Command Performances

A Seattle arts supporter commissioned a play for his wife's birthday. The play—and the fundraising idea—have lived on.

By Misha Berson

Challenge: How to raise new money to pay for playwriting commissions.

Plan: Approach potential individual donors with the notion of funding commissions as gifts to honor a loved one's birthday or other special occasion.

Key players: Kurt Beattie of Seattle's ACT Theatre, and ACT patrons Charles and Benita Staadecker.

What Worked: Charles Staadecker commissioned Steven Dietz to write the play Becky's New Car as a birthday gift for wife Benita.

What Didn’t: Initial concerns (soon allayed) that the Staadeckers' influence would alter Dietz's play.

What’s Next: ACT Theatre is promoting the process as the New Works for the American Stage program and gathering more commissions in this vein. Charles and Benita Staadecker are trying to recruit potential commissioning donors in Seattle for ACT, and spreading the idea to patrons of other U.S. regional theatres.

Know someone hunting for a novel birthday gift, for that loved one who has everything? Do they have a chunk of change for a gift you can't wrap up in glitzy paper and a big bow, but which might keep on giving and giving and giving?

Why not suggest they buy that special someone...a new play?

That was the present that Charles Staadecker, a Seattle businessman and passionate supporter of the arts, bestowed on his wife, Benita, in 2005.

With the encouragement of A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) artistic director Kurt Beattie, Staadecker commissioned a new script from veteran playwright Steven Dietz. Benita, an ACT board member, was delighted. And though the couple had no assurances they'd like the final product, or that ACT would give it a full production, it was a win-win for both parties.

Benita's gift turned out to be the breezy yet heartfelt midlife-crisis comedy Becky's New Car, a box-office and critical hit at ACT in 2008. And the play was snatched up for production in the 2009—10 seasons of theatres in Portland, Kansas City, Cincinnati and several other cities.

The fulfilling experience of this Seattle couple inspired ACT to establish the program New Works for the American Stage, which encourages patrons to honor a loved one by underwriting the commission of a new play.

There's nothing new, of course, about playwrights receiving gifts from patrons to ply their craft. A few centuries back William Shakespeare had a good thing going with his benefactor Queen Elizabeth I, as did Moliére with King Louis XIV. And some contemporary American writers have devoted individual backers, most notably Charles Mee, whose work is largely underwritten by philanthropists Richard B. Fisher and Jeanne Donovan Fisher.

But in hard-pressed times some theatres are working toward robust revival of person-to-artist patronage. And ACT's new program has turned the Staadeckers into ardent benefactors and promoters of a practice Beattie hopes will become a trend.

"This sort of thing happens all the time in classical music," notes Beattie. (The Staadeckers' arrangement with Dietz was inspired by their discovery of a similar practice at the Seattle Symphony, and the couple has since commissioned a trombone concerto from its resident composer Samuel Jones for their 25th wedding anniversary.) "If it happened more in the theatre it could be incredibly valuable, for both the artist and the philanthropist."

Dietz, who divides his time between Seattle and Austin (where he teaches playwriting at the University of Texas), admits he was wary about the project at first.

"I wondered, what are their specifications for this play? What's the catch? But there wasn't any. It didn't need to be about Benita or anything else. It was just a new play in her honor."

Dietz adds that his literary agent "was similarly skeptical. But it was a standard deal, contractually, with only one special request attached: By Benita's birthday, I would have one scene written that she could read."

Charles Staadecker, a gregarious real estate executive with boundless enthusiasm for the Seattle cultural scene, says the couple tried to avoid nursing high expectations of the script. "We were very clear that not even Edward Albee goes 10 for 10," he says.

But they did take up ACT's invitation to sit in on rehearsals and artistic meetings for the company's staged readings of Becky's New Car, which centers on a likable, happily married everywoman, Becky, who works in a car dealership. Becky surprises herself by suddenly entering into an impulsive fling with a wealthy and eccentric stranger who mistakenly believes she is a widow.

At rehearsals, the couple simply watched the goings-on. "We took the position that we were surrounded by professionals," says Staadecker, "and we should let them do their jobs."

But their enthusiasm was infectious, notes Dietz, "and they got educated in how a play comes together. Eventually we had some nice give and take. I really wanted to know how they responded to certain things in the piece, just as audience members. But they never forced their opinions on me."

Did Dietz fear his close-at-hand "angels" might want to alter or censor his script? "Look at all the hoops you can jump through when you get a grant from a foundation or a government agency," Dietz counters wryly. "Here, if there's some objection to the script, at least I'm dealing with a human being, not a bureaucracy. And I think it's a bit of a myth that individual donors have more onerous agendas than the institutions that fund your work do."

The Staadeckers were so enamored with Becky's New Car that they attended 30 out of the 36 performances at ACT, gave mementos to the cast and crew, and urged many friends to attend. But their involvement didn't end there.

"I've been speaking a lot to corporate groups and individuals, and encouraging them to do something like this," explains Staadecker. "My mission is to say, 'If you are thinking of giving your loved one a car, a safari, a cruise, there's another choice. You can commission a play, or you can get together with friends to do it.'"

The Staadeckers want to spread that message around the country, as they attend productions of Becky's New Car in other cities.

According to Beattie, several similar commissions are already in play at ACT. One is for Seattle author-composer Chris Jeffries, for his musical based on the Jack Kerouac novel Maggie Cassidy. It too is being underwritten as a birthday present.

Beattie hopes this funding gambit gains traction as corporate monies for culture diminishes and government arts largesse remains hostage to political forces.

"In America there's this divide between individuals in the business world, and us in the world of the arts," he contends. "And the direct involvement of individual patrons in the actual making of art can bring the two camps closer."

Does that put us back in the era when crowned royalty of Europe were the prime subsidizers of theatrical, musical and other forms of art?

"There's a difference between the patronage of art by the church or the nobility in the 18th century, and what we're doing," Beattie insists. "In our program, the individual patrons have nothing like the power the Esterhazys wielded. They're simply contributing to the richness and deepening of America's cultural life."

Critic Misha Berson is a frequent contributor to this magazine.