Just a few years ago, Wendy C. Goldberg’s assessment of the Denver Center Theatre Company was blunt.
“I felt the company was out of sync with what was going on in contemporary playwriting,” said Goldberg, artistic director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s esteemed National Playwrights Conference.
That was before Goldberg – or Denver – met Kent Thompson. Before Thompson stuck the DCTC’s finger into the live current of new-play development.
Goldberg has since helmed three major productions here – “The Clean House” before it even made it to Broadway; “Living Out”; and, opening Thursday, Rebecca Gilman’s “The Sweetest Swing in Baseball.”
“Kent is really out there walking the walk,” said Goldberg, who at just 33 has been one of the most influential players in the field of new-play development for a decade.
“There is really no other regional theater in the country that is putting on as many world premieres in a season as here. That’s impressive because it’s risky on all levels, but he’s not shying away from it.”
In the years B.T. (Before Thompson), Goldberg championed a new play here, but got a terse reply: too much like a screenplay.
“I thought that was the most rudimentary response,” she said. “The plays that I work on are nothing like screenplays, but they have a kind of episodic nature, and they demand a certain type of theatrical vision that needs to be brought to it.”
An example might be “The Clean House,” in which a character drags an enormous felled tree into his living room.
Founded in 1964, the O’Neill Center is the oldest theatrical developmental lab in the country. Every year, eight new plays are chosen to be workshopped for performances each July in Waterford, Conn.
Two years ago, when the job opened, executive director Tom Viertel asked alumni writers to recommend a successor. They repeatedly named Goldberg, who ran the new-play program at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Viertel called Goldberg.
“We want you to lead us into the future,” he told her. “And we need your first season in a month.”
If age was a factor, it worked to Goldberg’s advantage. She was the first to see the potential in Jason Grote’s mind-bending “1001,” which she chose for a 2006 workshop. Thompson directed, which fueled his decision to give “1001” its full world premiere here in January.
“I think the O’Neill was looking for someone to breathe new life into that program, and they needed someone with a huge amount of energy and vision,” said Bonnie Metzgar, associate artistic director of Denver’s Curious Theater. “She has a calm nerve, a lot of integrity. Thank goodness they were smart enough to give her the job.”
Because the O’Neill season culminates in July, Goldberg is a hired gun for much of the year, guest-directing at some of the nation’s most prestigious regional theaters. She swears she has never asked Thompson to schedule plays that suit her interests – often scripts with a strong central female character – but it’s no coincidence titles keep popping up on the season that could well be subtitled “The Wendy Plays.”
No one’s confirming it, but Thompson’s 2007-08 season includes Wendy Wasserstein’s final play, “Third.” She was one of Goldberg’s mentors.
“Kent just happens to pick these wonderful plays that I love,” she said. “His goals and his mission are so much in line with mine. I remember last year, when he announced the current Denver Center season, it just instinctually felt so much to me like a season I would choose myself.”
That season includes “The Sweetest Swing in Baseball,” the story of a successful painter who has lost her muse. After an attempted suicide, she feigns the persona of troubled baseball legend Darryl Strawberry so she can stay in a psychiatric hospital after her insurance runs out.
“I have been advocating for this play all over the country, and it has just never ended up happening,” Goldberg said. “And then all of a sudden Kent just announced it – without any prodding from me.”
In the play, Dana knows nothing about baseball, but she and Strawberry share the commonality of having vast and ultimately unfulfilled potential because of self-destructive tendencies.
“Inside this hospital, she is really struggling to keep herself well and wanting to reconnect with what it was that inspired her to begin painting in the first place,” Goldberg said.
“Sweetest” will be Goldberg’s first play in Denver that won’t star Romi Dias, who just completed her first season with the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
“Wendy is keen, smart and she has her finger on the pulse of all her plays,” Dias said. “She totally trusts her actors and she guides with a light but firm hand. I mean, she looks into the souls of her characters, and then she helps you to find them.
“I don’t know how. She just knows.”
What’s good for Goldberg’s actors is good for Thompson is good for the Denver Center.
“I do think the word is getting out about what Kent is doing here,” Goldberg said. “This is the first time in my whole working experience when I have really felt like, from stage management to technical director, everybody here is treated as an artist in their own right – and they are supported in this incredible way that is not always the case in other theaters around the country.
“It’s just amazing here.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Sweetest Swing in Baseball”
DRAMEDY|Denver Center Theatre Company|Written by Rebecca Gilman| Directed by Wendy C. Goldberg|Starring Kathleen McCall, Sam Gregory, Megan Byrne, Brad Heberlee and Caitlin O’Connell|THROUGH MAY 26| At the Ricketson Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex|6:30 p.m.
Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 1:30 and 8 p.m.
Saturdays|$36-$46|303-893-4100, 866-464-2626, all King Soopers or denver center.org; 800-641-1222 outside Denver
