Are nonprofit theaters too closely tied to commercial producers?
Decades before he took on the chairmanship of the National Endowment for the Arts, Broadway producer Rocco Landesman approached his friend Robert Brustein about doing a musical at Brustein's artistic home, the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. Brustein liked the idea, and the show, "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," opened there in 1984. It would go on to run for more than 1,000 performances on B…