Fall theater preview: Tampa Bay stage companies offer more shows than ever
September 18, 2015 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
The tide is rising for Tampa Bay area theater companies. We have more professional venues offering more plays than in years past.
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Companies that put down roots several years ago, such as Freefall and Tampa Repertory, are increasing their stride and taking bigger risks with each new season. A Simple Theatre, founded in 2011, has continued to expand in scope and reach new audiences after finding a home at Eckerd College in 2013.
Meanwhile, American Stage has launched its first season with a new producing artistic director. Here’s a look at what several professional theaters in the area have in store.
New directions for American Stage
Tampa Bay’s longest-running nonprofit professional theater company found itself at a crossroads with the departure of its artistic director. The board chose Stephanie Gularte, a founding artistic director of Capital Stage Company in Sacramento, Calif., for more than a decade, to lead the company.
As producing artistic director, Gularte, 44, combines business and artistic leadership into one role. It suits the background of a woman who grew up in northern California working in her father’s restaurants, and who was managing a pizza shop at age 16.
A political science and theater major at California State University, Sacramento, Gularte worked as an actor for several years out of college. But she found a niche in producing.
“I had been around that kind of culture of entrepreneurial focus all my life,” she said, “so producing was an opportunity to bring those skills and that background into play.”
The plays selected by an interim artistic director for this year’s “season of awakenings” bring a variety of perspectives to the stage.
Gularte will direct the season opener, Intimate Apparel (now playing through Oct. 11). Set in New York in 1905, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning play follows the journey of Esther, an African-American lingerie seamstress in the city’s bordello district.
Jitney, by August Wilson (Jan. 20-Feb. 21), explores an unlicensed taxi business in a Pittsburgh African-American community in the 1970s. 4000 Miles (March 16-April 10), a 2013 Pulitzer finalist by Amy Herzog, explores the clash between unlikely roommates, a 91-year-old woman and her grandson. The season also features The 39 Steps (Nov. 18-Dec. 13), A Tale of Two Cities (June 1-26) and Monty Python’s Spamalot (April 13-May 8), and concludes with The Pitmen Painters, based on the true story of British miners who became an art world sensation (July 20-Aug. 14).
Because a majority of the characters in Intimate Apparel are black, Gularte originally sought out a female African-American director, who was unavailable.
She decided to direct the show herself, in part because well-known director Kate Whoriskey, who is white, has worked closely with playwright Nottage and directed several of her plays, including the 2003 premiere of Intimate Apparel.
“I wouldn’t make the same kind of decision with an August Wilson play because I know that his perspective would be that a black man needs to tell these stories, it needs to be from that perspective,” said Gularte. “Lynn Nottage is from a different generation; her themes are somewhat broader.”
The theater was founded in 1977 and was for decades the only professional theater in town. While envelope-pushing productions at newer theaters have gotten attention in recent years, don’t expect American Stage to change its relatively traditional image overnight.
“It’s harder for an organization that’s been around for a long time to be thought of as innovative, just for the fact that you’ve been around for decades,” said Gularte. “But, too, it goes back to what one person means by ‘innovative’ and what another person needs and wants. That’s a healthy thing for that spectrum to exist. And the thing that I think is a mistake is if we try — or for any business, but certainly for an arts organization — try to be everything for everyone.”
A lively mix at the Straz
On a weekend night, the five interconnected theaters at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts seem to almost breathe, like some concrete-shelled organism. And while the largest performing arts center in the southeast United States might not technically be alive, it is growing.
Notes on the blueprints for a master plan for expansion have been sent back to architects. The Straz is adding outdoor art on its 9 acres and rehearsal space inside. The new direction should take shape by mid October, said Judy Lisi, the Straz’s president and chief executive officer.
“We try to bring programming that will attract different sectors of our community,” Lisi said. “What is that one thing that will attract someone?”
