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Our Interview with Stephen Elton, Artistic Director of the Beowulf Alley Theatre Company
Beowulf Alley Theatre Company
Stephen Elton-Artistic Director
Amy Almquist
Interview by Joel Dorr
Joel: This is
Joel and we’re at the Beowulf Alley Theatre Company. We’re in Tucson
with Stephen Elton and Amy Almquist. Well, I’ll just start off with some
basic questions. Who’s idea was it? How did you two get together? How
did this all start?
Stephen: The idea came about - I had been working for some local theatres
around town acting, directing, technical directing and stuff, and there were
some people who are or now who came to me and said, “How would you feel
about starting a new company,” because they knew that I had sort of been
tossing around some ideas, and would I be interested in heading up the company
and that sort of thing. My initial response was, “No,” that I wasn’t
really that interested, but they said, “We’ll support, give you
some financial assistance and help you through the process.” So I said,
“Okay.” And we went through forming the non-profit and coming up
with the name, which was a challenge in itself, a lot harder than I thought
it would be. And sort of formed the theatre. The vision was pure and simple.
I was a film major in college. I sort of stumbled into theatre after I was
out of college by accident, but I really latched onto it as a way to tell
stories because I was just always a storyteller. And I just felt that there
was -- I simply -- All I wanted to do was make theatre that I wanted to see
because I felt that a person 30, 40 years old, that there wasn’t anything
for me. If I went to Arizona Theatre Company, or if I went to the University
of Arizona, I felt it was for someone else, but it wasn’t really for
me. I wanted something that spoke to me, and there were chances here and there
to do those plays, so that was all the vision really was. And not necessarily
selfishly, but I felt that there’s more people like me who not necessarily
are theatre snobs who don’t care about the importance of Shakespeare.
We’re doing this show because it’s important. No, we’re doing
this show because we like it and because it’s good. That’s the only
reason why I felt that we should be doing shows. So that was really the kind
of the initial idea was let’s build a place that, where we pay attention
to details, where it’s not just sort of slap a show together with part-time
actors and kind of put it up. Let’s kind of work hard and -- But also
we have sort of a quirky sort of sense of humor about it like where we don’t
take it, we’re not theatre geeks. We don’t think that the world
sort of begins and ends with theatre. We enjoy it, but we have sort of poked
fun at a lot of the traditions and a lot of the actor things.
Joel: I can relate to that.
Stephen: So that was kind of the combination of wanting to do interesting, innovative material for people like us, but not take the process so terribly serious.
Joel: So, let me state again. I drill down at the
business stuff, so sometimes if it sounds like I’m getting personal in
the business part and you want to go, “It’s none of your business.”
But you say you had some money. Can you be more specific?
Stephen: It was one source. We had one benefactor
who made a commitment to provide a certain amount per month basically steady.
“That I’ll give you this much a month, and that’ll sort of
be your allowance,” type of thing. And initially most of that money went
into savings, and then we did a couple of shows. And then, this is actually
our second property. We rented another property.
Joel: You rented another property?
Stephen: Yeah. We were just –
Joel: So is this a rental or a purchase property?
Stephen: Rental, lease. Six, well it’s like
an 11-year lease on this property. So we had done those -- We had started
renovations and, to make a long story short, had a problem with the landlord
because he had agreed to do certain things to the property that he never did.
And so we eventually just had to get out. So she just had made and continues
to make this monthly donation in a sense.
Joel: So how are you going through with the financial
part of this now? I assume you’re responsible for renovation yourselves?
Stephen: Yeah.
Joel: Is that something that you’re trying to
do on a monthly thing from this money, or have you gone out there to get a
loan or something? Or how are you funding that?
Amy: Well, we have gotten loans, but we did get some
additional support through fund-raising drives and through a trust from another
donor. And so given that we felt like we had the confidence to move forward
with a budget and do a certain kind of renovation on this space. Let’s
just do sort of a backpedal on just a little bit. One of our motivations for
kicking off with a renovation or a theatre space development before we kicked
ourselves off too intensely as a producing company was that in Tucson there’s
an extreme lack of performing space. There are some 40 to 50 companies out
there, theatre companies, small theatre spaces are looking for space, and
there isn’t much space to rent.
