This representative group was unanimous in its call for an artistic director with a firm hand who would put the house in order. Interestingly, the playwrights expressed their ambivalence. Though they wanted a place to explore their craft away from commercialism, they also desired the presence of agents and producers to enhance their careers, thus creating an immediate clash of motives and conference goals.

My choice for artistic director was Lloyd Richards. He had successfully directed BEDFORD FOREST under the most stressful circumstances, and since then had become an integral part of the conference. He had shown a genius for play analysis, was a highly respected teacher, exhibited a cool head under fire, and seemed to have the experience and wisdom to accomplish the job. He accepted the position, and together we began to institute the program he designed to affect the necessary changes.

Peter Larkin was asked to create a group of modules which, like child’s building blocks, could be assembled in different configurations to create scenic elements, i.e. door and window frames, platforms and furniture, etc. This effectively addressed the issue of special scenery for each play. Fred Voelpel and Neil Jampolis did full renderings of sets which were to be posted outside the theater spaces to give playwrights and audiences a picture of how each play might be built were it to be completely produced.

Additionally, it was decided that all actors must perform with script in hand, whether or not they had memorized their lines. This took all pressure off the actors, eliminated any sense of competition, made the actors an integral part of the process, and allowed the playwrights to rewrite up until the curtain if they so desired; rewrites were color coded to show the extent of work done on each play. No longer would each piece have a lighting “design,” rather, each play would simply be “lit.”

Directors would be assigned plays upon their arrival to Waterford, in order to stop the attempt to rehearse in advance, and thus use the conference as a showcase for themselves. Indeed, their job became to explore a play, and expose its problems; to allow the playwright opportunity for change and rewrites, rather than the commercial theater function of making the play work by covering up its flaws.

Producers and agents continued to be welcome at Waterford, but rigorous efforts were made to keep negotiations off the grounds. Nothing could be more destructive to the playwrights’ bonding process as one playwright saying to another (as Lloyd puts it), “So and so is interested in my play. Who’s interested in yours?”

The critics continued to be a part of the conference, first with the creation of the National Critics Institute, which would use the conference plays to exercise the writing and perception skills in camera. Secondly, Lloyd conceived of a function which was to use an especially skilled critic as a sort of ombudsman between the director and the dramatist. I suggested that the name for this person might be stolen from Bertolt Brecht’s theater and we call them “Dramaturgs.” It has interested and amused Lloyd and me, that over the years this name, which I learned from my theater history professor, Alois Nagler at Yale, has come into the mainstream of contemporary American Regional Theater life.