bobr@zeus.UUCP (Robert Reed) (01/19/85)
The New Rose Theater, a Portland repertory theatrical group, is on the verge of financial ruin. Unless they can raise 25,000 dollars by the end of January, they will have to shut down. Being a frequent theater goer and supporter of the New Rose, (one of the finest companies in town), I urge you to lend your financial support. Go see their current production of Tartuffe, a marvelous restaging of this classic Moliere play, done in a 1930's setting, to see the value of keeping this company together. Contributions can be sent to New Rose Theater, 904 SW Main, Portland OR, and are tax deductible. Better yet, many companies in the area such as Tektronix offer matching programs that will double the value of contributions (with Tektronix, it will do so up to a 200 dollar limit per organization). For Tektronix, you can prepare you donation for mailing to New Rose, and then send it to Irene Perkins, Tektronix Foundation, DS Y3-439. What follows is an article which appeared in the Portland Oregonian in support of the New Rose: REPERTORY THEATER GOOD FOR PORTLAND Toni Dorfman In early December the board of the New Rose Theatre offered me the post of artistic director. The opportunity to help build a professional classical repertory company excited me tremendously. In New York, such companies have not survived. There are no institutions comparable to the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Comedie Francaise. Why not in Portland? I thought. The prospect of working for the New Rose was the magnet that made me willing to leave New York. In early January, in the middle of contract negotiations, I got the word that the New Rose, in dire financial straits, had had to reorganize itself into a cooperative enterprise and was just barely hanging on. With its own survival at stake, it had no way of guaranteeing any salary. Consequently its offer to me had to be withdrawn. I am disappointed personally, but the bigger worry to me in what is happening to the New Rose is the potential loss to Portland of this kind of theater company. The New Rose is the only classical repertory theater in the city. It is a theater company of rare quality, filled with soul, guts and finesse. It is a theater worthy, I would add, of Portland's audiences. Historically, most of the world's greatest plays were written for permanent repertory companies of actors. Shakespeare wrote for his own company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Moliere wrote his plays for and acted in his own troupe, of the Palais-Royal. Goethe, Ibsen, Lope de Vega, Synge, Chekhov, Yeats, O'Neill, Brecht, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, Ingmar Bergman all were or are men of the theater connected to specific repertory companies not only as playwrights but often also as producers, stage managers, directors and actors. In addition to inspiring dramatists, the repertory-company form fosters the art of the actor: ensemble playing, the continual refinement of one's work before an audience, being stretched by the demands of great plays are among the benefits. The benefits to an audience are incalculable. Plays do exist in blueprint form as scripts. But they are written to be performed, as music is. Great plays are complex visions, eternally present in the living instant. Audiences need the accessiblility of great plays as they do of great music. Last summer I received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study Shakespeare at Reed College. Twice a week in Reed Commons I attended performances by Chamber Music Northwest. The music was exquisite. The musicians were superb. But it was the audience that most impressed me. Independent, discerning, responsive, the people around me palpably loved the music. Not there to be seen, not there to please a spouse (no one dozed off at those performances, not even those deliciously supine on the floor pillows), the people were there to listen to the music. The audience, I realized, was an ideal theater audience. It was not the hall that made these concerts a great experience. It was the music, and the people listening to it. So it is in theater. Theater is an intimate affair. Certainly it is important to have playhouses. The Portland Center for the Performing Arts will be beautifully equipped. But what are its theater spaces for? Rental halls for second-string road companies of Broadway musicals? Touring rock performers? Itinerant evangelists? Certainly, these are the theatrical fare of many American cities. But is second-hand, second-rate theater the kind that Portland deserves? Portland is a city with great musical ensembles and nationally respected institutions of higher learning. It is a city filled with people of integrity and generosity of spirit. You are building a theater center. But you must also nurture the theater that gives it life. An endowment of 3 million dollars, for instance, much less than the cost of the building, would permanently support a professional acting company of the highest quality. Will Portland support its own indigenous theater, companies such as the New Rose, who with passion and skill bring great drama to life? The New Rose deserves that support. Even more to the point, so does Portland. -- Robert Reed, Logic Design Systems Division, tektronix!teklds!bobr