Joel: Forty to fifty, really?
Amy: Yeah. Someone says, “I want to do a play.”
So they start a little production company. So they’re sort of on the
books, so to speak. And we just found that we couldn’t find space to
rent. We couldn’t find space to use, and we just felt incredibly fortunate
that we had a benefactress out there who was going to support us and said,
“You know, let’s turn the tables on this thing and let’s start
here, at this ground up. Let’s build this space. By the time we build
it we have a place to completely produce a full season and, quite possibly,
have a space that we could rent out when we’re not using it, which would
give us that, hopefully, a dual source of income.” We thought, “Gosh,
that seems to make a little more business smarts,” than just kind of
hope that someone’s going to show up to a show if I can get a space in
a rinky-dink church basement somewhere.
Stephen: It’s part of that diversification --
because you only do so many shows a year, and you end up with a lot of dead
time in between that you still pay rent. So if you can fill the space when
you’re not performing, when we’re rehearsing and building someone
else is performing, and we have that source of income. And so you don’t
have to have a big month, then a small month, then a big month, then a small
month. You can have big, not so small. You know, so that’s -- You’re
right about the reason to build a facility was number one, there are not facilities,
so what choice do you have; but, secondly, since there are no facilities you
can turn it into your advantage and bring in some revenue.
Joel: Right. That kind of supports the conversations
earlier today just how much they’re bringing in instead of renting the
facility out when they’re not using it days.
Stephen: Uh-huh.
Amy: They’d make a lot of good use out of that
space, and there’s an incredible demand out there.
Joel: It’s amazing how many theatres don’t,
you know?
Stephen: Right.
Joel: From what I’ve seen, many don’t do
anything with their spaces and it just sits there unused. And then they are
wondering why they can’t pay their bills.
Amy: Right. That’s a good observation. And we
know of other small theatre companies in town that are so, they have very
little time to do what they can do in their space because they must keep producing.
They must produce a morning show, a nighttime show, a late night show, a Sunday
afternoon show just to do try to do whatever they can to keep their revenue
in. So this space is constantly being used. So we knew we had an advantage
to –
Stephen: LTW does, what, 14 shows a year?
Amy: Main stage. Right. And it’s conditional
here.
Stephen: Well, combined.
Amy: Oh, combined, yeah.
Stephen: Twelve combined with kid’s shows, and
they’re doing 14 performances.
Joel: 14 different productions?
Stephen: Fourteen different productions, yeah. And
then each production is running for five weeks.
Joel: Fairly short runs.
Stephen: So they’re just -- What they do is they close on a Sunday;
they open a next show on a Friday.
Joel: What is that organization called?
Stephen: Live Theatre Workshop over on Speedway.
They do everything in the round, so there’s no set. And so, and they
basically just have sort of a simple, light plot, and so they just sort of
pump them out. It’s like a factory.
Joel: Hm. Interesting. Well, back to your building
here, how long will the renovation take, do you know?
Stephen: Like four to six weeks is what I’ve
been told.
Joel: Four to six weeks for renovation? From beginning
to end?
Stephen: Yeah.
Joel: Wow.
Stephen: It’s relatively simple in some regards. There’s
not a whole lot of walls to be built. The funny thing, the funny story about
that is our initial plan. We hired an architect. We told him what our budget
was, and apparently he has too broad of an imagination because he finished
the drawings. We bid out the drawings to three contractors, and they came
400 percent over budget.
Joel: Of course.
Stephen: And so we had to go backwards. We’ve
picked one of the contractors and said, “Okay. This is how much money
we have. What can you build?” And they basically just starting removing
things until we hit that mark. And then at that point it had been very simple,
had become more simplified. And so it’s only --
Joel: You did say four to six weeks, right?