For starters, there’s a string of Broadway musicals totaling 13 weeks. Once (Sept. 22-27), about a Dublin street musician and the power of song, kicks off the season, with A Gentleman’s Guide to Love Murder (Oct. 20-25), Newsies (Nov. 10-15), Kinky Boots (Dec. 1-6) and The Sound of Music (Dec. 22-27) rounding out 2015.
Like the new restaurant in the works, the Straz is always adding items to the performing arts menu. This season, for example, you can catch Cosi Fan Tutti (Feb. 19 and 21) or Don Giovanni (April 8 and 10), both operas by Mozart; or take in The Intergalactic Nemesis: Target Earth — A Live-Action Graphic Novel (Jan. 28), a futuristic comic book vision come to life. By offering up something for almost everyone, the Straz hopes to start long-lasting relationships with the arts.
“We always feel that we are missionaries,” said Lisi, a retired opera singer. “‘Try this. You might find something that can expand your life.’”
Freefall: night of the living theater
Since it opened in 2008, Freefall Theatre has earned a reputation for putting its own stamp on existing plays. The Importance of Being Earnest With Zombies (Oct. 3-Nov. 1), an adaptation by founding artistic director Eric Davis of the Oscar Wilde play, will be no exception.
Wilde’s farcical take on Victorian society translates well to the present, Davis said, since “the things that are really held up as being of importance are those things that are trivial in life.”
In his adaptation, Davis has overlaid an already twisting plot with a zombie plague. “The metaphor of hordes of people moving without any mood or thought or being is always relevant,” said Davis.
Expect similar daring with Freefall’s remaining six productions, which include Our Town (Jan. 16-Feb. 14), the apocalyptic Mr. Burns — a Post-Electric Play (April 30-May 22) and Gilbert Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (Aug. 6-Sept. 4).
Stageworks: new plays, fresh takes
One of the most critical tasks facing directors lies in selecting the next season’s fare.
For Karla Hartley, the producing artistic director at Stageworks Theatre and an adjunct theater professor at the University of Tampa, getting the right mix comes first.
“On the surface, you’ve got the slots you want to fill,” said Hartley. “A comedy, a little drama, a musical. But I think that subconsciously, at the end of that choosing period, you can see a through line from here to there. And I love that.”
That line is another word for “theme,” and directors like Hartley say it often emerges in retrospect. The common denominator this year, she said, is fear.
In Lights Rise on Grace (Oct. 8-25), a world premiere by Chad Beckim supported by the National New Play Network, the daughter of Chinese immigrants fears breaking free of her family, which tells her she should not love the young black man she loves. The plays at Stageworks include nods to older works with This Wonderful Life (Dec. 3-20), In the Blood (based loosely on The Scarlet Letter, Feb. 5-21) and Inherit the Wind (March 10-27). It closes with 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, a play set at the height of the 1950s red scare.
A Tampa native who got her first working role in 1987, Hartley remembers a downtown that virtually shut down after dark.
“Before the Straz and more condos, no one lived in downtown Tampa,” she said. “It’s an exciting time.”
Jobsite: a singular vision matures
Jobsite Theater started in resentment.
In 1999, the year David Jenkins and four friends started putting on productions at the Silver Meteor Gallery, there weren’t a lot of plays filled with characters in their mid 20s. Nor did the plot lines seem relevant to Jenkins and the friends with whom he founded the company.
“We were five guys who wanted to do theater,” said Jenkins, 41. “We said, ‘What if we started producing shows that have characters like us?’ “
They aimed for “politically and socially relevant theater,” as Jenkins put it, and people came. In 2003, Jobsite moved its productions to the Shimberg Playhouse at the Straz. Last year, with backing from the Straz organization, Jobsite moved to the larger Jaeb Theater for the spoof Return to the Forbidden Planet.
Some of those cast members will return this year for Silence! The Musical — The Unauthorized Parody of Silence of the Lambs.
