For Artistic Director Mark Lamos, Connecticutâs Westport Country Playhouse is about âbecoming more cutting edge than perhaps itâs had a reputation of being.â�
â±őłÙâs about forging an identity,â� Lamos says. âOne of the challenges is that it has âWestportâ� in its title and âCountryâ� in its title, and we have a wider audience than just this very small town.â�
Lamos has been Westportâs artistic head since 2009. He was artistic director of Connecticutâs Hartford Stage for 17 years, and a Tony nominee in 1991 for directing Our Countryâs Good. Westport Country Playhouse traces its history to 1931, when Broadway producer Lawrence Langner bought an abandoned 1835 tannery and turned it into a Broadway-tryout theatre. It morphed into a home for summer stock, becoming a not-for-profit professional theatre in 1973. Oscar winner Joanne Woodward was artistic director from 2000 to 2005 (and interim co-artistic director in 2008).
âThe wonderful thing that I inherited was a theatre that Joanne and [her husband] Paul Newman really re-did from the ground up,â� Lamos says. âIt was a theatre that was going to be razed. They saved it with a group of like-minded community members, took it down, and built a brand new theatre.â�
Woodward âwanted to change the profile of the theatre when she took over to be something more like Williamstown [Theatre Festival] in the Berkshires, more serious theatre, more world premieres,â� Lamos says. âThat didnât fly with an audience that had been raised on star vehicles in summer stock.â�
Her vision is what is being carried outâthat Westport Country Playhouse would become a theatre âthat is about entertainmentâ� but also about âgiving voice to new voices, to supporting unusual programming occasionallyââwork âthat feeds your soul in a way that you didnât expect,â� Lamos says.
Thatâs what he means by âcutting edge,â� he says. âWork that surprises you. That you may have thought youâre really not going to appreciate but that absolutely grabs you and you fall in love with. Work that validates you and yet takes you in new directions. If thereâs a portion of the season that has that kind of artistry in it, thatâs where Iâm happy to live.â�
This monthâs play, he says, fits the definition. ±őłÙâs Appropriate, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, about family secrets on an Arkansas plantation. A 2016 recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, Jacobs-Jenkins won a 2014 Obie for best new Off-Broadway play for both Appropriate and An Octoroon.
âI was overwhelmed by the playâs power,â� Lamos says. ±őłÙâs ânot only in the great tradition of American family dramas, it explores new ground within that tradition.â�
This season ends with Lamos directing Romeo and Juliet (October 31âNovember 19). Thereâs ânot a minute in it you can take for granted,â� Lamos says. â±őłÙâs endlessly surprising. ±őłÙâs swift-moving. ±őłÙâs fascinating on so many levels to me. And I hope I can pass that fascination on to an audience.â�
