Professional theater wasn’t exactly a hot commodity around here in the dimly-lit 1960s and ’70s. Showboat and other dinner theaters featured faded TV and film stars in vehicles like Come Blow Your Horn or Wake Up, Darling, stale plays enjoyed over stale supper rolls, salad bars and chicken wings.
Asolo, however, presented cutting-edge dramas and comedies straight from Broadway — and other diverse corners of the big theatrical universe. The first seasons, in 1958 and ’59, included Molière’s The Ridiculous Ladies and a New York City Opera production of Mozart’s Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail.
Sarasota’s cultural revolution had begun at the turn of the century, with the arrival of circus magnate John Ringling and his wife Mable. The Ringlings envisioned the area as a sort of Floridian Riviera for the uber-rich, with their mansion, ornate grounds and massive collection of European art as the centerpiece.
Ringling willed the compound to the city, which took it over upon his death in 1936. The original theater was built on the grounds, using much of the materials from an actual 18th-century playhouse dismantled and shipped from Asolo, Italy.
“We are the largest resident professional theater company in the state,” he muses. “We should be in Miami. Or Tampa. But there isn’t the support for it, to do the work that we are doing.”
The answer, then, is that Asolo Repertory Theatre — the organization’s full name — has been the pride of Sarasota for all of its 59 years. And Sarasota — let’s just say it — is a town with a lot of money.
A theater district in and of itself, Asolo, which includes the lauded FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training, has an annual operating budget of $10.3 million.
According to Edwards, 45 percent comes from donations and grants, while the rest is derived from subscribers and single ticket sales.
“That means I have to be programming things people want to see,” he says. “Very often they will take a risk, and take a punt on an unknown. Fifty percent of the plays we’re doing, they don’t know. They’re new. But they’re gonna come anyway.”
That’s become they’ve come to trust him, and the quality of the work done by Asolo’s actors, production staff and craftsmen.
The theater’s 59th season begins Nov. 18 with Evita, the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical about Argentina’s legendary First Lady Eva Peron.
Opening the season with a musical is an Edwards tradition. Evita will run through the end of December, at which point Asolo’s full repertory season kicks in.
The concept of a repertory theater company originated with the Greeks.
“It’s the most traditional way theater was done,” Edwards points out. “A group of actors have, in their repertoire at any given time, four or five plays. The only way to produce theater and make any money was to have four or five plays in your arsenal at any given time.”
In other words, a troupe visiting a town could perform for the same patrons several times within, say, a week.
“We are the descendants of that idea. Every year, we assemble a company and we do three or four of our plays in rep. Which means: You can come into Sarasota for a week, and you can see four plays in one week. All on one stage. We change out the set every day.”
This will go on, after the limited run of Evita, from January through March. The rep shows are Shakespeare in Love, Morning After Grace and Rhinoceros.
“All the actors are in at least two of the shows,” says Edwards. “So the organization of the rehearsal process is like a space shuttle launch. The crew, the actors, the shops, they’re all union. So we have to have our day organized. The calendar determines everything.”
Edwards estimates he and director/choreographer Josh Rhodes saw 2,000 people for Evita, at auditions held in several states. Puerto Rican singer, model and actress Ana Isabelle, who landed the lead role, was discovered at the New York City tryouts.
“She had the magic, the charisma, the fire,” says Edwards, remembering he moment he and his director first laid eyes (and ears) on her. “She walked into the room in a tight-fitting white suit, with her hair pulled back like Evita did. Lipstick. It was arresting. She had dressed like Evita. And then she sang, and it took our breaths away.”
Ninety percent of Asolo’s cast is Latin American, making the production, in Edwards’s view, the most diverse Evita in history. “It seems so obvious, but that’s not what they did in New York for the last revival,” he reports. “It’s certainly not what they did in London. And in another famous revival they just did, in the Northeast, everyone was white.
“The thing is, there’s so much talent in America right now, it was not that difficult to do.”
Evita has been on Edwards’s (lengthy) wish list for a while. In America’s current climate, he insists, the show’s “depiction of glamour and politics” felt entirely appropriate. “It was just an entertainment when I first saw it 40 years ago,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like that now.”
Conversely, if the play choices are viewed as too “cerebral” for the Rodgers and Hammerstein fans, they’ll stay away, too.
“I have to do, firstly, what I love and believe in — but I also want to fill the theater,” says Edwards, a theater veteran who says his 12 years at Asolo constitute “the longest I’ve been anywhere in my life.”
The secret, he believes, is to communicate with the audience, through talkbacks, surveys and the like. “It’s a dance, with me and with the audience — I’m in conversation with my audience, because they know I’m going to do things that push them. Take them out of their comfort zone. That’s my job.”
It doesn’t always work. Last spring’s satire The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity failed to find an audience.
“It was a brilliant production of a very exciting new play, incredibly timely,” Edwards says.
So what happened?
“It skewed young, and it was difficult to get the young people that really would’ve understood it into the theater.”
Which brings us to the other conundrum facing every artistic director of every professional theater in America: How to keep the audience recycling with every new generation?
“The young writers want to write things for their contemporaries," Edwards says. "Their parents don’t necessarily want to see that. We have to serve both. We have to do both things.”
He’s thrilled, he says, with some of the razor-sharp, younger-skewing work coming out of the Tampa Bay theaters.
“Competition? I don’t see it that way. I see it as infrastructure. I see it as ecosystem. I think Eric Davis at freeFall is fantastic — I can’t believe the risks he takes. And he pulls things off. I believe he’s a healthy part of our ecosystem.”
In the meantime, Asolo’s 60th season is just over the horizon. Michael Donald Edwards swears he’s focused on only looking forward.
“I haven’t even thought about it being the 60th season,” he laughs. “I don’t think that way. It’s about what’s happening now.
“There’ll be 60 lines of dialogue in the first 15 minutes. There’ll be 60 hors d’oeuvres served at the opening night. There’ll be 60 martinis consumed after the first show. I’ll do that kind of thing. Make everybody happy.”
This article appears in Nov 2-9, 2017.
