Going Public Oskar Eustis on saying goodbye to Trinity BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

So after an unusually long 21-month search to replace George C. Wolfe, the renowned Public Theatre finally chooses Oskar Eustis. This was after tossing around nearly 100 possibilities, ranging from actors such as Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman through every prominent regional artistic director worth his or her subscription base.

In retrospect, the Public picking Eustis, 46, who was prominent among the initial candidates, seems obvious. After all, one way to define what he has done in his 10 years here is to say he’s turned Trinity Repertory Company into a little Public.

Look at his decisions and Trinity’s accomplishments on his watch.

New plays have been an annual season-closer here, with such world premieres as Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home and the commission of Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice. Socially engaged plays, such as the latter, have been a continual offering. Actors and playwrights of color have found a welcome home at Trinity. Yet Eustis has not been averse to staging musicals, under the talented influence of Amanda Dehnert, who takes over as acting artistic director. (Eustis will work half-time in New York and Providence until June.)

Correspondingly, as the pre-eminent non-profit American theater, the Public has earned a reputation for racial diversity that is second to none. The theater has been a hothouse for new plays. The musical A Chorus Line was the first in a series of Public moneymakers to transfer to Broadway, with Bring In ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk and Topdog/Underdog being more recent such successes.

The Free Shakespeare in Central Park program is the Public’s annual gift to New York, and Trinity’s recent production of The Henriad underscored its commitment to that swath of culture. Under Eustis, Trinity has doubled its season subscribers and gotten the books into the black. For his part, Wolfe — who steps back to devote more time to playwriting — leaves overseeing an annual budget of $12 million, in the black but $2 million less than that of founder Joseph Papp in 1990.

Before coming to Providence, Eustis was most prominently known as the seer who commissioned Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, back in the 1980s as head of the Eureka Theater Company in San Francisco. He later directed the world premiere of Part I at the Mark Taper Forum, in Los Angeles — though it was Wolfe who eventually brought it to Broadway, via the Public.

Eustis accomplished a merger of Trinity Conservatory with the Brown University theater program two years ago. A similar deal, announced concurrently with his appointment as artistic director, has been struck with the Public Theater and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Four years ago Eustis made the surprising decision to turn down a prestigious artistic directorship of Yale Repertory Theatre that came with deanship of the Yale School of Drama. New York and the most influential theater in the country has lured Eustis away from Providence as New Haven could not.

On a cell phone on a train platform, on his way to his first day in Manhattan after his new job was announced, Eustis spoke about his decision. Here are excerpts.

Q: You already turned down a plum job once, with Yale. Apparently it’s going to be hard to say good-bye to Trinity.

A: It’s going to be very hard to say good-bye to Trinity. This has been the best decade of my life. I’ve never been happier in a job than I have been at Trinity. I’ve never been happier in a community than I have been in Providence. And leaving, for both Laurie and for myself, has been sort of a heart-wrenching decision. We are confident we’re making the right decision, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re confident that we’ll still feel that way in a couple of years. Because we know we’re giving up something very, very real. And the ultimate calculus was saying that, you know, this is the right thing for me to do professionally. It is the way that I have the most to offer to the world. And life should be about taking on new challenges, not about resting where we’re safe. Particularly at this stage — 10 years from now, I don’t think I’d be up for this.

Q: You’re going from a small pond to not just a big pond, but the ocean. Anyone in that position there at the Public is going to be a target —

A: That’s right.

Q: — as well as appreciated. What’s your thinking about that aspect?

A: Of course, I’ve thought about that incessantly. And what it comes down to is we’re going to find out if I’m the kind of person who can stand being a target. We don’t really know that yet, because I’ve been incredibly well treated at Providence. And I’ve never had this circumstance of really being this prominent a figure in any market where, as I said to Laurie, "If I’m incredibly successful, I will receive more bad press in the first year than I’ve received in the whole rest of my life put together." That just comes with the territory. And I will either be able to handle that well or I won’t. But it seems to me that it’s certainly not appropriate for me to decide in advance that I can’t handle it. I’m going to try to.

Q: Well, your mind must be swimming with new ideas for the Public. Is there anything specific you can say about what you’d like to try there?

A: You know, honestly, they haven’t even let me in the building yet . . . The first thing I’m going to do is try to figure out what’s actually going on there in a lot more detail before I’m generating more ideas. But what I’m sure of is that I feel extremely comfortable with the Public’s mission. It’s a mission I feel like I understand and it’s a mission that I believe in completely. That’s not going to change. The only issue is going to be what shows we do.

Q: When you were a theater student at NYU — we forget about those days — you auditioned before Joseph Papp for a role in a Shakespeare play. If he had jumped up and shouted, "Man, that boy can act!" do you think you would be as satisfied today with as successful a career as an actor?

A: Absolutely not. Besides which, if Joe had done that, it would’ve meant he’d lost his senses, you know. Because I wasn’t any good. Bill, I feel so lucky because I feel like I’m one of those people who has found a career that just genuinely matches who I am. I can’t imagine another career that is more me than this career is, so I just feel incredibly lucky. By the way, it was Henry IV that I was auditioning for 30 years ago.