Stephen: Yeah. Well, I just talked to the contractor
yesterday, and he said I have a vacation planned in March, and I don’t
plan on missing it. So, okay.
Joel: All right. That’s great. So you’ve
produced -- You guys have been around for is it two years?
Stephen: We were officially formed in 2001 as a corporation
and a non-profit. We did out first show in June of 2002, and then we did another
show in February of 2003. Right?
Amy: Uh-hm.
Joel: Okay. And what kind of following do you guys
have so far?
Amy: In terms of productions itself, it’s a
small following. People have been aware of us.
Joel: What I mean by that is how would you describe -- When I take
a look at the University of Arizona’s theatre program, you got a lot
of blue-haired ladies.
Amy: Oh, I see, so demographically?
Joel: Yeah, so demographically --
Amy: We assume that the future large demographic
-- I mean, I’m assuming with the demographic we’ve had so far as
well -- is probably in that age range. We have a very large snowbird* population
in Tucson, and they tend to be the bulk of the theatre goers in town. But
another area that we’re trying to kind of niche ourselves into is that
many of the theatres have been played to that demographic, and we know that
there’s a wider gap, a wider spread to the demographic. So we’re
hoping to hit people of kind of more of the 40 and up range, even perhaps
younger, 30 and up. So, but generally in Tucson the broad demographic are
the theatre community, college-educated, public radio listener, age 50 to
75.
Joel: How are you as an artistic director -- What
considerations are you going to have to make in choosing your season -- in
going after trying to find new people, and not offend the old people, and
you know.
Stephen: Right. That’s the challenge, and we’ve
had many discussions on that. Basically, you are going to concede a couple
times in the year basically saying, “Okay, we know that this type of
show will work.” Especially in the beginning, we’re a little more
cautious in the beginning because we have to make sure that there is a certain
following, you know? We want to have a year two. We don’t want to have
just one year and say, “That was fun.”
Joel: Right.
Stephen: So we’re picking shows that we know
will have a certain broad appeal, and then we’ll be able to place a couple
shows where we’re -- The whole idea is we want to sort of train the audience
slowly into maybe a little bit more of a narrower focus. So we’re going
to be doing -- The first three shows we have planned are pretty broad appeal:
one farce, one British comedy, and then one American --
Amy: Highly irreverent comedy.
Stephen: Yeah. So, but they’re comedies with
like some substance, you know. We don’t turn out like frivolous, zany
things. We kind of pick stuff that’s got a little bit of a punch to it.
Amy: We’re more contemporary and it’s possibly
something that the people just haven’t seen.
Joel: And in your first season how many shows are
you going to put out?
Stephen: Well, the first season we’re calling,
going to start in April. So the idea is to do two shows in the spring to try
to catch the end of the theatre season. Do a show over the summer, and then
we’ll do our season ticket push for fall of ’05. So we’re trying
to do like a three-show mini package to give people a little sample of what
we do so that when we send our materials out in August, they’ll be, “Oh,
we’ve heard of them.” And here are our offerings. And then we’ll
probably do a sixshow ’05 season Something like that, the traditional
six-show season.
Joel: Okay. So this location you found. Talk to me
about that. Talk to me about where you looked, what happened, you know, that
whole ordeal.
Stephen: Yeah. The funny thing is your number one
limitation is you have to have the right type of building because you need
open space. By the time you find a certain size building, a lot of times they
have pillars, naturally it’s just the way construction works. So it’s
a certain size space, and then the second thing is ceiling height are the
two most important factors and the hardest to find. You’ll find a building
that’s got 10-foot ceilings or something like that. This has 16-foot
ceilings above that suspended ceiling. So that’s -- You’ll go from
building to building to building because you’ll see a space that’s
40, 100 square feet or 5,500 square feet but it’ll have columns down
the middle or it’ll have a 10-foot ceiling.
Joel: What is the square footage of this building?
