The 20th season of Harlequin Productions in Olympia begins this winter, so it was a fine time to sit with founding members Scot and Linda Whitney for a look back.  What began as a fairly routine interview morphed into a fascinating conversation about one of theater's most daunting ongoing challenges:  How do you change people's minds about the material they'll enjoy?

The Harlequin story should be an inspiration to nonprofit arts groups of all persuasions.  Scot came up in independent film and admits he knew little about theater until Linda got him into it around 1990, but he soon developed an interest in staging scripts others admired but wouldn't produce - Orphans, for example, or the notoriously off-putting Waiting for Godot.  After polite rejections from several local companies, he accepted an offer to direct a 50-minute one-act, Ten Seconds in the Life of Fenwick Green, in a punk club.  Few had heard of the play or its playwright, there was little publicity, and consequently, there were no advance sales, then a blizzard shuttered downtown two days before opening night.  The Whitneys were floored when Ten Seconds sold out anyway.  A late show was added and six performances stretched into 12 sold-out shows.  A year later, Harlequin was able to produce an ambitiously Easternized Hamlet.

The company's popular Stardust holiday shows debuted in season four.  Before long, Harlequin capitalized sufficiently to acquire and remodel the State Theater, which was closed after a tragic decline into dollar movie house status.  What began with an avant-garde one-act in a mosh pit matured into an 800-pound gorilla, Oly's paragon of technical stage polish.  This suits Linda fine; she's a graphic designer by trade, and she and Scot keep a watchful eye on the look of each show.  Talking to Scot, though, I'm pretty sure I detected a nostalgic glint in his eye when he remembered those renegade years.

Here's the thing:  We in the theater game know what people think they want to see.  They want musicals or comedies, mostly musical comedies.  Yet Harlequin chases the freshest, most startling scripts available.  It's gutsy, especially given the cost of maintaining a top-notch facility.  This season, for example, Harlequin followed the apocalyptic, fundamentalist-baiting, unforgettable comedy End Days with the wrenchingly grief-stricken Rabbit Hole.  I asked the Whitneys what constitutes a "Harlequin script."  Scot answered without hesitation:  "We have to love it."  I wondered out loud whether audiences are reluctant to come home from work, eat dinner, greet the babysitter and take in a show about heart-rending grief.  Don't get me wrong, the show was damn good, but how do you persuade people to spend hard-earned cash on those dark rides?  The Whitneys are still crafting an answer to that question, but their answer seems to be:  Make sure the show is awesome, and a few honest laughs never hurt.

Once, while directing Proof, a play about unhinged mathematicians, I asked my dramaturge Alan to explain how mathematical sequences could be used to compose music.  He introduced me to the work of Olivier Messiaen, which I could only hear as unmelodic, cadence-free piano plunkings.  Indeed, I wondered how anyone could like it.  "Your comment presupposes," he sniffed, his arms crossed, "there's only one way to appreciate music."  Alan could hear and admire the virtuosity and innovation of the work in a way I could not - metaphorically speaking, he possessed bigger ears.  I thought of Alan's response as I reflected on Harlequin's ongoing gamble.  A play like Rabbit Hole proves it's entirely possible to enjoy a work of art that does not inspire joy.  What we gain from this experience is bigger eyes and better ears.

Harlequin Productions

202 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
360.786.0151, productions.org" target="_blank">harlequin productions.org