Sundance jives to scribe vibe
Writer-friendly theater lab builds strong track record
July marks the 25th edition of the Sundance Theater Laboratory, a three-week play development program that has nurtured idiosyncratic and critically successful works, including "Spring Awakening," "The Light in the Piazza," "Grey Gardens," "Well" and "I Am My Own Wife."
Known until 1997 as the Playwrights Lab, the Sundance stage offshoot's success rate is impressive -- since 1996, more than 60 of its projects, or about 80%, have gone on to full productions.
The Lab's opportunity for full immersion in a project is why better than 600 playwrights (often with directors attached) apply annually for the eight available slots.
Works being developed in July include Josh Kornbluth's improvisational solo piece "Citizen Josh"; Stephen Belber's story of an American reservist back from Iraq investigating his father's death, "Geometry of Fire"; Marcus Gardley's Civil War-set "And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi"; and "Kind Hearts and Coronets," a musical by Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak, adapted from the 1949 Ealing black comedy starring Alec Guinness.
This year's playwright-in-residence, Tanya Barfield will work on "Equal Measure," which parallels storylines on President Woodrow Wilson and Jade Kingston, an African-American civil servant working in the White House.
Perhaps equally important to the goal of a commercial production is the Lab's dedication to the artistic process, which inspires participants to head to the Utah mountains as if on a religious pilgrimage.
When this year's creatives -- including playwrights Belber and David Grimm, directors Rebecca Taichman and Lucie Tiberghien and actors Anthony Rapp, Will Chase, Reg E. Cathey, Judy Kuhn and Raul Esparza -- arrive for the July 10-30 session at the Sundance Resort, they will enter a cloistered world of rehearsals in which talk of production is dissuaded.
Unlike most development programs, the Lab doesn't conclude with public readings. Instead, works may be witnessed only by participating artists.
Lab artistic director Philip Himberg says that guarding the shows from public view is crucial.
"For artists to do their best work, they need an incubation time when they're not pressured by the notion of audiences, critics and producers breathing down their necks. If the end goal is a public performance, the nature of the work suddenly changes," he explains.
Having developed Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's tuner "Spring Awakening" at the Lab in 2000 before mounting its current Off Broadway run at the Atlantic, director Michael Mayer feels the members-only approach encourages risk-taking.
"I can't guarantee that the work gets better," he says. "But I can guarantee that the way you work on it is changed. There's something profoundly moving about a big group of artists telling their stories with each other and for each other."
Echoing Mayer, Grimm -- who attends this year with comedy "Steve and Idi" and developed "Measure for Pleasure" last summer before it bowed at the Public -- lauds the Lab's unique focus on community. Projects are run on an open-rehearsal policy that encourages fellow labbers to drop by. And since they also share meals and free time, participants are bound to start exchanging ideas.
"You learn from each other in a way that is noncompetitive and very enriching," Grimm notes. "It's so isolated (at the Institute) that the world of a project becomes the world you're ensconced in."
Artists at all stages of their careers have participated, with up-and-comers often working down the hall from the likes of "Piazza" composer Adam Guettel or "I Am My Own Wife" director Moises Kaufman.
Himberg says established talent is included by careful design.
"That grew out of an understanding that even very experienced playwrights need a place to develop their work," he explains. "Including (prominent artists) was not just something we did because we thought we should, but because they told us they needed it."
Tim Sanford -- artistic director of Playwrights Horizons, which has produced five Sundance grads, including next season's "Blue Door" by Barfield -- agrees that all theater artists need time to develop projects. However, he says, it's rare for them to get what they need in the rush of day-to-day city life.
"Generally, our development (in New York) tends to be more limited. It's difficult in this environment to get an actor's attention for a full week," Sanford quips.
Despite the high demand for Lab slots, one of this year's writers dropped out to accept a high-paying television gig. That exit points to Himberg's greatest concern for the future: keeping theatermakers in the theater.
"You wonder sometimes if people are still writing for the theater like they used to," he observes. "How can we keep these people writing for the stage?"
To that end, Sundance is focusing on additional means of support.
For starters, it introduced two smaller labs. Added in 2000, a writer's colony in Ucross, Wyo., has hosted early drafts of shows like "Piazza," while a lab in White Oak, Fla., was created in 2003 to host more experimental work like tuner "Grey Gardens," about eccentric mother-daughter pair Edith and Little Edie Bouvier Beale.The latter show has springboarded from a sell-out run at Playwrights to a Broadway transfer in the fall.
Himberg even admits to mulling the concept of production.
It may be time, he says, to start nurturing plays between their development in Utah and their appearance before an audience. "A lot of projects that leave Sundance get produced too early," he ventures. "They get received poorly and then close. We're talking a lot about a 'second stage' program to help give further polish to work before production."
Even if a second-tier project is introduced, however, it will still be privacy-as-usual for the playwrights in the mountains.
