Is it fair to say that, if overseeing the day-to-day artistic operation of the Alliance Theatre is the “work” part of Susan Booth’s job, then directing a specific show is the “fun” part?
“In a word, yes,” she said with a laugh during a recent interview.
But based on the thoughtful enthusiasm with which Booth discusses both her “creative” and “institutional” objectives, it isn’t always easy to appreciate the difference.
“There’s no question it’s pretty exciting whenever I get to disappear off the office radar, when for a few weeks I get to exist in a rehearsal hall instead,” Booth said. “At the same time, though, there are elements of my office work that are really cool, too. It’s not just about budgets or fund-raising, but also about programming theater that attracts and engages the community.”
After a pause, she smiled and added, “It’s a neat kind of Rubik’s cube. As challenging as it can be to figure out, that’s partly what excites and motivates you to try.”
This year, Booth, 48, marks her 10th anniversary as Alliance artistic director, kicking off the company’s 2011-12 season with her staging of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Into the Woods” (opening Wednesday and continuing through Oct. 2).
An innovative mixing of various Grimm’s fairy tales, the show holds special significance for her. Booth was still a graduate student at Northwestern University and a self-professed “theater geek” in the early 1990s, when she saw a London production of it that provoked a “massive epiphany.”
“It was an absolutely iconoclastic version of the show, so defiantly idiosyncratic. What did I know? At first, I kept thinking, ‘Gosh, they’re not observing every last stage direction in the script.’ Or, ‘Gee, they’re actually making the material their own,’” Booth said.
And yet, she said, “That’s probably the precise moment when I truly knew that I wanted to be a director [and] that there was a way to direct that went beyond slavish adherence to convention.”
She and her husband/cohort, Max Leventhal, who’s also celebrating a 10th anniversary as the Alliance’s general manager, relocated to Atlanta from Chicago, where Booth had served as director of new play development for the famed Goodman Theatre. In addition to amassing an impressive résumé of directorial credits there, she also freelanced with several other equally notable regional theaters, the La Jolla Playhouse and Actor’s Theatre of Louisville among them.
Among the personal highlights during Booth’s Alliance tenure are her mountings of such dramas as “Intimate Apparel,” “Doubt” and, especially, last season’s “August: Osage County.” But she also cites the sprawling musical revamp “Jesus Christ Superstar Gospel” as a standout. “I didn’t come up in this business doing a lot of musicals,” she said, “so I wasn’t sure whether I could pull it off.”
On occasion, Booth has found time to direct elsewhere around town —“Thom Paine” at Actor’s Express, “Blood Knot” at Theatrical Outfit — but the administrative demands of her “day job” usually limit her to only directing two shows a year. Beyond “Into the Woods,” on tap for her next spring is the Alliance’s highly anticipated “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” with a script by Stephen King and songs by John Mellencamp.
“Throughout my early career as a director, in a sense it was mainly all about me. I knew what sort of plays I liked, what my strengths were, what my politics were and how all of those things intersected on this or that particular show,” she said.
“But, after opening night, I’d go home or move on to the next project. How a show sold, how or even whether it resonated with an audience, that wasn’t quite as much of a concern for me then as it is now.”
The signs of what Booth describes as “a fairly radical change in my whole outlook and approach” are many. Between the company’s annual Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition (now in its eighth year), its commitment to “developing major American musicals” (e.g., “The Color Purple”) and its 2007 Tony Award for best regional theater, the Alliance has attained national visibility and prominence under her guidance.
“A lot of our Kendeda winners have gone on to phenomenal success all over the country, but I’m really delighted that we got to see them first right here in Atlanta,” Booth said. “It’s also pretty amazing to have established artists like Twyla Tharp creating new work (“Come Fly with Me”) right here at the Alliance.”
She smiled again. “And, I’ll admit, I really wanted that Tony, because, as arrogant as it might sound, it confirmed everything we already knew about how good we were. Sometimes, institutions require that kind of external vetting to get the internal love and support they need.”
The notion of “thinking globally” is admirable, of course, but Booth conceded that “acting locally” is no less important, “embracing and fostering artists right here at home,” whether it means using an illustrious all-Atlanta cast in “Osage County” or premiering a play by the city’s own Pearl Cleage (last year’s “The Nacirema Society”).
On the one hand, it’s all good. On the other hand, given the precarious state of the arts in these trying economic times, Booth isn’t entirely out of the woods, so to speak.
Ask her what frustrates her most about the job and she doesn’t hesitate to answer: “That we have to continue arguing the validity of theater itself,” she said. “Really? Still? The idea that cultural organizations are crucial to the life of a society is as old as the ancient Greeks, isn’t it?”
Theater preview
‘Into the Woods’
Through Oct. 2. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays; 7:30 p.m. Sundays. $35-$65. Alliance Theatre (Woodruff Arts Center), 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000. www.alliancetheatre.org.
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