In 1959, a director named Sir Tyrone Guthrie bought a small ad in
the New York Times, asking if any American cities would like a
resident theater—a place where actors could perform classical
plays, away from the commercial corruption of Broadway,
and edify citizens of the heartland. Seven cities responded. In 1963,
Guthrie opened his theater in Minneapolis. The regional theater
movement had begun.
Just two years later, Andre Gregory famously announced at a national
theater conference: “I’m scared that the regional theater, by the time
it is mature, will have bored the shit out of millions of people all over the country.” (He had already worked at three, including
Seattle Rep.)
People have been calling for the death of regional theater since it
was born. The regionals are moribund for dozens of reasons: exhausted
economies, overhead and union costs that keep tickets prices high, an
old and dying subscriber base, their inability to adapt to a
younger audience (viz., its preference for buying single tickets
instead of subscriptions), and, of course, their failure to not bore
the shit out of people.
But ACT, one of the feebler regionals (it nearly died of debt five
years ago), is showing signs of renewed vigor with something called the
Central Heating Lab, led by Carlo Scandiuzzi, a Seattle
philanthropist (the new library named a room after him) and theater guy
(he worked with the late lamented Empty Space). The Heating Lab
promises something vital, something regional theaters have
conspicuously lacked—a nimble, populist wing that can
absorb the best local theater, dance, and literature, and put it
onstage. (Most Heating Lab events happen in ACT’s moody,
haunted-seeming cabaret downstairs.)
Central Heating Lab had its coming-out party in August 2007,
with readings (by Rebecca Brown, Matt Briggs, and other quality
writers) after performances of First Class, a play about
Theodore Roethke. The Heating Lab still focuses on post-play addenda
(cabaret, dance, concerts), but its genius has been to yank off the
“events” blinders and start subtly programming a kind of
counterseason for a whole other audience: the younger kind that
likes to buy single tickets and doesn’t think Alan Ayckbourn comedies
about middle-aged couples having affairs are all that funny.
Coming in the next few months under the Lab’s rubric: comedy by
Black Daisy, Dart-Mondo, and Andy Haynes; music by
“Awesome”; dance by Julie Tobiason (of Pacific Northwest
Ballet); and The Adding Machine, the first production by New
Century Theatre Company (the fledgling collective started by actor
Paul Morgan Stetler, playwright Stephanie Timm, Stranger Genius Amy
Thone, et al.).
If it works, the Heating Lab will combine the best of the regionals,
the fringe, and the bars where people go to see comedy and bands. It’s
an idea 50 years overdue. 
