August In Alaska -- An Unlikely Confab Brings Some High Drama To A Rustic Town

VALDEZ, Alaska - It is a unique and unlikely theatrical event, and everyone in the room knows it.

Leading Broadway dramatist August Wilson perches on a stool, script in hand, performing roles from his lauded play cycle chronicling a century of African-American life. Chiming in at his side are the prominent film and stage actor Delroy Lindo ("Get Shorty," "Malcolm X") and noted performer Ella Joyce ("Roc").

This intimate display of eloquence would be a rare treat if it happened in Los Angeles, Manhattan or Wilson's home city of Seattle.

But the fact that it is in a civic auditorium in the remote and rustic outpost of Valdez, Alaska, a six-hour drive from Anchorage and 4,500 miles from the bright lights of Broadway, is something of a miracle.

Actually, mountain-ringed, rough-and-tumble Valdez has been quietly pulling off theatrical miracles since 1992, when the Prince William Sound Community College Theatre Conference was born.

Every summer since then, the tiny college has vigorously paid tribute to American theater's most respected established playwrights and most promising younger stage directors. And it has given less-accomplished dramatists a chance to mingle with the greats and hear their own plays recited and critiqued.

Arthur Miller, now in his 80s, made the trek to Valdez in 1996 to pick up his Last Frontier Playwright Award. Terrence McNally came up last year. Broadway veterans Robert Anderson ("Tea and Sympathy") and Lanford Wilson ("Tally's Folly") also have been feted.

And presiding over the entire event (though he did from it afar this year, because he has a new play opening in London) is three-time Pulitzer winner Edward Albee, the first dramatist to be honored at the Valdez conference, and now its namesake and artistic overseer.

An unlikely theater mecca

So how does a far-flung hamlet famous for its fish catches, boisterous taverns, petroleum pipeline, and close proximity to the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, turn itself into a folksy-glitzy theater mecca once a year?

Why do writers of Wilson's stature endure quirky weather and rough travel to get here?

And why is this off-the-beaten-path event supported by several major oil companies, and eagerly attended by the governor of Alaska?

Well, there's the gorgeous wrap-around scenery of mountains, glaciers and crystal-blue waters as bait. And the fresh salmon and halibut.

There's also the chance to rub elbows and talk shop with the likes of Lindo, Joyce, Oscar-winning actress Patricia O'Neal, hot scriptwriter Douglas Carter Beane (all guests at this summer's conclave), and with noted director Marshall W. Mason, founder of the conference's Last Frontier Directing Award. (This year it went to a gifted Off-Broadway artist, Mark Brokaw.)

But the main reason why Valdez is even a faint dot on the national theater map is the persistence of Jo Ann C. "Jody" McDowell, president of the Prince William Sound Community College.

"Jody's full of energy and enthusiasm, and she can pick my pocket faster than anyone I know," declares Bill Malone, president of Alyeska Alaska Pipeline Service Co., one of the event's chief funders.

"She's a weather system all on her own," remarked Alaska's Gov. Tony Knowles, who flew in by helicopter to present the Edward Albee Playwrighting Award to Wilson this year.

Wilson calls McDowell "indomitable and inimitable." And the drama-loving college president, a recent transplant to Alaska, jokes that Valdez locals think of her as "that name-dropping wacko woman from Texas."

A vivacious, fast-talking dynamo in her early 50s, whose elegant couture suits contrast vividly with the unofficial Valdez uniform of jeans and parkas, McDowell formerly ran a community college in Independence, Kan., that hosts the annual William Inge Theatre Festival.

In a "mid-life crisis moment" she moved to Valdez to manage its struggling community college. McDowell quickly bolstered the institution by offering Alyeska workers the federally mandated environmental training they require. And she saw her new home as the perfect site for a theater summit.

"There's no movies here, no shopping, no malls," McDowell tells you. "We have breathtaking beauty here, yet we're world-famous because of the oil spill. I just thought we could use something like this, and I got a few small grants to try it."

