Geoffrey Sherman, Once of Meadow Brook, Helms Salesman in Motown Oct. 8-24 | Playbill

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News Geoffrey Sherman, Once of Meadow Brook, Helms Salesman in Motown Oct. 8-24 Geoffrey Sherman, former artistic director of Michigan's only LORT house, Meadow Brook Theatre, is the director of an Oct. 8-24 Detroit revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, for the hybrid student professional troupe at the University of Detroit -- Mercy.

Geoffrey Sherman, former artistic director of Michigan's only LORT house, Meadow Brook Theatre, is the director of an Oct. 8-24 Detroit revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, for the hybrid student professional troupe at the University of Detroit -- Mercy.

The Theatre Company has been a critics' darling for the past 25 years for its stagings featuring undergraduate students and Equity professionals. Over the years, the troupe on the campus of the Jesuit-founded university has offered new works, revivals, classics and edgy pieces, from My Sister in This House to Claudia Allen's Roomers to the world premiere of Jane Martin's Criminal Hearts.

Sherman directs two of Michigan's major Equity talents, David Regal (as Willy Loman) and Arthur Beer (as Ben) at U-D Mercy's McAuley Theatre.

The company also includes Yolanda Fleischer (a prominent Detroit director) as Linda Loman, Joe Haynes as Charley, Dax Anderson as Bernard, Travis Reiff as Biff, Drew Parker as Happy and Danielle Antonio, Brian Barter, Lessa Bouchard, Sherie McDaniel, Rashida McElvene and James Mio.

* Among those who studied with The Theatre Company is Angelina Fiordellisi, who runs New York City's Cherry Lane Theatre, Kaufman Theatre and the Cherry Lane Alternative, a new works program.

*

Sherman left Meadow Brook in June 1999 after four seasons, telling Playbill On-Line that despite his efforts to bring new programming and ideas to the company, the audience and his colleagues at the theatre -- a cultural program of Oakland University in suburban Rochester, MI -- hungered for "a more conservative diet" of works that he could not provide.

When he began in 1995 he told the OU administration that it would take six years to erase a debt, build a bigger audience and grow in reputation, "and I still believe that," he said in spring 1999.

Sherman had a three-year contract that was extended in 1998 by only one year. He suggested the short extension showed a lack of faith in him, and he knew it was time to investigate his wish to continue writing and free lance directing for the stage and TV.

Associate artistic director Debra L. Wicks is interim artistic director during a national search for Sherman's successor. It is thought that Meadow Brook will likely shy away from "controversial" or "intellectual" plays such as What the Butler Saw, Arcadia, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Three Tall Women, works produced during Sherman's tenure. Several of his works, and works during his tenure, won awards.

"I felt, in terms of audience response, the [large] number of people who didn't come to see Merry Wives of Windsor told me that the sort of artistic policy that I wanted to pursue wouldn't fly as high as I wanted to here," Sherman said.

He added, "If people aren't willing to come along for the ride, I need to find somewhere where people are willing to come along for the ride."

Since his first season in 1995-96, Sherman helped establish aggressive audience development measures and more contemporary artistic programming following 24 years under Terrence Kilburn, who kept a low profile but satisfied his crowds -- and packed them in -- with revivals of Neil Simon, Agatha Christie and classics.

The first artistic director, John Fernald, reigned 1967-70, long enough to put the theatre in a debt that Kilburn's programming of popular mainstream shows erased. A debt began again in Kilburn's later tenure, during the recession.

Subscribership dropped by perhaps 1,000 since Sherman began in 1995, Sherman said, but single ticket sales are the highest in the theatre's history.

Annual attendance at Meadow Brook, the flagship theatre of Detroit's small and struggling professional community, is about 110,000. "We had people in their 20s and 30s who came into the theatre, some for the first time," Sherman said of the iconoclastic What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton.

In Sherman's four years, Meadow Brook presented its first work by an African-American author (August Wilson's The Piano Lesson), embraced other minority or multicultural projects such as I Am a Man and Thunder Knocking on the Door and encouraged more communication between the professional theatre and the undergraduate theatre department of Oakland University, where Meadow Brook is located.

Also in Sherman's time, Meadow Brook established measures that are the norm at other major LORT companies around the country: Membership in the industry group called Theatre Communications Group (TCG), newsletters, talkbacks, a telephone comment line, "younger" shows such as The Rocky Horror Show, Off-Broadway-style work such as Three Tall Women, rentals to other professional theatre companies during the off-season and steps toward a "second stage" where edgier work -- such as his lauded 1998 New Studio Company staging Angels in America: Millennium Approaches -- could be explored, free of the fears of subscribers. The New Studio Company, a hybrid of students and Meadow Brook Equity actors, returns in May 1999 with a staging of Terrence McNally's Master Class, at Varner Studio Theatre, across campus from the mainstage.

Also during his time at Meadow Brook, an educational outreach program began, a community advisory board was formed and the theatre's first development director was hired.

Sherman said he's had offers from other theatres, he said, but his aim might be westward, toward film and television work. He's been an artistic director for 12 years. He said he chose to not offer suggestions for the 1999-2000 season at Meadow Brook.

Prior to working at the 584-seat LORT B Meadow Brook, the British-born Sherman was producing artistic director of Portland Repertory Theatre in Oregon and the Hudson Guild Theatre in New York City.

For information about Death of a Salesman, call (313) 993 1130.

The Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman closes Nov. 7 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

-- By Kenneth Jones

 
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