While I believe there is tremendous value in revisiting a classic and witnessing its many interpretations, ultimately I find that these plays are distinctly of another time and place. Playwrights are the chroniclers of our time. Even when they write about the past, they do so from the vantage point of their particular moment in history. To me, the theatre is a mirror which we hold up to ourselves in order to have a good laugh at our foibles, examine our frailties, challenge our beliefs, deepen our understanding of each other, or all of the above. Bringing a new play by a living playwright to the stage is the most exciting and rewarding way to fulfill the purpose of the theatre.
New plays offer the promise of new ideas, new stories and new characters.
Or our upcoming production of Man Measures Man, in which two Jewish American doctors join the relief effort in Kosovo only to find their moral centers turned inside-out. These are stories that could not have been written at the time of O'Neill, Chekhov or Shakespeare. Well, we talk to literary agents, literary managers at other theatres, and playwrights with whom we have existing relationships. We get hundreds of inquiries and dozens of scripts sent to us each year. Very few of those end up on the mainstage.