Dowling departs the Guthrie with career-launching play

When Sean O'Casey's classic play "Juno and the Paycock" opens at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis tonight, it will be the final play in the 20-year tenure of Artistic Director Joe Dowling.

Appropriately enough, Dowling is directing the production, a play of great personal importance to him because it launched his international career.

"Well, it's the play that brought me to America," he said.

Indeed, Dowling's 1986 production of "Juno and the Paycock" at the Gate Theatre in Dublin was so successful that it eventually opened on Broadway.

"And that got the kind of reviews that one's mother might write," Dowling said. "Just incredible. Raves, raves, raves, and it began people's interest in me directing in the states, and finally [led to] the invitation to run the Guthrie. So it felt to me a very appropriate completion of the circle, that 'Juno and the Paycock' would be the final play."

"Juno and the Paycock" is the story of the Boyles, an Irish family living in the 1920s through the Irish Civil War. It follows Juno and her blowhard husband, the Captain, who likes to sit in the pub and tell tall tales.

"Ah, them was days, Joxer, them was days," he tells a drinking buddy. "Nothing was too hot nor too heavy for me then. Sailing from the Gulf of Mexico to the Antonartic Ocean. I seen things. I seen things Joxer that no mortal man should speak about that knows his catechism."

At one point, Dowling decided that he had directed "Juno" so much that he should never do so again. But he said he loves the play, which is about life under terrible poverty and deprivation, and how people rise above the pain.

"O'Casey has found a way, in a very, very Irish way of depicting that on stage and not making it depressing," Dowling said. "There's a huge amount of humor in the show; there's a real feeling of optimism and hope. Unfortunately, as life did for so many people, hope is dashed in the end, but it's there."

"Juno and the Paycock" is the third show in a row Dowling has directed as he wraps up at the Guthrie. He began with Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," followed by Arthur Miller's "The Crucible."

"I think and you know, hopefully not boastfully, 'The Crucible' was among the best things I have done since I came here," Dowling said. "I thought we had the perfect cast. Our creative team created an amazing visual treat. It was very hard work, because it is a big play with a lot of meat and a lot of energy required, but it was so satisfying."

Much of Dowling's job over the last 20 years has been looking to the future: arranging seasons and building the Guthrie's three-theater complex on the banks of the Mississippi River. Because he steps down in late June, he has been able to set aside administrative work and focus on plays.

"So the joy of actually being engaged in the art, as opposed to having all the other things that go with this job has actually been wonderful," he said. "I've had a great six months."

Dowling leaves a real legacy: a new theater, a thriving company with a series of balanced budgets, and a sound national reputation. He has been through tough times, struggling to raise money to expand the Guthrie and enduring controversies over the Guthrie's place in the local theater ecosystem.

But Dowling feels good about what he has been able to accomplish.

"There's been a lot of talk about the Guthrie in terms of the relationships with other theaters [and] the relationships with minorities, and they are all valid questions and they all should be asked," he said. "But the Guthrie, in my time, has always believed that we as a leader have to both encourage the growth of other companies and help those companies when we can, and the way of doing that in this building has been to invite them in to play their work here."

After he leaves the Guthrie, Dowling will be busy. He already has other directing gigs lined up and hopes to write a book. He'll be celebrated at "All the World's a Stage," a June 6 gala at the Guthrie.

Although he is not overly sentimental about the end of his stewardship of the Guthrie, one recent moment gave Dowling pause. It came last weekend, during the last performance of "The Crucible."

"And watching that play unfold, and watching that curtain call where all those brilliant actors came out on stage, I have a serious moment of contemplation, shall we say, and an emotional moment, definitely for me," he said. "Because it's the last time I will direct on that thrust stage which of course we recreated, the original thrust stage that's such a special part of the Guthrie experience."