Season Three, 1990-1991
The season was advertised as an "adventure" to support a "remarkable risk-taking group," and used a quote from the Marquis de Sade: "We believe that every situation is at the disposition of the novelist...only fools will be scandalized. True virtue was never frightened...by pictures of vice..." The season opened with two of Bertolt Brecht's Lehrstücke: The Measures Taken and The Exception and the Rule. Both were directed by Rich Burroughs with interested students from Reed College, currently studying Brecht and Epic Theatre. Melissa Marsland directed The Wallsby Argentine absurdist Griselda Gambaro, and Burroughs directed a New Historicist experiment called The Jew of Venice, a study of English Renaissance portrayals of Jewish characters.
Politicized by her travels to Nicaragua during the Revolutionary regime, Westlake staged a tribute to the Nicaraguan people, Mothers of Heroes, featuring Harrel as White Guilt and Allison Coe as the confused autobiographical character Sam. Burroughs recruited Dave Demke to direct The Butcher Papers by Dan Duling, the beginning of SRT's long relationship with Demke and Myra Donnelley. The season closed with Burroughs' staging of Georg Büchner's Woyzeck. This marked the first time that the The Oregonian featured the theatre in a 'preview' article.
As a pay-what-you-can theatre, SRT rarely made enough money to pay its expenses. Artists were paid under a share system where a certain percentage of the box office was divided equally among the artists; they rarely made more than $20 a show, and never more than $80. The Bullring also relied on a percentage of the box office as rent and the restaurant management was frequently disappointed with the trickle of cash that came in. The Fire Marshall noted that serious upgrades were needed to keep the theatre open, and the Bullring moved to evict the theatre. Westlake convinced the restaurant owners to keep the theatre for one more season and to pitch in for the cost of the fire code upgrades.
Read more about this topic: Stark Raving Theatre