Stephen: Six thousand. So it’s hard to find
that, just those two elements alone, let alone where it is in town. I mean,
we looked all over. We looked in strip malls. We looked pretty much every
where-- We didn’t limit our search. We just wanted to find the “type”
of space.
Joel: How did you search? I mean, did you just hit
the pavement?
Stephen: Literally, one, we would drive around. We
would pile in a car and we would drive down Fort Lowell* this way and then
up Grant* this way. I would look out the right sides, someone would look out
the left side. We would see a sign; we’d pull in. You could pretty much
tell right away. Write numbers down, and then we would have a real estate
agent that would call and get particulars for us. But the funny thing is the
two buildings we found I basically made the contact myself, this one and the
one we were in before. This had been open for a long time. He couldn’t
rent it. It’s kind of a lot of square footage for a store or something.
So Hugh hadn’t been able to move it and so I contacted him, then it was
-- I’d have say it was a nightmare. I walked in here December 15th of
’04 and -- Amy: In ’03. Stephen: Oh, right, December 15th of ’03
--
Joel: Wow.
Stephen: -- and we signed the lease in June of ’04.
It took six months to negotiate with these people. They’re a family who
ran a business in here for 30 years. Their business closed down, and now they
became landlords, and they don’t really know how to be landlords. They
were asking for a lot of weird things, and we had to negotiate concessions.
They’re going to redo the power. We went back and forth, and I honestly
a couple times I thought it was over because I just -- I was so fed up with
the process, but we had an attorney that was helping and said, “Stick
with it.” A couple more times back and forth, then finally we agreed.
It’s a six-year lease with a five-year extension at our sole option.
Joel: Is your rent, like at the early stages now
one rate, does it increase?
Stephen: I’ll tell you the price per square
footage. His goal was to get $6 a square foot triple net, which means we pay
for, on top of that, we pay for his insurance, any maintenance and his taxes.
And I’ll say that we’re under that. We negotiated under that, but
then at the end of the six-year period I think it goes up to like $7 or $7.50
a square foot.
Joel: Okay. How much is the renovation going to cost?
Stephen: $110 thousand.
Joel: $110,000? Not bad.
Amy: And we also know we’re taking a little
bit of a risk as well by going this route with jumping into the space headfirst
and then sort of building our name afterwards, but I think what we found is
that those people who we know in the press and who know us by reputation and
experiences, artists in the community, they’re starting to tell us that,
“We can’t wait for the story to come out, for the theatre to go.
We believe your theatre company is like the newest thing happening out there.”
So what we’re doing is we’re actually generating a big buzz, and
so we think we might actually get a better following because of the buzz that
we’re generating as opposed to if we’re like, “Okay. We’re
going to do a show in a basement, so somebody please come.”
Joel: Well, I’ve seen theatre companies in San
Diego. I did some of my own work with Blackfriars Theatre and some really
good theatre companies there, but that was the biggest problem is that they
had a home for a while, then they lost it. And then they were over here and
they were over there. And people were like, “I don’t now where in
the hell you guys are.”
Stephen: Well, the business, you know, we’ve
read, our adult education is continuing through the multiple books you can
get, and there’s one of them that --.
Amy: Self-adult education.
Stephen: -- preaches subscriptions. Subscriptions
is the basis of your money as a theatre company because you get it up front,
and subscribers are inherently more accepting of different kinds of shows.
They’re not fickle. Whereas a single ticket person will say, “I’ll
come to that but not that.”
Amy: Or they’ll say, “Oh, you know, I felt
like going tonight, but I don’t think I am going to go tonight,”
because they haven’t bought the ticket yet, whereas a subscriber has.
And if you don’t go, well…”
Stephen: So subscriptions you have to have your own
facility, or you have to have a regular place because subscribers don’t,
are not going to purchase where, “Well, the first show’s going to
be here, and then we’re going to be at the high school, and then we’re
going to be at the park.” That’s -- I think it feels too suspicious
for you to put your money down ahead of time, you know? Whereas if you have
your own facility or the regular place that you perform, the civic center
or whatever, then they say, “Okay. They’re stable, they’re
consistent.”