"The town needed a touch of class badly," notes Anchorage Daily News arts editor Mike Dunham. Valdez politicians and merchants agreed, donating lodging, food, parties and cruises for the affair. Other locals signed on as volunteers.

Eager for Valdez to be seen as something other than the oil-spill capitol of America, Alyeska, ARCO, British Petroleum and Yukon Pacific (a consortium advocating a natural gas pipeline in Alaska) pitched in with cash. (The only major oil firm in Valdez not involved is Exxon.)

Working "my world-class Rolodex," McDowell begged old chum Edward Albee to participate in the initial 1992 conference. She reports, "Edward came reluctantly, but fell in love with the place."

A dedicated mentor and teacher, the author of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" lent the event his name and clout on two conditions: He chooses each year's playwright-honoree, and the conference develops new writers along with honoring famous ones.

This summer, at what is now called the Edward Albee Theatre Conference, 48 playwrights received readings and advice, and competed for a top new-play prize of $2,500, provided by Yukon Pacific.

Chicago and New York scribes made the trip on their own dime, as did Tom O'Connell of Seattle and Bellingham's Jakob Holder

About half the hopeful writers were native and immigrant Alaskans, including Anchorage author Kim M. Rich. Rich hopes the statewide focus won't dissipate as the still-folksy conference grows and gets slicker.

"This is really inspirational for us because we live in communities that are far away from each other, and you can get very isolated," she reflected. "This brings Alaskan theater people together, and it brings the rest of the world to us, too."

Doug Stewart, a dashing young bush pilot who looks like he stepped out of the TV sitcom "Wings," also participated. A resident of far-north Nome, Stewart began writing plays because "winters in Nome can be pretty brutal, and I got tired of watching sports on TV."

Well-known New York dramatist ("As Is") William Hoffman, one of the play judges, got a kick out of Stewart's farcical comedy,"Intimate Secrets." Enthuses Hoffman, "I find this the wildest, most interesting playwright's conference in existence. The quality of the work here is staggeringly high."

Adding celebrity clout

The conference also featured performances by several Alaskan troupes, including Juneau's Perseverance Theatre (the state's only professional troupe). But the major draws for the more than 500 people attending the weeklong gathering were the celebrity guests - especially Wilson.

A product of inner-city Pittsburgh and a controversial champion of culturally specific black theater, the owlish, affable Wilson seemed right at home in a frontier town with only a few paved streets and just two permanent black residents.

In Valdez with his wife, Constanza Romero, and his two daughters (the toddler Azula and 28-year old Sakina), Wilson took a pass on the rafting trips and boat rides. But he dropped in on play readings and chatted for hours with novice writers. In a relaxed public chat he also recited some of his poetry, and said of his plays, "I try to express through the life I know best the things that are common to all cultures."

And Wilson seized the rare chance to act. In an off-the-cuff reading of his "Two Trains Running," a play Seattle Repertory Theatre helped introduce, Wilson deftly mastered his script's urban-poetic cadences and striving characters - prompting suggestions he take up a second career.

And he gave a thrill to several younger black artists who performed alongside him, including Pittsburgh acting student Derrick Sanders.

"Man, here I am in beautiful Alaska with August Wilson, who is like my hero," Sanders marveled. "I have to keep pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming."

The conference's most memorable event, though, was that sampler of scenes from Wilson's play cycle. It began with an excerpt from his prize-winning debut Broadway hit, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" (set in the 1920s). And it culminated with the first public reading anywhere of Wilson's newest, 1980's-themed script, "King Hedley II."

Beaming with pleasure, the author looked on as the stunningly intense Lindo and expressive Joyce enacted a pivotal encounter from his Broadway hit "Fences."

Afterward was a reception where movie stars, theater folk and townies mixed easily with oil brass and Gov. Knowles ("the only governor who gives a speech in a $2,000 suit and hiking boots," cracked one Alaskan).

Over white wine and jumbo Alaskan shrimp, an Anchorage playwright wondered how long the conference could remain one of Alaska's best-kept secrets.

"It has great potential for growth," she mused."I just hope it doesn't change too much.