About a dozen years ago or so, I enjoyed a brief turn as artistic director of the New Loft Theatre, later renamed the Tampa City Theatre. After six weeks or so, the money ran out, and my vast power to schedule seasons and hire actors and directors evaporated almost as quickly as it had materialized. But I’ll never forget those heady days when I thought I might actually have a say as to the plays and artists that would appear in the Bay area. And all these years later, I still occasionally ask myself: if I were running a theater now, what shows would it be offering? Here, then, is the 2010-2011 schedule of the Creative Loafing Imaginary Stage Company. Note that none of the following has turned up locally over the last decade.
September, 2010.I’d start my season with a double bill of Harold Pinter’s The Collection and The Lover. I’m not so sure of the second piece, about a man who pretends to be his wife’s lover and who enjoys secretive trysts with her when her “husband” isn’t around. But the brilliant play The Collection is only about an hour long, so it needs a companion. And, yes, The Collection is remarkable. It’s about Bill and Harry, who live together in London peacefully until a third man, James, accuses Bill of having slept with his wife when the two of them – Bill and Stella – were in Leeds. What follows is a series of scenes in which all four characters negotiate, cagily and angrily and dejectedly, what “truth” they can all agree to believe. The facts of the matter are the least important elements.
October, 2010. For the season’s recent Broadway hit, I’d next show
