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Special Section: Artistic Direction
“We had people after that first season
say, ‘this isn’t exactly what we thought
this would be,’ and we spent our first two
or three seasons really finding who our
core audience was going to be.”
Today, they found that audience.
Their often provocative work has
garnered 3,000 subscribers and their
shows average 82% capacity. Most
recently, they were able to complete
work on the building they are
in to include offices and a smaller
cabaret theatre.
“A lot of theatres, when they see
the audience isn’t showing, try to find
the lowest common denominator of
material to bring people in. Does this
mean every one of our shows is dark
and depressing? No.” Also, they appeal
to their community by building their
seasons around material written largely
by southern writers.
“Every city in America deserves great
theatre, and those in regional theatre
shouldn’t pretend they are on Broadway.
This is a theatre that is about community
and region.”
Lane says that to be a successful artistic
director, you have to first be a good
theatre artist. “Whether you’re an actor, a
designer or director, you need to understand
that theatre is not just an art, but
also a business.” Fundraising, budgeting
and making difficult choices, making sure
tickets are sold, are all as much a part of
the job as the ability to pick a play and
put on a show.
Apparently, one of his tasks includes
the proverbial pinching: “No matter what
kind of day I’m having or what problems
have come up, I remind myself that this is
a dream job. I’m very lucky.”
Stages
St. Louis
Michael Hamilton grew up in
Kirkwood, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis.
Coincidently, in the exact reverse of
Lane’s upbringing, his drama teacher in
high school was not interested in musicals.
But Hamilton wouldn’t let that
technicality stand in his way. “I got a
bunch of friends together and talked
the principal into letting us do a spring
musical,” he tells. “It was Celebration!”
Hamilton directed, of course.
He attended Southwest Missouri
State School in Springfield on a
scholarship. There he worked alongside
the likes of John Goodman and
Kathleen Turner. Still, he, too, tried to
talk himself out of pursuing theatre as
a career and dropped out of college
and spent a year at the psychiatric
ward of a hospital. (He demurs to say
if that experience helped prepare him
for dealing with “theatre folk,” but
surely it didn’t hurt…)
He then was off to New York where
his focus shifted. “I got a couple of summer
stock jobs as a choreographer, and
one took me to a theatre in upstate
New York where I met Jack Lane [no
relation to Preston — ed.],” he tells. “Like
many young artists, we would have
post-mortems about shows, discussing
what we would have done differently…
it was arrogance, really! We thought we
could do it better!” he laughs.
Their conversations quickly lead to
the idea of starting their own theatre
because “both of us wanted to control
our careers.” Hamilton would be the
36 May 2008 • www.stage-directions.com