http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7rY_jZLvJo

However, the potential royalties from a Rep production are going to be astronomical compared to what ArtsWest is most likely paying, so it's possible Dramatists may try to cut the rug out from under them by ceding rights to SRT (in which case, Harrison probably has grounds for a lawsuit - IF he or his board wants to spend valuable income to fight a breach-of-contract battle in court).

But, for the moment the more relevent question would seem to be, "would two consecutive productions of the same play necessarily have a negative impact on either company's box office?"
Although ArtsWest, being the smaller of the two, clearly has more to risk in the event patrons decide to forego their production in favor of the Rep's, my guess is, there isn't going to be so much overlap between the two audiences to cause much significant impact either way.

The reality is, this sort of contiguous programming happens fairly frequently, particularly with works from musical theatre and Shakespearean repertoires: I can recall sometime in the early/mid '90's, when there were something like five separate productions of "West Side Story" scheduled at companies from Olympia to Everett in a nine-month period. Granted that's a pretty broad geographic spread, with little chance of audience overlap, but still, just one example of what can happen.

Also, if the Rep gets the rights from ArtsWest that would make two seasons in a row in which a bigger theater snatched the rights out of the hands of ArtsWest. This years ArtsWest lost the rights to "Journey's End" for a production taking place in NYC.

There is no 'leaving' out in the cold, ArtsWest is already there. Which sucks because it is a fine mid-range theater that is largely ignored by east Seattle yet does good to great work and is a wonderful place to work that pays well without being Equity. It is one of my favorite places to work and it is truly unfair how often it gets sideline for no reason other than it's across a bridge.