Henry I -- Into The Breech: Actor Henry Woronicz Radiates Enthusiasm As The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Novice Artistic Director

ASHLAND, Ore. - Even in blue jeans and plain white shirt, Henry Woronicz looks every inch the Shakespearean hero. It's the sculpted profile, backswept mane of dark blond hair, and confident bearing that remind you he's played Shakespeare's Romeo and Hamlet, Pericles and Macbeth, most of the King Henrys and both King Richards.

And he's only 38 - late-career for pro baseball players, but warm-up time for classical actors.

No one questions Woronicz's acting ability: for that he wins high praise from critics and colleagues. But the jury remains out on Woronicz's latest, and most public, role: artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), the West Coast's premier Shakespeare festival and one of the nation's largest theater operations.

A novice administrator, Woronicz this year assumed creative responsibility for a two-city, five-theater, 400-plus-employee corporation that each year sells 400,000 tickets and spends $11 million.

Some consider his appointment an ultra-safe, inside move by OSF's conservative board of directors, a continuation of the middle-of-the-road ruling style of Jerry Turner, who retired after 20 years in the job.

Others, including Woronicz, view his initial three-year contract period as part audition, part apprenticeship.

"Had this theater been in trouble, we might have taken a different route in hiring," says OSF general manager William Patton. "But we felt we had the administrative stability to give Henry a chance to grow into the job."

Adds Bob Hicks, former drama critic for the Portland Oregonian and longtime Ashland watcher, "Henry is well-liked and respected for what he's setting out to do. But he's green as an artistic director, so we'll all just have to wait and see what happens."

Sitting in his small office, surrounded by posters of shows in his past, Woronicz does not dodge the obvious.

"My lack of experience as an artistic director scared people at first," he admits. "But I'm a good learner, and this is a very well-managed theater. I think I'll be here a long time, but if I end up hating the job in five years, I have no compunctions about getting out."

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown? Not really. Talking candidly in a recent interview while presiding over OSF's summer opening weekend, Woronicz radiated assurance and enthusiasm.

More extroverted than his scholarly mentor-predecessor, Woronicz keeps a high profile in Ashland. He chats with patrons during intermissions, invites press contact, socializes with actors and drops by rehearsals often.

Insiders say Woronicz was a popular choice within the Ashland acting company, because he's been one of their own since 1984. His only prior extended commitment was a six-year acting stint with the Boston Shakespeare Festival.

"Henry has tremendous energy," says associate artistic director Pat Patton. "And he's such a good actor himself that he really knows how to communicate effectively with other actors."

But the company's big challenges lie elsewhere. Though it's grown more professional over the years, and Turner's own productions were often highly praised, OSF's national artistic reputation lags behind its achievements as a top box-office and tourist draw.

Ethnic minority and women artists have been scarcer than in other theaters OSF's size.

And there's the touchy OSF Portland situation: Running a satellite theater 300 miles from Ashland has brought the company as much grief as glory.

With regard to OSF's artistic stance, Woronicz is no radical purveyor of change. But he agrees adjustments are in order.

"It's easy to get complacent here, which we're very aware of," he says. "I know actors who worked here in the early 1980s and said, `Never again, I was really bored in Ashland.' And when the American Theatre Critics Association met here in 1985, they liked what we did in our two indoor houses, but were disappointed in our outdoor Shakespeare."

He blames much of the disaffection on acoustic limitations in OSF's giant outdoor arena, the Elizabethan Stage. Last month the company opened the new Allen Pavilion, a two-story enclosure designed to remedy the problem.

"Before we built the pavilion, that space was an odd hybrid, an Elizabethan house with a Greek amphitheatre," Woronicz explains. "The actors were pushing their voices, and directors were frustrated because all the subtle work they did in rehearsals would just evaporate outdoors."

Woronicz hopes more "vocal subtlety and nuance in the work" will recharge the company.

He also wants more contemporary plays in the festival's repertory. While Turner bracketed Shakespeare with his own translations of Ibsen and Strindberg, Woronicz talks about producing Caryl Churchill's latest play, "Mad Forest" and premiering new works.

"We can be a tremendous resource for modern playwrights, due to the size of our company and their long residency here," he asserts. "Writers don't have to restrict their imaginations and write two-character plays with one set. We can handle 20 characters and three sets."

