Everyone from Tiny Tim to the Wicked Witch of the West has walked across its stage at one point in the past four decades, but there are many more characters still to come.

Syracuse Stage, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this summer, started its 2013-2014 season Wednesday with the premiere of “Blithe Spirit.” As part of an anniversary gala in June, Joe Whelan, the publications director, published “Syracuse Stage 40 (Celebrating 40 Seasons),” a book documenting the theater company’s past. While it was meant to revel in the theater’s rich history, Jeff Woodward, the managing director, is more concerned about the company’s future.

“Part of our goal is to just keep pushing to the next step,” he said, “and not to compromise our standards and mission while we do it.”

As the managing director, Woodward said his most important responsibility is to support the vision of the artistic director. This season, that meant generating the most exciting set of plays possible. Tim Bond, artistic director for six seasons and counting, was unavailable to comment as he has been preparing for the opening show, but Whelan said the process doesn’t adhere to a set of rules, and consequently changes year-to-year.

The goal remains the same, though: To organize a season that generates excitement among patrons.

The Stage is doing that this year by producing six plays, three of which are new to Syracuse. These include “Scorched” – Oct. 23 through Nov. 10 –, “The Whipping Man” – Jan. 29 through Feb. 16 – and “Chinglish” – Feb. 26 through March 16. But there are also some traditional shows that the Stage has relied on each season, like a family-oriented play during the holidays, Whelan said — this winter’s show is “A Christmas Carol” – Nov. 23 through Dec. 29.

“The Glass Menagerie” — April 2-27 — and the season-opener “Blithe Spirit,” a comedy about a novelist who, in the face of writer’s block, holds a séance to stir inspiration for his next story, complete the list.

“Like any theater, we owe a debt to classic tales,” Whelan said. “We owe a debt to revisit them and see if they speak to our age as well.”

The challenge in making the artistic director’s vision a reality is finding the resources to do so, Woodward said. For that, the theater needs to attract as large of an audience as possible. During a time when the performing arts have generally struggled financially, Woodward said the Stage has adopted an innovative set of programs to boost community engagement.

To accommodate the visually disabled — a daunting task in such an aesthetically focused field as theater — the Stage designates certain performances during each production to be equipped with a headset and a prerecorded narration of the show. Detailed set and costume descriptions and commentary on the actors’ actions allow even those who can’t see the opportunity to experience the theater as it should be, Woodward said. And for the hearing impaired, two performances of every play are open captioned: Dialogue is run across a screen like subtitles during a movie.

The Stage’s most engaging relationship with the community, however, has been with Syracuse University, Whelan said.

According to Whelan’s book, Syracuse Stage owes its 40 seasons to the university. The Stage, located at 820 E. Genesee St., has been affiliated with SU since 1974, when SU pulled it from the ashes of what was the failed Syracuse Repertory Theater, which closed because of its expensive business model: The theater operated as an acting company, meaning there was a staff of actors who were always paid, regardless of whether they were in the current play.

“What happened, though, was that it was successful enough that everybody began to see the value of having a theater company in Syracuse,” Whelan said. “That’s when the Stage and Syracuse came together because they could reduce the inherent conflicts if they had one person running both the drama department and the theater.”

With time, employees at the Stage have been integrated into SU’s drama department. Tim Bond is its artistic director and Whelan is a part-time instructor. Whelan said the professors at the Stage teach mostly in the technical department. Therefore, the lights, stages and costume designs for SU productions are all done by professionals, making them “of the highest quality,” Whelan said. And drama students also have opportunities to design, produce and act in Stage productions throughout the season.

While the Stage and the drama department work very closely together, they are still separate entities.

“We describe ourselves as kind of a teaching hospital,” Woodward said. “We are joined at the hip with the drama school.”

That guidance and experience has paid off, as the SU drama department was ranked the 20th best in the world this summer by the Hollywood Reporter, among the ranks of The Juilliard School and Carnegie Mellon University. Whelan said SU and the Stage are both in an advantageous position to capitalize off the other’s success moving forward.

Said Whelan: “When you have new energy, new blood, it becomes fun, because there are new ideas and new challenges. You get exposed to a whole new way of working.”

Published on September 18, 2013 at 10:37 pm

Contact Joe: jtinfant@syr.edu | @joeinfantino