” which was sent intact from Seattle to the Globe a few summers back.

San Diego has no comparable program, but it should. The Old Globe does have its Play Discovery program, which involves a one-night staged reading for four shows a year. But the Globe, like other San Diego theaters, can’t seem to find the money, the space or the time to invest in workshops. Instead, the theaters gamble big on full performances of plays that may not yet be ready (such as the critically panned “Up in Saratoga”).

The Pulitzer Prize for “The Heidi Chronicles” is bringing the Seattle Rep widespread attention, which, clearly, it merits. But the media shouldn’t be the only ones studying the Seattle success story. All regional theaters should.

For 10 years, Minerva Marquis has seemed inseparable from her Marquis Public Theatre. She directs the plays, keeps the books, builds the sets and is in the ticket window, selling the tickets--with help from a troupe of volunteers she calls her friends.

But all this industry would have come to naught if there hadn’t been a staunch supporter of many years who made sure the only money she needed to raise from show to show was to pay for royalties and production costs. When Raoul Marquis died of a heart attack March 23, he left the city block he had developed on India Street to his three sons and the theater that bore his name to the mother of his children, his ex-wife of 18 years, Minerva Marquis.

“He was one of the biggest donors to the arts in the city,” said Marquis, who postponed the opening date of her upcoming production, Strindberg’s “A Dream Play,” to April 27 in deference to Raoul’s passing. “He supported the theater by leaving the theater to me in this manner. That was his donation. All the insurance and liability is paid for by the property company that is now owned by my sons.”

The couple had been divorced for eight years when Raoul asked Minerva, a former actress, to take over the administration of the theater he had built. Why did he start the theater just to pass it on?

“He got himself into all sorts of things and stayed as long as they were fascinating, and then moved on,” Marquis said with a laugh. “That was the kind of guy Raoul was. Very colorful.”

The romance may have long been gone, but the friendship kept growing.

“We got along better after we were divorced,” Minerva said. “We were very close friends. We disagreed on the kind of show that the theater could do. He was always very interested in the avant garde and the classics are where my interests are right now. I never did feel any pressure from him. But now I feel an obligation to do the best I can with his memory.”

PROGRAM NOTES: Busy Judy Milstein, founder of Underground at the Lyceum and actress in “Six Women With Brain Death” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, will host “Imaginary Playhouse” on KPBS-Radio on April 16, 7-8 p.m. The live variety show, which features music, storytelling and comedy, will segue into “City Without Love,” a half-hour dramatization of a modern Russian stage play in the genre of “The Wizard of Oz.” Included in the cast is Mark Guin, the understudy who recently filled in for Jon Tenney in the Old Globe’s “Up in Saratoga.”