ARTicles vol. 1 i.1: Welcome to the 2002-2003 Season

How to begin? It’s the hardest question a director has to answer when creating a new production. Now I was faced with an empty canvas on a different scale – my first season as Artistic Director at A.R.T. I knew that I wanted the building filled with artists whose work was provocative and personal. I also wanted to have friends around. I turned to six artists whose work I find breathtaking, and I asked them what they would like to make. The season began to take shape. It is now my great pleasure to introduce these extraordinary artists to you.

I first encountered János Szász, the director of Uncle Vanya, with many of you, when I saw his Mother Courage at A.R.T. two seasons ago. My connection with him grew when he took on the role of Director of the A.R.T. Institute, and I was struck by the generosity of his spirit as he directed the students in a beautiful production of Georg Büchner’s Spring Awakening last fall.

I met Peter Sellars in 1984 on the stage of the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, when he reopened that theatre with his spectacular staging of Brecht’s Visions of Simone Marchand. I can still see the wonderful Priscilla Smith as Simone, defying gravity as she climbed the walls of the Playhouse. I eagerly followed Peter’s work through his trio of Mozart operas and his extraordinary production of Khlebnikov’s Zangezzi at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. One of the greatest pleasures of the past year has been getting to know Peter personally, and becoming infected by the great passion and lyricism with which he discusses The Children of Herakles.

Anne Bogart (La Dispute) and I first met when we were both up for a job that she got and I didn’t – a Gertrude Stein chamber opera in Manhattan. I have been a rapt audience for her work with the SITI company for the last decade, and have partnered with her for the past five years teaching directing at Columbia University. She, like Peter, is one of the most eloquent theatre practitioners I know. Her love of this craft, her colleagues, and her audiences are a deep part of the fabric of what she creates.

Rinde Eckert (Highway Ulysses) and I have collaborated several times over the past ten years, on his own solo work (The Gardening of Thomas D. and Idiot Variations) and on a larger project, Pioneer, which started in 1993 at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston and then toured the country. Rinde’s work comes from a deep storehouse of classical inquiry which he weds to a musical soul. Being a part of his investigations and sharing the workings of his brain has long been one of the rewards of my career.

I first encountered the work of Andrei Serban (Pericles) in the mid seventies at La MaMa, New York, where he staged his legendary Fragments of a Greek Trilogy, a project that tours the world to this day. I remember being so jealous of his imagination that I hated the production – for three days – until I had to conclude it was genius. Andrei and I first met when he was directing The Cherry Orchard at Lincoln Center for Joseph Papp. But although we have known each other for a quarter century, and worked as colleagues at Columbia for five years, I had my first real conversation with Andrei when I asked him to work at A.R.T. this season. We’ve discovered our friendship in this process.

Twenty-five years ago I sat through the seven hours of Einstein on The Beach with the whole of New York, all of whom were dressed in black. It was an amazing introduction to the work of Philip Glass. In 1986 I staged a piece of Philip’s for the New Music Americas festival in Los Angeles, and a dialogue began that continued at various holidays and in Nova Scotia, where Philip composes and spends his summers. He told me last year of a project, The Sound of a Voice, that he and David Henry Hwang have wanted to make for a decade. I first met David in the 1980 Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival in Marin County, California, when he and a handful of other playwrights took part in a workshop led by Sam Shepard. David dedicated some of his later work to Sam after that experience.

To all of these wonderful artists and all their collaborators, my thanks for joining us this season. It is with a great pride that Rob, Gideon and I bring you their work in our first year together.

Bob Brustein, Rob Orchard, and their associates have built an independent and artistically daring institution in The American Repertory Theater. As we begin our new journey I am thrilled at the possibilities of this year and beyond.

Robert Woodruff

Artistic Director