Bart's on the cover of American Theatre

Hey, check it out. My friend Bart Sher, who runs the Intiman Theatre here in Seattle, and recently directed Chekhov's Three Sisters, is featured. Full article is here.

Vintage Bart -- wry, dark, articulate, passionate. What happens when you give a Grateful Dead-head his own theatre company? begins the article.

Probably the greatest theatrical event of my youth was the '84 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles. It was there that I first saw [Georgio] Strehler, [Ariane] Mnouchkine, Pina Bausch, and Tadeusz Kantor.

That's right. You're a Kantor-head.

A Dead-head and a Kantor-head.

Why a Kantor-head? Explain it to someone who isn't.

It was '84 and I was only 25 years old, and it was the first experience that for me was as intense and as interesting as going to a Grateful Dead concert. It marked me hugely. There are only intuitive reasons for why that would be the case. [...]

You have a twin brother -- who's nothing like you.

Nothing like me, no. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska and he works for a hospital and he's, you know, born-again Christian, and we're pretty different.

That's often how it goes with twins.

Yes. We're like the twins in a Bergman film. I'm just not sure who's the good brother and who's the bad brother. [...]

Is there part of directing a play that you dread?

No, not one. I totally dig every single bit of it. I love the exploration with the actors. I love the design. I love, love, love tech. I love probably more than anything the preview process, where you're editing everything you've made. I love hunting for the deeper rhythm of a play, listening to its transcendental possibilities. I can't imagine anywhere that I'm a better human being than when I'm in a rehearsal room. It's just something that's extremely well-suited to my personality. I love collaborating. I love being surprised by things. I love how complicated people are. Probably the thing I love most about the theatre is how incredibly screwed-up everbody is. I'm always nervous when I'm not dealing with a lot of complicated personalities who are, you know, breaking their spirits and souls on a text.

[...]

Theatre is the one living community in America where people who are gay, people who are straight, people who are of all colors, all classes, are in constant communication about what it means to be human beings -- to be Americans. There's no other example I know of in American life where all those things are clashing together and intersecting with the larger public and making such remarkable things.

[...]

This is a very complicated time in which to find howto oppose or show a mirror to the ruling powers. The ideology that defines Bush's community is extremely singular and does not have room to include all of us. So we either fall into the rules that it sets down for us or we're on the outside. What's interesting is that Democrats or liberals or anybody who once felt included in the process is feeling more and more powerless, for a lot of reasons. You get yelled down. You get identified. You get used. If you put your head too far above the parapet, you become something they lift up and use and smear for their own purposes to inflame their own base. They'll mangle whatever it is you're saying and that's not anything any artist with any brains wants to experience. So whereas it would have been clear with something like the Vietnam War or civil rights or women's rights, this is a different kind of enemy because this enemy actually wants you to stand up so they can explode you into the universe and make a fool of you.

And I think we've all gotten hip to that in the world of opposition. We don't trust that we can really be heard any more. So we're not entering into the debate in the same way. Eventually, I believe, the people who run our government will have to take some responsibility for what they are doing, at which point they might actually enter into a real conversation.

I don't want to be in opposition like this. I want the conversation to be, okay that's your position, this is our position. The more we aim as artists to be in a conversation we all share, as opposed to one which is setting up a polarized situation, the better. Then we'll reconnect the links that somehow have been dissolved. The trust that held the republic together has been severely attacked. That's why we're doing The American Cycle [five years of doing one classic play per season by great American playwrights]: to have a conversation that connects, not polarizes.

[...]

My brother and I barely survived the election. I love him to death and he's fantastic and I love his family, but I'm telling you there are times when I could just wring his neck. It's in my most primary relationships, this division in the country, and I have to find out how to make it work.