Offscript - What is new?
Novelty wore a bit thin during the 2004-05 season
If a show has never played Atlanta before, it’s technically “new,” whether it’s a one-of-a-kind world premiere like the Center for Puppetry Arts’ Avanti, Da Vinci! or the award-winning, well-established gay baseball play Take Me Out, staged by Theatre in the Square in the spring.
In the 2004-05 theatrical season, Atlanta playhouses pledged their allegiance to new shows, or at least new-ish ones. The Alliance Theatre tried out two big, Broadway-bound, Southern-themed world premieres - The Color Purple musical and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - and, thanks to a $1.5 million gift from the Kendeda Fund, permanently established its Graduate Playwriting Competition to develop new works. Even the smallest theaters, such as ART Station, Process Theatre and Essential Theatre, gave talented Atlanta playwrights the chance to debut fresh material.
But the season also tested the virtue of novelty at times. Actor’s Express’ world premiere of brain-transplant drama Echoes of Another Man proved a bit emblematic, since it’s hard to remember some of these shows after the fact. Skinwalkers at 7 Stages, Day of the Kings at the Alliance’s Hertz Stage, 8 1/2 x 11: Live and Uncensored at Dad’s Garage - what were they about, again? Despite the plays’ impeccable artistic ambitions, “new” didn’t always equal “important” or even “fun.”
It seems the gap between the thoughtful, high-integrity, “serious” shows and the indiscriminate crowd-pleasers opened wider than ever. One of the biggest stories of the year turned out to be the sheer popularity of touring shows at the 14th Street Playhouse, which demonstrates a new paradigm in local and national theater. In contrast to those huge Broadway-sized “event” musicals that swoop into the Fox Theatre for a week, smaller-scale tours can settle into midsized houses for months at a time. General manager Linda Kerwin says that 400-seat theaters like 14th Street’s mainstage can be more cost-effective - and thus more attractive - for national tours than huge houses like the Fox.
14th Street Playhouse started booking more tours out of necessity. Former tenant Theatrical Outfit moved downtown long ago (opening its spiffy new space, the Balzer Theater, in December) and the New Jomandi, formerly 14th Street’s mainstage anchor, has dropped off the radar. This year’s touring shows have shrewdly catered to niche audiences: young movie geeks for The One-Man Star Wars Trilogy, ladies of a certain age for Menopause the Musical, couples on date night for the stand-up comedy-style Defending the Caveman and, uh, Wills and Graces for Leslie Jordan’s autobiographical Like a Dog on Linoleum.
They’re not exactly innovative shows, all relying on certain degrees of familiarity, from our pop memories of Star Wars to Menopause’s boomer-era musical hits. But they can be astonishingly effective at selling tickets. Kerwin expects Menopause’s run to extend long past its “official” July 30th close date. Caveman comes back before the end of 2005, and Linoleum may make a return engagement in early 2006. In the future, Atlanta companies may have to compete more directly with these kind of shows than they ever did with the Fox Broadway musicals.
That doesn’t mean local theaters should be more frivolous. Some of the most exciting, best attended shows of last season were dark and edgy, like Killer Joe at Actor’s Express and Topdog/Underdog at the Alliance. Atlanta theaters should just beware of being so new that they’re too far ahead of the curve.
LOCALS ONLY
Last season’s vogue for new plays flares up again next week as the sleepy summer months awaken to several locally written world premieres. ART Station artistic director David Thomas presents a new adaptation of Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living, based on NPR commentator Bailey White’s homespun tales, running July 13-Aug. 14. Christian Danley pens The Computer Wore Flat-Soled Pumas, a Disney-spoofing comedy about a dorky kid and a supercomputer, at Dad’s Garage Top Shelf from July 14-23.
Atlanta playwrights turn out in force for The Decalogues, Whole World Theatre’s festival of 12 30-minute plays inspired by the Ten Commandments. A three-evening repertory of four shows apiece, The Decalogues runs July 14-Aug. 20 and features such local writers as Lauren Gunderson, Steven Peace, Robin Seidman, Suehyla El-Attar, Steve Yockey and Marki Shalloe.
ENTRANCE
Atlanta Lyric Theatre, a 26-year-old musical theater company, moves into a new permanent space in October. Called the Byers Studio Theater at the Lyric and named after Ken and Trish Byers (who donated $50,000 to the company), the 125-seat space is located in the Senior Citizens Services Center on Commerce Drive near I-75 at Northside Drive.
The company will continue to occasionally produce big, one-weekend shows at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center (next season includes H.M.S. Pinafore Feb. 3-5), but will use the new space for more intimate musicals with longer runs, beginning with the inaugural show Red, Hot and Cole Oct. 14-30.
EXITS
Alliance Theatre literary manager and local director Megan Monaghan steps down from the Alliance on July 8 to become literary manager of South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif. Also, Shakespeare Tavern managing director Kristin Dunstan has taken a position as director of university marketing for Western Illinois University.