Editor's Note

By Jim O'Quinn

Don't turn the page. Before you delve more deeply into this oversized, information-packed Season Preview issue of American Theatre (where certain clues are lurking), I have a puzzle for you to solve.

Glance again at the four elegant and rather mysterious boxes—packed with signifying objects, Joseph Cornell–style—that comprise Israeli illustrator Rakefet Kenaan's cover image. These boxes were designed to represent the interior life and creative spirit of the four artistic directors headlining this issue—Peter DuBois of Boston's Huntington Theatre Company, Kevin Moriarty of Dallas Theater Center, Raelle Myrick-Hodges of San Francisco's Brava Theater Center, and Michael Shepperd of Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles. All four have been recently appointed to the leadership posts of their respective theatres, where they've been charged with fashioning new and dynamic visions for their organizations. All four provided our artist with fanciful lists of objects and attributes that symbolize the way they see themselves. Take a moment: Can you match the artist with his or her signature box?

How did you do? The most obvious who's-who signs are probably the geographic references embedded in the boxes, but if you're personally acquainted with any of these four directors, you may recognize telltale individual symbology as well. The sky is obviously the limit for Raelle Myrick-Hodges (upper left box)—as the dancer on a tightrope suggests, she sees the challenge of revivifying Brava as "a high-wire act with no net." Michael Shepperd (center box), who aspires to make the scrappy, 64-seat Celebration "a state-of-the-art, completely green theatre," includes a consoling "chilled bottle of Ketel One Vodka" in his psychic landscape. Similarly, a glass of red wine peeks out of the corner of Kevin Moriarty's cowboy-flavored box (upper right), which paints themes from classic plays and the U.S. Constitution (amplified by an emphatic exclamation point!) as his primary obsessions. In Peter DuBois's box (bottom), a beloved black Labrador gets equal billing with a slew of academic influences and "a risk-taking approach to life."

Fun and games. But as the quartet of professional profiles that leads off this issue attests, bringing an artist's own vision and leadership style to bear upon the practical and creative life of an existing theatre organization is serious business—perhaps even the critical measure of an artistic director's long-term success. For the varied and far-flung companies under scrutiny here, our reporters seem confident, the future bodes well.