For the second in our series of interviews with Seattle's artistic directors and their visions for the future, we bring you Bartlett Sher of Intiman.

We have figured out that economic health on the part of the theater provides the comfort for people to enjoy the art more. If I were to project what I want for the next 15 years, it would be to put a lot of focus on economic health.

Subscribers' trust is related to you on a lot of levels and I think if they feel you're doing your best to bring them the highest level of work and be economically responsible, they consciously and subconsciously come to trust that if they give you money, you're going to be good with it.

I'm not saying that in reaction to ACT, but in reaction to any place I've gone or worked where you see a long-term relationship with an audience. I have a big job, which is to make six pieces--as great as I can--every year, and nothing feels better than to be an artist who is really adventurous and really risk-taking and really challenging his audience--and being fiscally responsible at the same time. The fact that we have a balanced budget this year makes me sleep better at night and that can't help but make someone who's walking into the theater feel a sense of success on all those levels, too.

On the stage side, I want to begin programming in the next 10 to 15 years at as high a level of work or higher, employing more people, more local artists, more artists from around the country, and cross-pollinating them, putting new ideas out into the world. I want to create the conditions under which I can continue to have good ideas and be challenged by the possibilities of what kinds of things we can make so the Intiman becomes unique, and people come to Seattle to see it, and we can take things from here into the larger culture.

But theater is, by its nature, a local art form--the more you dig in locally, the more you're in the particular, the more you're going to reach the universal. There's a weird kind of paradox to it.

The rule is, "Who are the best artists I can work with? And what are the best texts I can get?" and see where it goes from there. You can't say, "I'm trying to reach this audience, so I'm going to pick this piece." You'll never get anything authentic, just bad Hollywood crap. You'll have a piece that's trying to find its way to an audience and that will never work. The great storytellers who did reach lots of people had something to do and it struck something human because they were honest in their approach. When you try to do it the other way--well, anybody who does that gets everything they deserve.

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