Woronicz has shifted Ashland's annual play-reading series from fall to spring, "so if we find a play we like there's time to produce it the next season." He also inserted some "risky" works on this summer's indoor schedule: "Restoration" by left-wing British writer Edward Bond, and David Hirst's "La Bete," a thinly veiled satire on modern arts patronage written entirely in couplets.

But for all his interest in putting newer, more challenging scripts in the 600-seat Angus Bowmer theater and the 140-seat Black Swan, Woronicz intends to stick with a diet of meat-and-potatoes Shakespeare outside.

"In front of that Elizabethan facade we're not going to go hog wild and set some play on the moon," he insists. "We'll maintain a kind of straightforward approach out there. . . . That space is about the spoken word. When you do something weird visually, it looks awful."

Woronicz's impact on the ethnic and gender makeup of the company has already been felt. This year a record four women directors - Fontaine Syer, Barbara Damashek, Cynthia White and Penny Metropoulis - mounted shows in Ashland. Syer and White have also joined Pat Patton as associate artistic directors, giving women more pull in decision-making.

OSF also has made some progress in integrating its acting company. "It's been difficult in the past because of our geographic isolation and our policy of asking actors to commit most of their year to us," Woronicz points out.

"But we found this year that with just a little effort we attracted seven minority performers, the best we've ever done and about 10 percent of the whole company. It just comes down to making that effort."

Along with his freshman accomplishments, Woronicz made some beginner's mistakes. The most glaring, from a public-relations angle, was his treatment of Dennis Bigelow, producer of OSF Portland.

In 1988, at the city's invitation, OSF began producing subscription seasons in the handsome new Portland Arts Center. Turner dispatched Bigelow, a former Ashland hand, to oversee the venture.

Though Bigelow marshaled 10,000 subscribers and strong local support, high rental fees imposed by the city led to a cumulative deficit of $600,000 over four seasons. Last March, an alarmed OSF board of directors decided to give the Portland offshoot one more season to right itself fiscally. A month later Woronicz dismissed Bigelow, and announced Pat Patton would assume his duties.

OSF staffers say the move had to do as much with sibling rivalry as with finances. Some compare Woronicz and Bigelow to Prince Hal and Hotspur in Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part I," battling it out for control of their aging mentor's kingdom. As the Bard put it, "Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere."

"The restructuring was a tough decision," confides Woronicz, still smarting from criticism.

"Dennis and I are very different in our styles, our personalities, our tastes. We had a hard time finding common ground, and both realized it was time for change."

Taking as a model England's Royal Shakespeare Company, which performs in both London and Stratford, Woronicz foresees "more interconnection between Ashland and Portland. It was feeling like Portland was a distant cousin instead of part of our family."

This year two OSF productions ("The Ladies of the Camillas" and "Lips Together, Teeth Apart") will play both cities, a cost-saving and unifying measure. And with the city of Portland promising an 80 percent rent cut for next season and a big rebate for last, Woronicz hopes OSF Portland is enroute to solvency.

Though administrative duties take up much of his time, Woronicz will keep acting.

"I want to do Hamlet again before I get too old," he says, "and it may happen the summer after next."

Like most artistic directors, he'll also stage shows. With only a dozen or so directing jobs to his credit, and Turner's shoes to fill, Woronicz has a lot to prove in that role too.

His OSF productions have so far inspired critical response ranging from praise for a solid "Master Harold and the Boys," to a cool reception for a modern-dress "Romeo and Juliet." This summer his "La Bete," while popular with audiences, seemed a rather heavy-handed punching up of the stylish but slight text.

Overall, notes the Oregonian's Hicks, "The thing Jerry did that Henry needs to do is forget that Ashland is a vacation theater, and just do real hard drama. This is one of the rare theaters that can wind up being too successful, pulling in big audiences but lacking that artistic edge that makes for great drama."

Woronicz seems to understand this view, which is shared by many OSF watchers and even some staffers. And he believes that by making the company "a tremendously creative place to work, where actors process, directors process, and all the support people's voices are important" he can create drama that "is passionate, intelligent and compelling."

Is he the man to move along OSF into the '90s, pushing forward what Jerry Turner and festival founder Angus Bowmer started?

It's too early to tell. But, to borrow from Shakespeare, Woronicz wears the rose of youth upon him. And he's got some fire in the belly to go with it.