So the Stratford Festival’s Artistic Director, Des McAnuff, has announced his retirement after the 2013 season. The last time Stratford was faced with a resignation at the top, they foolishly decided to divide the kingdom. I think it’s safe to say they won’t try that again any time soon.

I know essentially nothing about the possible leadership options – I don’t even live in Canada, so I’ve never seen the work produced by theatres in Edmonton or Vancouver or even Toronto (or, heaven forfend, Montreal!) – so I wouldn’t be any good at playing the handicapping game even if I were interested in doing so.

But I am keenly interested in the future of the Festival, and so I thought I’d put down a few thoughts about where the Festival has been, and what they might actually want out of their next leader – from the perspective of a loyal audience member (and I recognize that that’s not the only perspective that’s relevant by any means).

Richard Monette, Stratford’s longest-serving Artistic Director and the only AD to rise from the ranks of the company, left his stamp on every aspect of Stratford’s operation, from the physical theatres themselves (he spearheaded extensive renovations of the Festival and Avon Theatres, and was responsible for the creation of the Studio Theatre), to the structure of the Festival’s typical program (in his words, everything from “soup to nuts”). He put the Festival on an exceptionally firm financial footing. And his most important legacy may have been the establishment of the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre to train future generations of classical actors.

But by the end of his fourteen illustrious years, Stratford had become rather an inbred place, particularly when it came to its roster of directors. For that reason, when the board looked for Monette’s replacement, it was particularly interested in bringing in someone (or, as it turned out, several someones) who would relink Stratford with a broader theatrical community, national and international.

And, to a considerable extent, this has come to pass. When I look back at the last few seasons of Monette’s tenure, and compare them with the seasons since his departure, it’s striking how much more diversity there is in the directorial lists – more diversity in the sense of coming from different places artistically and geographically, but also just in the sense of more names. And there’s also a stronger sense of Stratford as being connected with other theatres in and outside of Canada. McAnuff’s other main accomplishment has been to bring “electricity” to the Stratford stage – and I mean that literally; for one thing, Stratford is now doing musicals like Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar, but McAnuff has also been particularly enamored of contemporary-style stage effects in his classical productions, whether we’re talking about last year’s Tempest or Caesar and Cleopatra from his first season.

The next direction that Stratford goes should, ideally, build on what has been achieved, but also shore up areas where the Festival has failed to achieve what it needs to. In that regard, here are some thoughts:

• Stratford has never had a female Artistic Director. Twice briefly they have had female co-directors – Martha Henry in 1980 as part of the “Gang of Four” and Marti Maraden in 2008 as part of the post-Monette triumvirate – but never a woman as sole head. There is no rule that says they must, and I certainly wouldn’t argue for choosing an inferior candidate over a superior one because of sex. But it would be hard to deny that Stratford might gain something from a female artistic perspective (not to imply that there is any one such perspective) at the top.
• One of the more exciting departures from the year of the triumvirate was Stratford’s foray into classics outside the usual geographical bounds of the Festival’s canon. That was the year of Fuente Ovejuna and Emilia Galotti. And that was pretty much that: the closest the McAnuff years have come was to program Racine’s Phedre in 2009. I look forward to the day when the playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age, Russian playwrights other than Chekhov, Scandinavian playwrights other than Ibsen – when the full range of work appropriate to a classical company is available to the Stratford stage. In moderation of course – no one expects a season of obscurity. But to have something of this sort regularly on the menu would be delicious.
• Stratford has struggled for some time with the question of how to serve a family audience in a manner consistent with the Festival’s mission. They’ve had some huge successes – last season’s Peter Pan, for example, or 2007’s To Kill a Mockingbird – and any number of “regular” productions have been good selections for children – the classic musicals, always, but Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night’s Dream will generally do very nicely, and did, with our son, in 2008 and 2009 (when he was just shy of 6 and 7 respectively). But in the Monette years we too often got limp contemporary adaptations of literary classics like The Scarlet Pimpernel and in the McAnuff years we have occasionally been offered … You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown (part of the 2012 season). Which, okay, I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun, but is a show like that really Stratford’s mission? I’d like to see an artistic director that took the whole “family-oriented theatre” question in a more creative direction, looking to mount productions that demonstrate the sheer power of theatre to an audience of all ages, rather than either talking down to young audiences or earnestly trying to improve them. A production like 2008’s nearly-wordless Moby Dick adaptation by Morris Panych may be more relevant as an inspiration than anything Stratford has programmed specifically with children in mind.

What do I want to see continued from the McAnuff legacy? I’ll be honest: I’m not a big fan of Andrew Lloyd Weber and the rock musical more generally. But I am a fan of bringing electricity to the classics. And I admire the way McAnuff uses music in his non-musical productions, particularly last year’s As You Like It. I hope the next AD has as good an ear. I’m very pleased with the way McAnuff has shaken up the “modern classic” list – I’m excited to see Pinter, Tremblay, ecstatic to see Beckett. I hope the next AD is similarly committed to this kind of work.

You know, I said I wasn’t going to play the game of picking the next AD, but looking at the above, it sure sounds like one possible candidate fits my bill.