Joel: Do you guys have parking for this that’s
your own, or is there nearby parking, or…?”
Amy: We don’t have a lot that’s our own.
Street parking is available at night. There is a lot across the street that’s
technically a day-use lot, so we’ll be looking to seeing if that lot
will become available at night. The City broke ground on a new parking structure
a block - is it north? - a block north of here. How many spots?
Stephen: Seven hundred and fifty.
Joel: Wow. That is a huge bonus, huh?
Amy: Yeah. So we’ll be -- We feel like we’ll
be okay. That if there are people that are uncomfortable walking too far in
the dark downtown, and there are always people that feel that way about any
downtown, there’s certainly places to park on the street. We’ve
also talked with some people that are looking at renovating the downtown area,
and they have put in a recommendation to put angled parking out in front of
our street, which will give an extra 20 spaces there, which will be to our
advantage at night since we’re the only nighttime venue on the block.
Stephen: That garage is going to be free at night,
too. It’s like a joint city private project, one first of its type, kind
of sharing the costs. It’s going to have retail underneath it, and it’s
going to be solar powered.
Joel: A solar-powered parking lot?
Stephen: It’s supposed to be done over the summer,
so we’re hoping we’ll be able to include it in our season ticket
package sort of directing people, “Here’s where you park.”
People like to know, they like to visualize when they’re on their way
exactly where they’re going to park. They don’t like the concept
of “Well, I’ll drive around.”
Joel: Right. Yeah.
Amy: We also have two of the best restaurants in
Tucson, the most famous, about a block away from us as well. Many people like
to park in their lot, in front of the restaurant there and then just walk
over, too. So they know they’ve got a spot and so that’s to our
advantage as well.
Joel: Good. So you two are the staff here, current
staff?
Stephen: We’re the jacks of all trade.
Joel: On the subject of actors. Are you going union
any time soon?
Stephen: We use local actors, the idea is we’ll
be doing equity waivers initially. It’s just going to be for budgetary
reasons. We would -- We legitimately would -- Our goal is to become a mid-sized
player rather quickly in Tucson to be even able to offer equity-type contracts
within five years hopefully.
Amy: And there are actually a lot of professional
actors that have been in our situation as well. You come out of school or
grad school and say, “Okay. I’m ready to perform.” And then
your options are you can’t work at ATC. Could they hire out of town or,
you know, that’s the way it is with most large equity houses. And then
the rest of the offerings are pretty small, exclusive, and so you’d say,
“Well, I’ve got to create my own opportunities.” So we know
that there are a large number of professional actors out there who really
are looking for opportunities.
Joel: Good. Actually, I like hearing that. That’s
my biggest disappointment in theatre is the lack of opportunity for local
actors across the country. I’m amazed, everywhere I go, theatres I go
to, the local, smaller theatres I’m blown away by the talent. It’s
everywhere.
Stephen: Right.
Joel: There’s just not enough places for them
to work.
Amy: Tucson’s one of those towns that students
that graduate out of theatre program, they leave because they know that there’s
going to be nothing here. And we want to position ourselves to be a reason
to stay, necessarily, to keep the good talent in Tucson. We’ve noticed
a number of theatre companies across the country sort of in our same position
where they have tried to develop funds for people to donate to or for them
to develop to be able to pay actors to keep them here, keep them in town.
So that would certainly be of interest to us.
Joel: You guys remind me a little bit of a group
in San Diego called Sledgehammer Theatre.
Stephen: I’ve heard of them.
Amy: Oh, yeah.
Joel: And they’re just grass-roots guys. They
just wanted to do theatre and they didn’t want [to be told] how to do
it. American Theatre called them the “The Bad Boys of Theatre”.
You know, they have a quirky sense of humor and so they have had a reputation
as the avant-garde theatre group out of San Diego because they just happen
to do it their own way.
