Extend the range of experience onstage. The theater needs to hold the mirror up to all of nature, not just a privileged, ocean-view sliver. I may not have thought so highly of last year's production of August Wilson's "Fences" — in fact, it struck me as one of those pro forma revivals I just inveighed against — but Orange County audiences seemed delighted to spend some time in Pittsburgh's Hill District. Superior storytelling finds the universal in the local, so why not broaden our horizons while revealing more of ourselves in different socioeconomic guises?
Embrace and expand SCR's artistic community with the same care and attention lavished on donors and subscribers. Actors such as Linda Gehringer, Dakin Matthews, Arye Gross and Marin Hinkle are as much a part of the lifeblood of the theater as the playwrights, directors and designers who regularly return with them. This familiarity with a group of artists deepens theatergoers' investment, and it's one reason that opening nights at SCR are a family affair on both sides of the footlights.
