Theater-loving couple help Cygnet Theatre get new plays to The Finish Line

Later this month, Cygnet Theatre will open its annual  The Finish Line new play festival in its permanent new home: The Dottie Studio Theater at The Joan theater complex in San Diego’s Arts District Liberty Station.

Yet while The Joan and the festival’s three play scripts being presented Nov. 14 and 15 are new, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed in the 14 years since the festival was born: Its underwriters — Bill and Judy Garrett.

The longtime San Diego couple, who have been loyal Cygnet theater-goers since the company’s very first season in 2003, have funded the weeklong play development program from day one because they share a passion for cutting-edge new work presented in intimate settings.

“I kind of equate it to SeaWorld, where you sit up front and get splashed,” Judy Garrett said, in an interview with her husband at Cygnet’s The Joan on Oct. 24.  “In a small theater, you sit up close and you really feel like you’re part of the action. You get to know the actors and see the facial expressions and all the things you can’t do in a 1,000-seat balcony space.”

The Garretts are true theaterphiles. They’re season subscribers at six San Diego theater companies and they travel every year to see the latest shows on Broadway and in London’s West End, sometimes seeing up to 10 shows a week. While they do attend shows at the county’s two biggest theaters, The Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse, they’re just as enthusiastic about the small theaters they support, including Diversionary Theatre, Chalk Circle Collective and Loud Fridge Theatre Group.

Bill Garrett said one of the things he enjoys most about attending theater is being among the first audience members to ever experience the birth of  new script.

“New plays have always fascinated me because they were trying things. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t,” he said. “But what I realized was that there are so many playwrights out there that never get any of their plays produced. That’s what got us interested in doing something here with The Finish Line. We wanted to support playwrights and give them the opportunity to get a play they were really very interested in but hadn’t been able to push it over the line.”

Crossing The Finish Line

Sean Murray, Cygnet’s founding artistic director, said that when he and Bill Schmidt, Cygnet’s executive director, decided to launch their own new play festival years ago, they wanted to make it unique from the play festivals at other local theaters.

“So we came up with this idea that playwrights sometimes have a script that they stopped working on and they moved on,” Murray said. “The Finish Line gives them a chance to go back and look at the script, and we can give them the resources to try to finish it.”

With the support of the Garretts and a county grant, Cygnet’s new play festival, originally named Playwrights in Process, launched in November 2012, featuring four new plays by San Diego playwrights. A couple years later, San Diego’s Playwrights Project came on board as a co-producer.

In 2016, the festival was renamed in honor of its sole sponsors as The Finish Line: A Bill and Judy Garrett Commission. Directed by Cygnet’s then-associate artistic director Rob Lutfy, The Finish Line began inviting both San Diego and national playwrights.

Then in 2021, Cygnet partnered with UC San Diego’s just-launched MFA Playwriting Program, headed by Naomi Iizuka. Today, The Finish Line program — now produced by Cygnet artistic associate and casting director Kian Kline-Chilton — commissions up to two plays by UCSD second-year MFA candidates each year,  as well as one play by a San Diego playwright.

Bill Garrett said he and his wife feel it’s very important that the festival keep its focus on emerging San Diego voices.

“Not only do we have this criteria for who the playwrights would be, but we also say that everybody working on it are San Diego people,” he said. “We are huge supporters of the San Diego theater community and recognize the huge amount of talent that this community has. It has to be one of the best theater cities in the United States. In our minds, there’s no question about that.”

Although the Garretts declined to quantify the amount of their annual grant for The Finish Line, they did say they cover 100 percent of the festival’s expenses, which have doubled over the years. This includes financial support for the playwrights, actors, director and dramaturge; scenic and costume designers who create a “dream design” for a future production; rehearsal space; public readings; public forums, and more.

Murray said that besides helping playwrights develop new scripts, The Finish Line has also become a training ground for helping playwrights understand the current financial realities of the theater business. With rising production costs and a decline in federal grants and philanthropic giving, the large-cast, multi-scene plays from years past are no longer affordable for most theaters to produce.

Despite the belt-tightening under way in the theater industry, Cygnet’s move into The Joan has allowed the company more freedom to develop new scripts because The Joan complex has two stages — the smaller Dottie studio space and the larger Clayes proscenium theater — compared to just one stage at Cygnet’s former homes in Rolando and Old Town.

“If you only have the one space, it has to succeed in order for the business to continue,” Murray said. “Here, we’re able to do something riskier in the studio and hopefully something in or around it at the Clayes that can help pay for it.”

Murray said that Cygnet owes a great debt to the Garretts, and that gratitude is shared.

