For Emily Mann, New Jersey audiences are to be applauded. “One of the reasons I’m here is the community,” says Mann of her role as artistic director of Princeton’s McCarter Theatre Center.
Mann contrasts New Jersey’s savvy theatergoers with those drawn to a certain nearby hub of theatrical activity. Broadway audiences, she says, “Think they know it all. They’ll give standing ovations everywhere you look, but as soon as they see a bad review in the Times, that’s it. No one will show up.”
Mann’s audiences, on the other hand, are “ready to be surprised”—and Mann is ready to oblige them. Since she took the reins of the McCarter in 1990, Mann has brought the theater a Tony Award for Best Regional Theater; attracted stars including Cynthia Nixon, Frances McDormand, Tyne Daly and Jimmy Smits; and built a reputation for staging world premieres. In 2011, Mann directed two premieres—Phaedra Backwards by Marina Carr and The How and the Why by Sarah Treem. This year has already brought another new work: From mid-January to mid-February, Mann directed the world premiere of Dania Gurira’s The Convert (produced with the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles). In May, the theater will present the world premiere of Are You There, McPhee? by John Guare.
Commissioned for McCarter, it is the story of a man trapped by his own life.
For Mann, the subject of a new work matters as much as its quality. Before she’ll sign on, a play has to fit her view of the sort of challenge her audiences require. In the case of The Convert, she says, “here’s a chance to have a huge discussion about colonialism….You come out of this better understanding people who are occupied.”
Mann, 59, sets a high bar for herself—“My standards are to be the best,” she says—and has been amply rewarded with accolades and interesting projects. Princeton University awarded her an honorary doctorate of arts in 2002; last year, she was named Person of the Year by the National Theatre Conference, an honor previously bestowed on Edward Albee and Tony Kushner, among other theater giants.
For 2012, Mann has committed to direct a Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire with Wood Harris, Nicole Ari Parker, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Blair Underwood.
But Mann, who lives in Princeton with her husband, attorney Gary Mailman, is no stranger to struggles, either. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994, the same year she won the Tony. “I was very ill for a while, but I worked with a healer and have been charmed,” she says, referring to her ability to keep her symptoms at bay.
McCarter, for all its gold-standard moments, has not dodged the aches and pains of today’s economy. There are 4,700 subscribers to McCarter this season, down from 10,800 in the mid-1990s. This season’s budget is $10.5 million, which has required “scrambling,” says Mann. “I feel like an NPR commercial, always asking for donations.”
She continues: “I’d be lying if I said we’re doing okay. We have some incredible national grants—we do phenomenally well in that way—but foundations are giving less. We need bigger donations, and we need the people who love the work to come out more.”
Mann is giving them every reason to come to McCarter. “My mantra is, every single play has to be an event,” she says. “You come to the theater and you find things, and you’re with your community, and it does so much good for the soul. Loving and hating a work—those are both measures of success for me. But there’s another part of it, too: I would say I care deeply about filling seats.”