Stephen: Are they way downtown?
Joel: They’re in that -- Well, they’re
kind of downtown, yeah. They’re in that, it used to be a funeral home.
St. Cicilias’.
Stephen: Yeah. Right next to the interstate. We drove
-- James and I drove by that when we were in San Diego. I remember seeing
the building and, yeah, it’s an old, where there morticians in there?
Joel: Uh-huh. They’re awesome, though.
Amy: Yeah.
Joel: They’re just awesome, you know? And they
don’t give a damn about anything anybody tells them. They do their shows
and that’s it.
Amy: And we certainly talked about that in terms
of the kind of experience, entertaining experience we want to create. We’ve
been a part of so many theatres in town where you go and it feels very stuffy
and “I should have worn my gown,” and “Maybe I’ll have
a glass of wine at intermission,” and then I just feel so uncomfortable
because I feel like I’m “on” and we’ve said, “oh
man.” We’ve even talked about calling our lobby The Living Room,
you know? Throw a couple of sofas down there and at intermission you can grab
a bubblegum* soda and a cookie or whatever we can do to just kind of say,
“Hey, just come on in. Enjoy yourself and have fun, and we’re going
to have fun with you, and we’re going to kid you and tease you and have
a great time.” So, yeah, definitely just a different entertainment experience.
Joel: That’s a good idea.
Stephen: We got our seats donated from a movie theatre.
They were renovating so they gave us 200 like movie seats which is a huge
score, but they have the cup holders and some of our board members are like,
“Well, are we going to get rid of those cup holders?” And I’m
like, “No.”
Amy: Can’t drink in a theatre. You can’t
drink in a theatre.
Stephen: So that’s where at ATC they always
play the announcement about unwrapping your candy ahead of time, and it’s
this whole sort of “Don’t disturb anyone.”
Joel: Don’t disturb the actors.
Stephen: Well, we’re going to be like, you know,
“Bring your drinks in the theatre,” you know and try to, obviously
as much as we can --
Amy: Don’t spill, but bring it in.
Joel: I’m going to ask you a few more questions,
and some of these are going to come out and their strictly my business, you
know, in terms of I need information. Do you guys have resources that you
use for information? Artistically, do you read any journals? Is there anything
you look at to find information?
Stephen: I use American Theatre Magazine, Theatre
Communications group, their website. You can read even articles online. I
even bought one of their recent books. They have a book that’s a study
they did on artistic directors. You’re talking more about like periodicals?
Joel: Since you are a new small company starting
up how will you aquaire equipment, your lighting and stuff, are you going
to lease, you going to own?
Stephen: We’re going to own. We got a restricted
donation from another local theatre company to purchase the lighting system.
Right across the intersection there’s a coffee house/theatre place called
Wild Playhouse that’s not a non-profit, it’s a for-profit, and we
had sort of befriended her and helped -- I acted in the very first show for
her, and we do a lot of favors for her. So she bought and -- we haven’t
bought it yet --but gave us the money to purchase our first system.
Joel: Wow, that’s incredible.
Amy: We also discovered that Tucson is very much
an in-kind donation kind of town where you might not be able to afford to
buy your carpet, but some guy will be willing to donate carpet scraps and
install them for you, and so a lot of we’re hoping to get as well is
an in-kind support.
Joel: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve
learned so far in this adventure?
Stephen: Well, we probably each have one. Let me
think about that for a minute. I guess my biggest lesson is you need to really
like and believe in your approach because everyone will tell you how to do
it differently. And you really have to be comfortable and know that deep down
you’re doing what you think is right and what you believe in because
no one else really believes the same thing. And not that you don’t get
support, but there’s always someone saying, “Well, why don’t
you do this,” or “Why are you doing that?” or “That sounds
like a lot of work.” And so you just have to, when you make a decision
you just have to stick to it and say, “That’s it.” Because
everyone else is going to be saying, “What? You’re not doing Shakespeare?”