“We’re super excited about that,” said Jenkins, who added that Jobsite is one of three companies in the nation given the rights to the cult musical.
The partnership with the Straz for Silence! is just one example of Jobsite’s growth and gradual shedding of an “edgy” label they once embraced.
“As we’ve grayed,” Jenkins said, “we’re not five guys anymore and we’re not in our mid 20s. We’ve got women now, and what we offer is reflective of that. Shakespeare is appearing annually at the Shimberg; we’re doing Antony and Cleopatra (April 29-May 22). I don’t think you can call Shakespeare edgy.”
The theater has a fan in celebrated playwright Israel Horovitz, who last year emailed Jenkins offering to work together. The author of more than 70 plays and several movies (including Author! Author! starring Al Pacino) liked what he saw in Jobsite and directed a staged reading in February for his play Sins of the Mother.
Horovitz returns this year for a full production of his play Lebensraum (Jan. 8-31), directed by Jenkins, in which a German chancellor tries to make up for the past by inviting 6 million Jews to Germany with promises of citizenship and jobs.
Jobsite’s season has opened with Almost an Evening (through Oct. 4), three shorts by Ethan Coen set in the afterlife.
A new home for Tampa Repertory
In 2011, C. David Frankel noticed a drain of actors, stage managers and set designers leaving the Tampa Bay area. So he and a handful of colleagues (including his wife, Connie LaMarca-Frankel) established the Tampa Repertory Theatre in an attempt to expand the repertoire for local talent.
“There wasn’t enough work,” said Frankel, Tampa Repertory’s artistic director and a theater professor at the University of South Florida. “Ours was a modest contribution to solidify growth in Tampa and raise consciousness.”
Tampa Repertory didn’t have a home, performing at Hillsborough Community College’s Ybor City campus. It still doesn’t, but this year the theater is moving operations to two new locations.
Lillian Hellman’s groundbreaking 1934 drama, The Children’s Hour (through Oct. 4), and a new play, Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson (May 5-22), will be held at the Smith Black Box Theater at Tampa Preparatory School. Sam Shepard’s True West (Jan. 7-24) and Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (Jan. 7-24) will run at the University of South Florida.
The four plays make up the season, themed “American Visions.”
“We believe part of our mission is to focus on American classics, both known and unknown,” said Frankel.
With a $20 ticket price for adults, Tampa Repertory offers one of the cheapest nights out for professional theater.
The theater has cast a few Tampa Prep students in The Children’s Hour and will conduct occasional master acting classes for students, Frankel said.
Theater stripped down
Four years ago, Gavin Hawk was directing staged readings at Sarasota’s Banyan Theater Company. He was struck by a realization.
“The staged readings were almost as popular as our productions are and didn’t require as much money,” said Hawk. Along with colleagues Roxanne Fay and Meg Heimstead, he founded A Simple Theatre, what Hawk calls “theater stripped down to its bare essentials.”
Inspired by a resurgence of interest in 1940s radio plays, A Simple Theatre places actors in a row on the stage, their scripts on music stands. Performances might be accompanied by live music, but the only movement you’ll see is actors standing to read their lines.
The theater started in 2011 at the Studio@620, but has since moved to Eckerd College, where Hawk is a professor. The reader’s theater format means performances can be held anywhere, and in inventive ways. This season, A Simple Theatre will do The Glass Menagerie (Nov. 17) at the Duncan McClellan Gallery, which showcases glass artists.
A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney (Feb. 16) will be performed at the Dalí Museum, and Bent (March 15), a play about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, will be held at the Florida Holocaust Museum.
The season starts Monday with A Very Brady Fundraiser, a parody reading of an episode from The Brady Bunch. St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman will play Mike Brady. Times chief executive officer Paul Tash and St. Petersburg City Council member Leslie Curran will play Brady family members. The event starts at 7 p.m. Monday at the James Center at Eckerd College.
Contact Andrew Meacham at ameacham@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2248. Follow @torch437.
