But not before it opens here Wednesday night at the Arden Theatre Company.
How the Arden happens to be staging a new play now scheduled for Broadway, where power and big-money stakes could kill all other rights to it, isn't just a matter of who you know - although that's part of it.
Clybourne Park's author, Bruce Norris - also sometimes an actor (on Broadway, Biloxi Blues, in film, the stuttering teacher of The Sixth Sense) - has in the past worked closely with Ed Sobel, the Arden's associate artistic director who is directing the play here. In another connection, Norris and the Arden's leader, Terrence J. Nolen, both went to Northwestern University; Norris' Los Angeles roommate was Nolen's at another point.
Back then, "Bruce used to say he acted to pay the bills, so that he could write," Nolen remembers. Now Norris, 51, can write, it seems, whatever he likes - and he is about to hide out in Wyoming at a writers' retreat to finish two commissioned plays he's working on; he's just completed a third, for Lincoln Center.
As any artistic director will tell you, nailing down new plays before they're on the fast track takes more than connections. It's also about luck, and being electrified by a script. Bidding rights come into the picture, and so does timing; if your theater company is already committed to a season, another company in town may grab the play.
