In the
venerable tradition of releasing potentially controversial news on
Friday afternoons—in the eternal hope that journalists will
already be too drunk to report it—ACT Theatre announced last
Friday afternoon that its managing director, Kevin Hughes, is leaving
after only nine months.
Taking his place is Carlo Scandiuzzi, an excellent choice.
Mr. Scandiuzzi—a bright, energetic
Swiss-Italian—started in Seattle theater at the Empty Space
in 1982, acting in The Return of Pinocchio with ACT’s current
artistic director, Kurt Beattie.
Scandiuzzi was a concert promoter in the 1970s, bringing Devo, Nina
Hagen, Iggy Pop, the Ramones, and John Cale to town. In 1990, he acted
with poet Steven Jesse Bernstein in a horror movie about
skateboarders in hell called Shredder Orpheus.
Eventually, Scandiuzzi produced movies, founded IndieFlix (a
distribution network for independent films), and become a
philanthropist, throwing money at theater, dance, and the downtown
library (designed by Rem Koolhaas), which named a room after him on
spiral nine.
His recent masterstroke was starting the Central Heating
Lab, an attempt to inject new energy into ACT, which struggles with
the typical problems of regional theaters: exhausted economies, high
ticket prices, a graying subscriber base, trouble attracting younger
audiences, and a recurring failure to not bore the shit out of
people.
This year, the Heating Lab is presenting stuff you wouldn’t expect
in a regional theater: comedy, cabaret, modern dance, burlesque, a
new musical by band/theater collective “Awesome,” and readings by
Rebecca Brown, Trisha Ready, and Matt Briggs. The Heating Lab also
helps produce new plays outside ACT’s building, like The K of D,
which closes August 9 at Balagan Theatre. In effect, Scandiuzzi has
created a nimbler, more progressive faction inside the big institution
that can program 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.
The Heating Lab is also part of a trend among Seattle’s Big
Three—ACT, the Rep, and Intiman—of increased engagement
with fringe theater. Intiman recently hired longtime fringe
director Sheila Daniels as associate director and the Rep now rents its
smaller stage for fringe shows (like Angels in America, reviewed
to the right).
When asked what the hell was wrong with the old managing
director (a former board member), ACT board president Brad Fowler
said: “We were pleased with Kevin, he addressed the things we needed to
focus on as we moved forward.” Clearly, a master of obscurity.
Anyway: Hiring Scandiuzzi—polymath, philanthropist,
dynamo—is the best decision ACT has made in years. 