“They’ve been there not just as supporters but as friends for a very long time,” Murray said. “I also know that we’re not the only theater that have that affection for them. They’re pretty integral to a lot of different companies, in terms of trying to promote us to get new work on the stage and support artists and writers.”

A shared passion

Bill and Judy Garrett met at a welcoming dance in their senior year at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1965. While in college, he took an acting class and she attended many student theater performances. But their shared passion for theater wouldn’t bloom until many years later.

When Bill graduated from UW in 1966, the Vietnam War was raging. He joined the Army’s intelligence division and they spent 18 months living abroad in Germany. When they returned to the U.S., they spent five years in Tucson, Arizona, then later relocated to Pasadena and then Anaheim.

Judy, with a master’s degree in urban planning, spent most of her career in grant administration and grant-writing. Bill earned masters degrees in urban planning and public administration and transitioned from serving as a planning consultant to working in city government. He spent 20 years with the city of Corona, rising from the role of senior planner to city manager. Then in 1996, they moved to El Cajon where he served as city manager for eight years until he retired in 2005.

After retiring, Bill spent 16 years as a trustee for the Grossmont Community College District and Judy served for seven years on the Cuyamaca College and Grossmont College Foundations. Today she serves on La Jolla Playhouse’s board of directors.

The Garretts discovered Cygnet Theatre in 2003, when they read a favorable review of its very first production, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” at its original 165-seat theater in the Rolando neighborhood near San Diego State University. Intrigued by the founders’ risk-taking debut, the Garretts bought tickets to the company’s second production, the one-man comedy “Fully Committed,” and they were hooked.

The Garretts said it has been a great joy over the years having the opportunity to go behind the scenes to watch the play development process and follow the careers of playwrights whose work has been featured in The Finish Line.

One of their favorite experiences has been getting to know playwright Keiko Green, whose eerie drama “Sharon” was developed in The Finish Line in 2021 (which was presented via Zoom due to COVID lockdown restrictions). Twoyears later, “Sharon” made its world premiere as a Cygnet season production. The play was a big hit with Cygnet audiences and Green has gone on to many other commissions at theaters around the country.

“We like to say we put Keiko on the map, at least I jokingly tell her that,” Bill Garrett said, with a laugh. “We’re just teasing, but we think the world of her and her plays.”

A few of the Garretts’ other favorite plays to emerge from the festival over the years are: Nathan Alan Davis’s “The Wind and the Breeze,” introduced in the 2016 festival and later produced by Cygnet in its 2018 world premiere, and San Diego playwright Christian St. Croix’s “We Are the Forgotten Beasts” in 2023.

They also enjoyed meeting nationally renowned playwright Kate Hamill, whose “The Prostitute Play” debuted at The Finish Line in 2019, then made its world premiere at Cygnet in 2023 under the revised name “The Little Fellow (or — The Queen of Tarts Tells All).”

Some of the San Diego playwrights whose work as been produced in The Finish Line over the years are Tim West, Lance Arthur Smith, Rachael VanWormer, Allan Havis, Thelma Virata de Castro, Paul-David Halem, Mike Sears, Herbert Siguenza, Blake McCarty and many others.

Judy Garrett said she and her husband have also enjoyed meeting the UCSD MFA candidates.

“They’re all very supportive of each other and genuinely appreciative of the fact that someone in the community takes an interest in what they’re doing and wants to see their work,” she said.

The Finish Line: A Bill and Judy Garrett Commission

“Right Hand Left Hand” by Jonah Gercke: The play takes place over a hot summer weekend in Brooklyn where non-binary journalist David is caught up in the cultural tensions that flare up between their Israeli bosses and their Palestinian friends who are getting married across town. 7 p.m. Nov. 14.

“Martini” by Katie Do: It’s about a trio of women falling in and out of friendship with each other over many decades. The play explores friendship under the tension of personal politics, the magic of platonic love, and the reckoning of self in the wake of secrets told too late. 3 p.m. Nov. 15.

“Los Feliz” by Christopher Oscar Peña: When a rising Los Angeles filmmaker’s project bends to studio pressure, his collaborator and closest friend challenges what success really means. Moving from a film set to a queer bar and beyond, it’s a play about art, race, and the cost of being seen. 6 p.m. Nov. 15.

Where: Dottie Studio Theater at Cygnet Theatre’s The Joan, 2880 Roosevelt Road, San Diego

Tickets: Free, but reservations required. Reception and talkback follows each reading.

Phone: 619-337-1525

Reservations: cygnettheatre.org/show/upcoming-shows/the-finish-line