Kate Whoriskey on Ruined, the Intiman, and the Offing

Kate Whoriskey

Kate Whoriskey is younger than me, and that--if you're lucky--is all I'm going to say about that. The new artistic director of the Intiman Theatre, new Seattle resident, and new-ish mom (21 months) met me in her office for a "getting to know you" chat, which is the kind of thing she's doing besides starting up rehearsals for Lynn Nottage's Ruined (runs July 9-August 8) and discovering what the view is like from the captain's chair that Bart Sher recently vacated.

She's brainy (NYU, Harvard), brown-haired, Massachusetts-Irish, and prone to gales of laughter and sotto voce confidences, which is a little perplexing in the middle of an interview. She has a lot of goals. You may know her husband Daniel Breaker from either Broadway (Shrek's Donkey) or Spike Lee's film of Passing Strange. Her first Intiman staging was Ionesco's The Chairs (2000), then Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea and Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange.

She wanted to "do the Seattle thing" and go out for a latté, but I demurred, as there's little novelty left for me in trying to transcribe what someone said while a steam wand was blasting milk in the background. (Yes, she's new to town, and I should have followed her suggestion. Rude. Also, I would have enjoyed a cookie. Foolish.)

Anyway: INT. OFFICE.

The very next thing I noticed was choreographer Olivier Wevers' card on her table, which turned out to foreshadow the rest of our conversation--largely about the sense of tantalizing connections and collaborations that Whoriskey's arrival in town has set in motion, like a seed crystal dropped into solution. 

From left: Managing Director Brian Colburn, Artistic Director Bart Sher, Kate Whoriskey and Board President Kim A. Anderson. Photo: Team Photogenic.

"Where Bart and I meet are the classics--I want to continue doing classics and contemporary work," Whoriskey told me, in response to my "Whither Intiman" opening gambit. "I'd love to continue the American Cycle...and then in terms of things that might feel a little differently [...] I would love to work on an International Cycle, which would go along with the American Cycle."

Intiman's Ruined (which will go to co-producer the Geffen Playhouse this fall, then travel on to South Africa, to the Market Theatre) marks the official launch of the International Cycle, which Whoriskey hopes will add substantial diversity to the theatrical voices you can hear in Seattle theatre. It also continues her string of plays (Intimate Apparel, Fabulation) by Terry Teachout-fave Lynn Nottage. (Julia Cho is another young American dramatist who figures large in Whoriskey's directorial history, so be ready to hear more about her.)

"I'll probably direct a show a year is my feeling," Whoriskey said; this time it's Ruined, which she helped develop. The production here reunites original cast members--Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Salima), Cherise Boothe (Josephine), Russell G. Jones (Christian) and Condola Rashad (Sophie)--and the design team from the world premiere. As a lead-off production, it's a considerable statement: The play has won a shelf of awards: Pulitzer, Obie, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Drama Desk, et al. (Whoriskey likes statements.)

Set in a small mining town's whorehouse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the play invites, in the person of Portia's Mama Nadi, all us comfortable playgoers to take no notice of the civil war and enjoy the girls, though that blissful ignorance proves impossible to maintain as the play goes on. "Never less than compelling," was the New York Times verdict on Nottage's take on Brecht's Mother Courage. You also learn a lot about Congolese mineral extraction, I'm told.

Intiman's last show, The Thin Place, was notable for what happened when the curtain came down; people regularly stayed for over an hour to talk about religion and religious experiences, which topics, I informed Whoriskey, are very edgy for Seattle.

"We're trying to do every show--uhh...ooh, I feel a little nervous speaking about it, because they're nascent ideas, we're developing the ideas--but the idea is that there'll be a pre-event and post-event, with the event being the play," Whoriskey said.

"So for example: Ruined, we're doing a lot of community work to get the Congolese population--and other communities that are in Seattle--in to see the play, and then we're doing events around it. There's a run to raise money for Congolese women that Lisa Shannon is leading, there are talkbacks with Seattle Against Slavery, that if you're interested in becoming more involved, you can."

CLOSE-UP on coffee mug. INTERVIEWER SIPS and PLOTS.