Joel: How about you?
Amy: I think for me the idea of running a theatre
company from an artist’s perspective is very different from what it really
is, and that the bottom line is this is a business and it’s about supply
and demand. And it doesn’t matter how good I think my product is or how
important I think what I’m going to do for the world artistically, if
there’s nobody out there that’s going to see it or watch it or that
is interested in our experience, then it’s just not going to fly. It
really is about supply and demand and remembering that bottom line it’s
a business. And we’re here to make sure that the business functions.
And it’s a very different concept to wrap your mind around when you’re
an actor or a director, very different.
Joel: That kind of -- My brain works in bizarre ways,
but just the way you said that, and something was said earlier today kind
of prompted me, why did you choose the number of seats for your house that
you have right now to start with?
Amy: Actually, that’s a good business question.
I’m going to stab at it from my understanding of it, but there may be
a little more technical architectural answer, I’m not sure. There’s
no other intimate theatre company in town that has this many seats, and we
know of a couple of other theatre companies in town who are at the point where
they’re selling out at less than 100, 80 to 100 seats. And they’re
selling every night and they have to run shows Tuesday through Sunday, two
on Sunday, and it becomes a very intense schedule. And we thought, “Well,
if we just added a few more seats, we could accommodate that much quicker,
much sooner.”
Joel: It’s 140 or something like that?
Amy: 140 is our ideal, is what we’re ultimately
going to build*. With this renovation we had to scale back just a little bit,
so we’re going to be a little bit less.
Stephen: It’s initially going to be 80.
Amy: Yeah, initially it’s going to be 80, but
in our final phase we’re going to be at 140. So that’s my understanding
of it, and so it gets more people in sooner. It also allows us to -- There’s
some theatre companies in town, they kind of come in and they want to rent
out, and they want to rent out to us a larger theatre seating than 80 or a
60seat house. So it let’s them come in, do their shows, and get a much
larger audience. Is there a different understanding?
Stephen: No. That’s it. We wanted the number,
and then our actual number is basically governed on architectural limitations.
You have to have so many width of aisles and by the time -- The funny thing
about a theatre is, no matter how big it is you’ll eventually run out
of room even if start with 100,000 square feet. And so what you do is you
constantly push and pull. I want a bigger lobby, but that means a smaller
theatre. I want bigger dressing rooms, but that means a smaller stage. And
so we basically compromised everything and got what we thought was the perfect
space, and then it came out to be 140 which we thought was perfect. And at
the initial phase we’re going to do the first five rows. Each row is
14 seats times 5 rows, so that’ll be our opening house.
Joel: All right. Here we go with a couple more questions
then I’ll let you guys go. If you guys could bring in one person from
the past, present, I’m talking cave man, Shakespeare up to present time.
Stephen: A real person?
Joel: If you could bring this person in to work with
on one show, any technical designer, writer, actor, who would you select.
Stephen: Boy, that’s a good one.
Amy: I’ll give you a really general answer.
I would say any celebrity so that we know we could pack the house every single
night. We’d make the money.
Joel: You don’t care, just somebody, huh? Like
Dennis Rodman, maybe.
Amy: If we could pack them in.
Stephen: I would love to get the opportunity to do
like a world premiere from like a great contemporary playwright to really
put you on the map. I don’t know how you get that opportunity, but let’s
say we had the latest play from Sam Shepard because that’s sort of the
feeling that we wanted to give to people. So that’s who I would like.
If the guy walked in and said, “Hey, I got a new play. You guys want
to do it?” “Okay.”
Joel: Well, next time I see Stephen Metcalfe down
at La Jolla, I’ll ask him for a favor --
Amy: There you go.
Joel: Here’s a funny story for you. I was the
business manager for the North Coast Rep. in Solona Beach and I didn’t
realize -- Well, I guess I knew Stephen did a lot of work for the old Globe
and so we were doing his play “Emily” and all of a sudden I get
a phone call and this guy says, “I’m Stephen Metcalfe and I was
wondering if I could come down and take a look at the show.” And I’m
thinking it’s one of my friends yanking my chain.
