Taking a New Tack
Wallace Chappell arrived as the Loretto-Hilton's new artistic director inn 1980, eager to take risks, willing to experiment. "As artistic director, I want to act as a cultural leader, an experimenter, an innovator, a risk-taker...But excellence is always expensive..."
In what the Post-Dispatch dubbed "a major policy shift," Chappell disbanded the resident acting company, a decision greeted with mixed reactions among theatergoers. While he told the press he intended to form a company of younger actors, Chappell also said he wanted to bring in "well-known stars," a prospect viewed approvingly by some patrons and skeptically by others. Controversy over losing the company was softened by the success of the Shakespeare Faire at Laumeier Park, which was attended by 10,000 before the 1980-81 season officially opened but, unfortunately, also took a big bite out of the theatre's surplus funds.
When the press broke the news that the theatre's name was about to be changed in an attempt to make it more recognizable to people outside St. Louis, many natives who knew what the Loretto-Hilton signified were not pleased.
Wallace Chappell mused, "The Rep...It has a good sound," but instant confusion arose when Globe-Democrat headlines blazed, "It's 'St. Louis Repertory Theatre' Now," because the actual new name was The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. Something wasn't clicking.
The Mainstage season was expanded from five productions to six, while Studio offerings declined from three plays in 1980-81 -- the year The Island was presented there -- to two in 1981-82 to one in 1982-83. The Imaginary Theatre Company toured with The Firebird and Other Stories, The Show-Me Show and Windies and Whoppers, while the volunteers were principally occupied with completing and marketing their exquisite cookbook, Cooking for Applause.
During Wallace Chappell's tenure as artistic director, 18 plays were produced on the Mainstage and six in the Studio, expanding the playwrights previously presented on The Rep's stages to Larry Fineberg, A.E. Hotchner, Dennis de Brito, Ron Mark, Max Morath, Brandon Thomas, Noel Coward and Clyde Talmadge.
Accolades abounded when The Rep was invited to take Athol Fugard's The Island to the Dublin International Theatre Festival the year after its run in the Studio. One for the Road, Sweet Prince, A Tale of Two Cities and Under the Ilex premiered on The Rep Mainstage.
There were two highly controversial productions; the American premiere of Sore Throats in the Studio was praised in The Saturday Review, and Buried Child on the Mainstage excited the most controversy of any play The Rep had ever done.
The Rep was producing play readings at the First Street Forum, and Jan Eliasberg, associate artistic director, organized Studio Theatre Festival '83, Love and Power, a multi-media event concerned with women's issues, which The Rep co-sponsored with several other organizations. A lot was happening.
But Chappell had trouble settling on plays in time to market the season as a package, and he had a penchant for optimistically announcing other plans which failed to materialize. A highly publicized series of three Rep plays to be shown on KMOX-TV turned out to be only one, Harry and Thelma in the Woods; an anticipated second invitation to the Dublin Theatre Festival failed to materialize; and Chappell speculated in the press about directing a play in Japan, which he never did.
Critics loved Tartuffe, which opened the 1982-83 season, but subscribers were not inspired, and although A Tale of Two Cities, with a cast that included all the students in the Conservatory, played to capacity audiences during its run, critics panned it. Even Julie Harris' appearance in Under the Ilex did not rescue the season, and the heady excitement everyone likes to feel at the theatre drifted into a tension inspired more by uncertainty than by anticipation.
In the 25th Anniversary issue of American Theatre magazine, Zelda Fichandler, co-founder and artistic director of Arena stage in Washington, D.C., wrote about the risk of failure, "...the forces at work are so unpredictable and so complex...Every play is a lock and every director has his own or her own key to it...What else makes success so elusive? You have to assemble the right actors, which entails many considerations...you have to find a designer who is compatible with the vision of the play...the art of collaboration in the theatre is subtle, elusive, ultimately mysterious, and cannot be predicted to occur by the clock or the calendar...the question of time...the needs of a season for balance and variety.
"The interests of the actors, the shop schedule, the appropriateness for the Guild opening event or the spring benefit or Christmas or spring school vacations...the collective consciousness of the theatre and what it wants to direct its attention to at a particular time, and, finally, the nature of the audience...It seems to be totally clear that it's the art that makes the money and not the other way around. When the art makes enough money, everything works."
True, perhaps. But enough money is as hard to measure as art is to quantify. During 1982-83, there was money, but not enough to pay the bills. To make matters worse, public funds were diminishing and corporations were only beginning to appreciate their vital role in the community's cultural life and well being.
When Chappell's contract was not renewed, the press printed the explanation that the separation was "due to artistic differences and long-range direction of the theatre..." One writer alluded to a survey conducted by the theatre's board of directors in which the audience called for "contemporary classics" and "polished, finished new works." Despite a variety of programming which might have satisfied those expectations, the drop in ticket sales prompted one writer to say that Wallace Chappell simply didn't quite have the right magic for St. Louis.
Into the breech stepped Steven Woolf, production manager and managing director, who was appointed acting artistic director as well. Wearing three hats, and coping with a 1983-84 season not fully formed when he took charge, Woolf made his first mark by opening the season with a very well-reviewed production of The Glass Menagerie.
He also restored the Studio's three-production season with a powerful trio of Sam Shepard plays. Ticket sales grew. Then, when Chappell's permanent replacement was not hired in time to plan for the 1984-85 season, the board of directors asked Woolf to plan the new season and to remain as acting artistic director while their search continued.
