New Intiman Theatre head reveals ambitious 2010 season

For her initial season heading the Tony Award-honored Intiman Theatre, first-time artistic director and Seattle newcomer Kate Whoriskey has something to prove. And she intends to prove it, with an ambitious, eclectic 2010 roster of shows, revealed in an interview this week at the Seattle Center playhouse.

A hot New York director hired by Intiman last June, Whoriskey will keep some policies of outgoing Intiman head Bartlett Sher, now a leading Broadway director.

"Like Bart, I want us to do both classic and modern plays," she noted. She's also extending the American Cycle, a popular series of dramatized U.S. literary classics.

But Whoriskey plans to add "more diversification onstage and in the audience," with a new International Cycle, an original work about spiritual faith and an encore of her hit Off Broadway staging of Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Ruined."

The 2010 Intiman season:

"Paradise Lost" (March 19-April 25), a 1935 Clifford Odets play about a clan coping with the Great Depression, "has resonance today with our own financial crisis," says Whoriskey. Damaso Rodriguez directs.

"The Thin Place" (May 14-June 13), a new docudrama by Seattle's Sonya Schneider, is based on KUOW arts journalist Marcie Sillman's interviews with local residents about the meaning of faith. Andrew Russell directs the one-actor, multicharacter work.

"Ruined" (July 2-Aug. 8) reaches Seattle, in Whoriskey's hit Manhattan Theatre Club mounting. Researched by Nottage and Whoriskey in Africa, the play depicts a Congolese brothel of women trying to survive their nation's protracted, brutal civil war.

"Ruined" kicks off the International Cycle of plays reflecting cultures of countries and continents (Mexico, Cambodia, Africa, etc.) that Whoriskey contends are underrepresented on U.S. stages.

"A Doctor in Spite of Himself" (Sept. 3-Oct. 10) is a classic Molière comedy, timed to mirror our national health-care debate. Christopher Bayes directs and Broadway actor Daniel Breaker ("Passing Strange"), Whoriskey's husband, stars.

"The Scarlet Letter" (Oct. 22-Dec. 5) continues the American Cycle, with Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale of a woman in Puritan-era Boston, branded and reviled after an adulterous affair leaves her pregnant. Adapted by Naomi Iizuka; Lear DeBessonet directs.

Intiman's perennial holiday show "Black Nativity" closes the season.

Commuting for now

Whoriskey will not move to Seattle with Breaker and their infant son, Rory, until next spring. (She's currently directing a Broadway revival of "The Miracle Worker.")

But she reports getting "a lot of support from this community" in her recent visits to plan the season and meet with local arts groups and funders.

Intiman's hiring the 38-year-old director at Sher's urging, without a national search, raised some eyebrows in arts circles.

And Seattle actors worried Whoriskey might rely more on East Coast performers than local talent for her shows. "I know people are afraid of that," she acknowledged. "But Seattle actors have a great reputation, and I feel it's my responsibility that [our directors] see everybody they can and try first to hire from here."

Can Intiman afford Whoriskey's bold plans for 2010, and future years? (She's still working out her multiyear contract.) Managing director Brian Colburn insists she won't break the bank. He notes Intiman's hefty deficit has been reduced from $2.5 million to about $1.8 million, and ticket sales rose in 2009.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com