Amy: Oh, yeah, sure.
Joel: I’m like “alright who is this?”,
and he keeps insisting he is Stephen Metcalf. And I’m like, come on,
who is this? So, the guy comes to the show and…
Joel: Stephen: Amy: (all at once) It’s Stephen
Metcalf.
Joel: You got it. He comes up afterwards and says,
“You know, I want to clean up that second scene. So he came in and tweaked
this thing for like about three weeks and just kind of had fun with it. I
think he was just having fun more than anything.
Stephen: Right.
Joel: Oh, my god, the actors were like -- It was
the most exhilarating thing they’d ever done I mean… Stephen Metcalfe.
But he’s in the resident playwight now with the Old Globe.
Stephen: Have you ever seen anything at the Black
Dahlia in L.A.?
Joel: The Black Dahlia? I’ve heard of them.
Stephen: The Theatre Communications Group wrote an
article in the November issue on 12 upandcoming theatre companies like across
the country, and they focused on one of them called The Black Dahlia. And
for a small theatre company I was impressed. I think they were only 50 seats
or something, but they’ve done all these premieres because I guess they’re
in touch with a lot of L.A. writers.
Joel: Oh, yeah.
Stephen: And the L.A. writers like them because they
don’t meddle. The writers just write it, and then they do it. Whereas,
writing for larger, you know, they always want to refine it or something.
Joel: Right.
Stephen: So I was really impressed. And all of these
companies are under five years old.
Joel: One last question.
Amy: Yeah.
Stephen: I feel like this is like, what’s that
TV show? Yeah, like you’re asking me my favorite cuss word or something.
Joel: So what moment, when did it happen? When was
that one moment when you went, “ I gotta do this. I gotta do theatre.”
What happened?
Amy: I’ll tell you mine.
Stephen: You go first.
Amy: I was a very shy child. And I, as a sophomore
in high school, just on a whim I auditioned for the play and got cast as the
lead straight out, and I couldn’t believe it. And there was one scene
in the play. It was “Our Town,” the perfect high school production
for the perfect transforming moment, but there’s a wonderful little monologue
at the end of the piece. And for that first time in my life I actually felt
like it was okay to be myself. It was okay to express these kinds of things,
and I just gained a certain kind of personal confidence. And from then on
I was hooked, and from then on I was outgoing, and ever since then there was
nothing I could do as well as doing that. And so that hooked me then on out.
Yeah.
Joel: That’s a really nice story.
Stephen: First -- First, right?
Joel: Uh-hm. Well, the time when it hit you that
you had to do this.
Stephen: To be like fully sort of committed?
Joel: When you knew that there was something that just grabbed you.
Stephen: Uh-hm.
Joel: Whatever it was that put its claws in you and said, “You’re
coming this way whether you want to or not.”
Stephen: Right. Okay. Well, like I said, I was a
film major and so I took an acting class through the local community college
where I was going to learn how actors do their thing because I was going to
make the next independent movie was the direction I was going. I was 23 years
old. Took this little acting class taught by a professional actor, and it
was basically a monologue class. And just learning that it wasn’t like
magic, that it was a skill that you could get better at. And then when you
would have your little performances, you’re little whatever in front
of like parents and people. Every class had one at the end. And then sort
of achieving what you set out to do in your monologue. I’m hoping to
do these things in the monologue and then having it work on someone, having
someone have that reaction and say, “Oh, it worked. It actually worked.”
Joel: Cool.
Stephen: That was probably the first sort of moment.
Joel: First time you had a hit.
Stephen: Yeah.
Joel: Well, you guys, this has been really fun.
Amy: Oh, thank you so much.
Stephen: Yeah. Thanks for coming by to see us.
Joel: Thanks for letting me come in and sharing some time with me.
©2005 Dramabiz Magazine. All Rights Reserved.