Celadine, presented by The Colony Theatre Company, continues Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 & 7 pm; additional performances on Sat., Feb. 13 & 20 at 3 pm; Thurs., Feb. 25 and March 4, 7 pm; ends March 7. $37-$42. Colony Theatre, 555 N. Third St., Burbank; 818.558.7000, ext. 15 or colonytheatre.org.

Andrew Barnicle

LA Stage Blog wished to talk with Andrew Barnicle who returns to The Colony Theatre to direct the West Coast premiere of Celadine by Charles Evered. Rick Bernstein, the Marketing Manager at the Colony, suggested some questions to ask Barnicle. The result? Bernstein finds Barnicle’s insight goes far beyond what we see on the stage. As long-standing Artistic Director of Laguna Playhouse, he has witnessed significant changes in the theatrical landscape over the years. He accepts the challenge of navigating through this uncertain territory – but please don’t poke him too hard.

Q: You’ve been the Artistic Director of the Laguna Playhouse for nearly 20 years. Is your role the same today as it was when you started?

A: Fundamentally, yes – on the surface, no. Is a car from 1951 the same as cars today? A new car still has four wheels and an engine but in many other ways it’s very different.

Q: How have things changed?

A: I spend much more time on the administrative end of things now. When I first started, we pretty much went to the Sam French catalog to put a season together. My time was spent creating production staffs, designs, casting and rehearsal schedules. But as we’ve grown, we’ve focused on securing the rights to work that’s newer and fresher. That means focusing more on remounts of previously extant productions or in creating co-productions. That’s the biggest paradigm shift. These days, we’re trying to be more collaborative. And fundraising and PR tasks have increased.

Q: What co-productions did you have this season?

A: We co-produced Moonlight and Magnolias with McCoy Rigby Entertainment and La Mirada. It makes things more economical and, at the same time, everything is decided by consensus from both companies. That’s the way things are happening these days and that’s a change. Last season we co-produced Around the World in 80 Days with San Jose Rep. We also produced Winter Wonderettes this past November – that’s a new show that had artists already attached to it, so we contracted them.

Q: So your time is spent much differently than it used to be.

A: In the old days, I used to sit and read plays and dream about casting. These days I sit and read long contracts and talk to lawyers and agents. Also, I used to direct more than I do now as more of the shows come to us with directors attached.

Q: Does this give you more time to direct elsewhere? You’re now directing Celadine at The Colony Theatre.

A: This is only the fifth show I’ve directed elsewhere in my 20 years in Laguna. I get occasional offers but the schedule seldom works in my favor. It’s my third time directing at The Colony. Whenever Barbara Beckley asks me about coming aboard, I’m happy to jump and see if I can do it. I love working at The Colony – I love the sense of “all for one and one for all.”

Giselle Wolf, Michael A. Newcomer and Larry Cedar in Celadine

Q: What attracted you to Celadine?

A: It’s a challenging blend of farce, melodrama and romance. It’s a new play but also a period piece – sort of a newly minted version of a traditional Restoration comedy in style and structure.

Q: What’s been the biggest challenge of directing Celadine?

A: The very same thing – the tonal shifts, finding the proper balance and cohesion. It segues quickly from something tragic to, say, something farcical – and then suddenly there’s a swordfight. Trying to wrangle all of these things is like trying to get all of the kittens to stay in the basket for photos.

Q: And how’s it going so far?

A: It’s terrific, especially working with this design team and these lovely actors. The designers have all really impressed me – Stephen Gifford’s set is amazing, and Luke Moyer’s lighting is beautiful. Jeff Schoenberg has created costumes that aesthetically overachieve, when one considers the limits of the budget. Cricket Myers has designed sound at my theatre many times but I’ve never worked with her directly; everyone knows how great she is. The actors are working really hard; they’re very talented and dedicated.

Q: That’s great to hear – but don’t all directors say that about their casts?

A:  In this show, there are no bonehead actors. There’s usually at least one. This is a bonehead-free production. (laughs)

Q: How do you prepare to direct a play?

A: Early in my career, I followed those textbook script analysis charts. I would break down scripts to a ridiculous degree. I often came in too prepared and was often disappointed the flesh and blood actors couldn’t do what I could get my toy soldiers to do on my dining room table.

Q: So you changed your approach?

A: What I do now is work in pre-production to find the play’s abstract essence. I try to reduce it to 10 words or less – that becomes the backbone of the play – and build on that with the help of the actors and designers. If I need to make a shift, it’s not on a whim; it’s based on what I’ve already pinpointed as the backbone. That backbone might get adjusted if people have better ideas than mine. I take more from the actors than I once did, although some probably wouldn’t agree.

Larry Cedar and Giselle Wolf

Q: As a director, you’re trying to fulfill your own vision but as an artistic director, you also know the importance of staying on budget. Do these things ever create a conflict?

A: Sure. The financial ceiling pressures the artistic ceiling all the time. At Laguna, I’ve had directors and designers push for additional resources we don’t have – it would mean taking money or time from elsewhere in the season. Good directors never want to make compromises in the work they do but they have mostly grown to understand the financial limitations we’re all facing. When I’m a guest director, I try to respect what artistic directors have to deal with. For Celadine, I told Barbara the only thing I was really worried about was the costumes. They had to be good because of the period of the play and the resulting expectations. And the set for this particular production didn’t need to look beautiful but I’m glad to say it does.

Q: What do you enjoy most about your job as Artistic Director?

A: I enjoy it most when we have a palpable success with one of our home-grown products; when we create something from scratch that’s received well. Directing Moonlight and Magnolias, watching the production come out of the fog of rehearsal was very satisfying. Along with the McCoy-Rigby folk, we created it from scratch. It is a more personal reward than bringing in someone else’s already realized production. This is mostly a private source of pride as audiences don’t much know or care where the production came from as long as the show is good.