Before I shifted into full Mike Wallace-mode, I asked Whoriskey to tell me a little more about what she was interested in doing differently, now that she's got a bully pulpit, and she said:

I'm really interested in promotin-n-ng...(pause)...(more pause)...ar-r-tists--so this season we have Lear deBessonet [for The Scarlet Letter] and Andrew Russell [for The Thin Place], who are young theatre directors--giving people who I think are really talented their first chance (no pause) I was one who was really lucky when I was...youn-n-ng (she laughs) and people gave me a chance. The economy is so...turbulent that people are afraid of taking any risks, and I feel like honestly if you get a young director, they will work so hard for you.

My aside to the reader: I spent extra time on getting the cadences down, which I hope you appreciate. It would become a little mannered, the whole way through, but I thought for this little bit it might help illuminate the fact that Whoriskey was thinking aloud. Refreshing.

At this point, I should mention that my Mike Wallace-mode is to bring up a point of contention, be brought to a halt by the awkwardness of it, and then look beseechingly at the interview subject, in the hope that they'll resolve things. Once again, the strategy paid off in spades. In this case, I mentioned to Whoriskey that her selection had aroused some spirited debate about hiring local, and whether this out-of-towner wouldn't just bring in a raft of out-of-town friends, when the goal was to become a world-class theatre town on our own.

"On the pure numbers side," Whoriskey began, "all theaters should hire local people. [...] Ruined is coming in from New York because it was made there, but Paradise Lost was largely local, Sonya [Schneider, of The Thin Place] is a local playwright, Scarlet Letter has local people--I think we'll be fine, I think we'll take care of the question." She added: "I think what surprised me was the level of anticipation of what my voice would be." 

Whoriskey's aside: "People in New York love Seattle. [She listed Shrek, The Musical, Light in the Piazza; Next to Normal] I would love the Intiman to be the theatre where projects get developed."

That's Seattle for you. People care about theatre, and they care a good deal about their theatre. They are possessive.

Still, when Whoriskey says of theatre today that "there's something wrong with the actor/audience exchange, or the piece-of-theatre/audience exchange now," she has plenty of company in the project of revitalizing, reengaging. Just first, there's the process of winning people over.

Intiman donors, in particular, might like this next part:

"I know people always talk about, Oh, we don't have enough money--I don't think it's that. I think theatre has lost its way a little," she continued. "Like you look at Joe Papp--I was at the Public Theatre and I saw a picture from the McCarthy trials, and I thought, God, that's amazing. These theatre artists were brought to D.C. to try to defend themselves. They were actually that political, they were seen as subversive. What happened that 50 years later we really don't have that place in the community?"

After our little Wobbly congress, I asked Whoriskey what she thought of the Intiman itself.

"I love the space," she replied. "John Conklin--do you know him, the set designer?--he did The Lady from the Sea with me, and he had a great reaction to the space. He came in and sat down--you know, he's such a teacher--and said, 'This is a good space.' And I said, "Yeah, no, it's a good space,' and he said, 'No, actually, it's a really beautiful space. It has an incredible audience/actor relationship, it has a proscenium but it has a thrust, so it feels intimate.'

And I think he's right, there's something magical about the space itself. Someone said to me, when I was considering taking the position, 'Do you like the space? Because at the end of the day, if you don't like the space, you shouldn't take the job.'"

I don't really have a good segué here, but hang on, we're almost done.

Two things that Whoriskey said have stuck with me (I'm just saying that in closing, obviously it's not just two things): "There's always an intent behind the production," she said, after I egged her on about making theatre matter. She was talking about how theatre gets made, and to give an example of the latitudes between entertainment, art, and, say, instruction, mentioned that sometimes theatre is purposefully brought into being as a response, a cure, for social imbalance, and incorporates its society, lets people assume both their roles and the roles of others. Since social ills remain with us, this raises the question, Is theatre asking too little from the audience? Is it eliciting sympathy instead of empathy?

The other she said she got from Jean-Luc Choplin, director of the Châtelet in Paris, where she was recently staging the Villa-Lobos opera Magdalena ("une belle réussite"!): Choplin told her that the form of the event can come to constrain how the audience experiences it, whether it's a play, opera, or ballet. Whoriskey's response, I think, is evident in her interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. Whether it's Dominic Kanza's compositions for Ruined, or a visual artist's scenic design (still one of the most striking Seattle Opera sets ever: Dale Chihuly's for Pelléas et Mélisande)...or a chat with Olivier Wevers--with Whoriskey, there's likely a surprise in store.