The Director Dreams: Homing in on the Playwright du jour

"I'm a cluster eater, a cluster dresser, and a cluster producer," explains Ken Webster, artistic director of Subterranean Theatre Company, when asked what made him follow up his successful performance of Daniel McIvor's solo play House for Frontera by directing McIvor's multi-character play The Soldier Dreams for his own company. "If I find a playwright, I'll do him to death. Last year," the director reminds me, "I did two Nicky Silver plays back to back."

Webster's tenacious loyalty to his playwrights-of-the-moment has allowed audiences an opportunity to experience and compare different works by some of North America's unsung playwrights -- playwrights often operating just beyond the boundaries of the more traditional new-play circuit.

McIvor's work first caught Webster's imagination in 1997: "Peck Phillips started telling me about this script, House, that he had done at College Station. And it sounded so intriguing just from his describing it and reeling off a few lines from a couple of the monologues that I agreed right there on the spot that I would be in it if he directed it." Webster performed House to sold-out crowds at Hyde Park Theatre, the Ritz, and a standing-room-only audience at the Continental Club in a fundraiser for Refraction Arts Project.

"Right after that discussion [with Phillips], I started looking for more McIvor plays, because he sounded so fascinating. I found Humans, a collection of monologues that's in the same book as House, and we did that for FronteraFest in 1998. I started reading as many McIvor scripts as I could. As soon as I read The Soldier Dreams, I knew I wanted to do it." An eight-character play concerning a man dying of AIDS and the family members who claim to know him, The Soldier Dreams is haunting, funny, and oddly familiar -- the banter among the friends and relatives sounds so ordinary at times, but the play's impact is sharp and sometimes disturbing.

"All of [McIvor's] plays are at least a little autobiographical," says Webster, who is drawn to the playwright's work for his rough but sympathetic take on humanity. "McIvor realizes that the world is often vile and hideous, but he still loves it. So his plays are a combination of dark and beautiful. He has this dark sense of humor, but he really likes mankind.

"What's amazing to me is that nobody has heard of Daniel McIvor. The Soldier Dreams has only been done once [in the U.S.], in Chicago." Now it receives its second American staging at the hands of one of Austin's sharpest and most consistent theatre companies. -- R.P.