Way Off Broadway: New Rainier

More and more people are arguing that if classical theater is to be presented with any frequency in the U.S., it must be done at some remove from commercial Broadway. More and more people are doing something about it. From Minneapolis to Washington, San Francisco and Oklahoma City, the list of regional rep companies continues to grow. And in the city that Sir Thomas Beecham once called an “esthetic dustbin,” the Seattle Repertory Theater has just begun its debut season.

Permanent Resident. Directed by Stuart Vaughan, 38, who ran Manhattan’s old Phoenix rep company for five seasons and earlier spent four as artistic director of Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival, the Seattle company opened with a stern and deliberate production of Lear, followed a night later by a bizarre and romping turn with Max Frisch’s The Firebugs. The standard of selection, according to Vaughan, is “classics and could-be classics.” The remainder of the season will see productions of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not for Burning, and Robert Ardrey’s Shadow of Heroes. The theater is housed in the white brick and thermopane 800-seat Seattle Center Playhouse built for last year’s World’s Fair. And people can still whisk out there from downtown, if they like, by monorail.

More than 500 actors tried to get into the group. Vaughan picked 15, including his wife, Helen Quarrier; none are of star rank but all are experienced. “Most of us are making sacrifices to come here,” he says. “Our salaries are certainly not high. But I think we all felt the same motivation to try something better.” He hopes to stay in Seattle the rest of his life.

Promising Dust. If the new eastern Lincoln Center rep group under Elia Kazan becomes a living monument to The Method, it will at least have a counterbalance on the Pacific Coast. Stuart Vaughan has no fondness for The Method. “It seems to me that nothing exists for the audience if it is not heard or seen,” he says. “Far from living the part, the actor’s function is to tell the audience about an imaginary person who looks and talks and feels like this. I hope the main difference an audience will see in our plays is that they seem more real than others.”

The advance subscription sale exceeds $150,000. Seattle businessmen are standing behind the rep company because, profitable or not, they think it will be good for Seattle: “It can become another asset,” they say almost in chorus, “like Mount Rainier.”