Q: What’s your biggest challenge?

A:  It’s the age-old struggle: balancing aesthetic desires with economic concerns – art vs. commerce. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don’t, and it’s unpredictable in every way. Having both is a rarity but not impossible and that’s what you strive for. There are lots of challenges to face trying to please the different entities.

Q: What entities?

A: First of all, there’s the subscription base. Generally, you can sense what they’ll respond to positively. Then there are the anonymous single ticket buyers, potential theatergoers who are not subscribers. You hope you find something they’ll like, too. There are critics, who you’d prefer to not bore or displease. Then there is the board of directors who, often for different reasons, are concerned with your choices. Oh, yeah, there are also the unions to keep happy and the local restaurants which get cranky if you don’t make hits. And nothing cuts to the quick deeper than when one my former university students calls and says, “You’re doing that?” And finally, there’s your own sense of aesthetic purpose, which you want to at least pretend to try to pursue.

Q: That’s a lot of people to think about.

A: It’s a little like living inside of a pin cushion – the moment you move away from a sharp object you get poked from the other direction. If I put up a slender, lightweight entertainment and it makes a million dollars, a lot of the snobbier critics will call us irrelevant. If there’s an artistically highly regarded production that sells 14 tickets, my board will raise a collective eyebrow. You can hear it. They are, after all, the fiduciaries of the organization.

Q: Has it always been this way?

A:  In the past, the crowd-pleasers subsidized the more esoteric works. The large subscription base made this possible. One of the biggest changes I’ve seen over the years is the decline of the enlightened subscribers who recognized the season would be eclectic and there might be some challenging material or plays they might not have attended on their own. They were adventurous, though, and willing to try something a little unusual. Those people have slowly peeled away, becoming single ticket buyers when they sense they will enjoy something.  As a result a lot of theatres are left with a fewer number of like-minded subscribers who get irritated if they get something a little too challenging. Naturally the programming tends to lean in their direction.

Q: What happened to those adventurous subscribers?

A: I don’t know. The number of theatre subscribers is in decline across the country – audiences have gotten older and we’re hitting that wall everyone’s been warning us about for the past 20 years – the wall of the graying audiences. We haven’t yet been able to cultivate a concomitant younger audience. People cite a number of reasons for this – economics, a reduction in attention spans, lack of arts education, lifestyle changes, competition from other sources of entertainment, etc. I’d add, probably an inherent rejection of plays designed to please older people.

Q: Can you produce shows that are more geared for a younger audience?

A: Yes, but there are drawbacks with going after the younger audiences if you only have one performance space and season. If your subscribers are getting older and, in many cases, less adventurous, then by going after the young audience, you risk alienating the very people who still subsidize you while you spend your marketing money chasing people who haven’t shown a propensity for attending. With a tanked economy, the situation becomes even more pronounced.

Q: South Coast Repertory recently announced David Emmes and Martin Benson, their founders and artistic directors for 46 years, will be stepping down.

A: I wasn’t surprised to hear that. Discussions about how they should make such a transition actually began years ago, and similar discussions are going on in lots of LORT theatres as more founders or second generation leaders pass the torch. David and Martin have always done everything in a first-class manner. I think they are handling this phase of their careers in the same way. I don’t think it could be done any more gracefully.

Q: What effect do you think this will have on Southern California theatre?

A: I don’t know how it will affect theatre in Southern California but I’m sure SCR will continue to thrive. David and Martin will still have a presence there which will help ease the transition.  SCR is a strong and very well-run organization.

Q: So what advice do you have for those interested in becoming artistic directors of their own theatres?

A: Law school. (laughing)

Q: Oh yeah?

A: They should stay reasonably small and manageable. Don Shirley explained it well recently on the LA Stage blog: large and mid-size theatres are doing smaller shows purely for financial reasons, even though these shows are better suited for smaller theatres. And smaller theatres are doing bigger shows that are cramped into their small spaces. What’s wrong with this picture?

Q: How do you think this can be addressed?

A: At its core, the traditional midsize and large non-profit theatre business model is strained. It assumes an equal amount of contributed (donated) and earned (ticket sales) revenue. The cost of materials, actors, directors and technologies continues to rise but the number of seats in the theatre remains the same. You can only schedule a certain number of performances of each play in a subscription season. With individual donations and government and corporate support weakened, the only way to compensate is to radically raise ticket prices which only makes theatre less accessible.

Q: So it’s all based on economics.

A: It’s a dangerous trap. When the budget of a theatre starts to grow, debt avoidance and overhead become the major concerns. The artistic and creative side can become sublimated to that. Programming may become compromised aesthetically if the box office is expected to pull everybody through. The upside is you’re still paying people a living wage to work in the theatre – no small accomplishment, and to a degree you can fall back on that as a source of pride, even if you’re not completely fulfilling your personal aesthetic ambitions.

Q: So what should these young artistic directors do?

A: If they stay small, or least carefully manage their growth – and many of them claim money isn’t important to them anyway – they’ll be able to do the kind of art they want to do. Managing the growth means growing the fundraising machine at the same rate as the audience and artistic achievements, and avoiding the trappings of material growth like capital loans and high rents.  Travel light.

Q: Do you ever wonder about the decisions artistic directors make at other theatres?

A: I learned long ago never to criticize other artistic directors. They’re getting poked as often as I am, if not more, and unless I’m in their shoes, I don’t know what they’re going through or what pressures they have on them when they choose or produce plays. It’s always the kid on the ground telling the kid in the tree to climb higher. The miracles are the theatres that can stay solvent and maintain their artistic integrity – and I applaud them.

Feature image of Giselle Wolf, Will Barker, and Holly Hawkins by Michael Lamont