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Unconventional Theatre Spaces
If looking for a theatre space isn’t hard enough,
“atmosphere” may play as important a role as the actual location
Eric Dyer’s search around New York City was getting frustrating. His performance art collective, Radiohole, needed a home, but the city’s sky-high real estate prices made finding an affordable theatre nearly impossible. So he did what so many people do at the end of a long, hard day. He stopped into a local bar and shared his troubles with the bartender.
And that’s how Radiohole’s problem was solved.
“I said I’d been looking for a space, and was really frustrated and pissed off,” says Dyer. “I saw the light bulb go off in this guy’s head. He had this garage attached to the bar.”
The garage, located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, was being used for automotive storage—it had been an auto body shop in a previous life—but the money it brought in was minimal. So after a brief conversation, the bartender agreed to clear out the cars and rent it to Radiohole on a five-year lease.
The result was the birth of a new theatre.
When you combine New York’s hysterically inflated real estate market with the city’s constant surge of creative energy, the only way for many theatre companies to thrive is to forgo any hope of renting a normal theatre and adapt an unconventional venue. Not only can this make an otherwise unaffordable situation feasible, it also allows companies to tailor venues to their specific needs and, depending on the venue’s origins, attract some much-needed publicity.
In Dyer’s case, his company agreed to share the venue with another, The Collapsable Giraffe (which led to the theatre’s name, The Collapsable Hole), with each company using the theatre for three-month stints.
The companies faced the challenge of converting the space together. Once the cars were cleared out, they adapted it to make it their own.
“It was totally raw,” recalls Dyer. “There was a cement slab and walls, a roof that leaked insanely and no electrical, heat or plumbing. And the cement slab was so uneven that there was a 24-inch difference between one end of the floor and the other.”
The companies built a bathroom and a soundproof wooden floor over the concrete and hired contractors to install a gas line and electricity. They put in bleacher-style risers—cushions are given out at performances to increase the comfort level. One month and $16,000 later, they had a space that has served their needs admirably for six years and counting.
Dyer says that there’s no way his troupe could have enjoyed the same freedom had they found a traditional black box theatre.
“We completely set our own agenda,” says Dyer. “We dictate entirely when we want to perform and when we want to rehearse, and if I’m building something and feel like putting a hole in the wall or the floor, I just do it. Plus we work with a lot of technical equipment, and we leave it out. We don’t have to clean up if we don’t want to. You couldn’t do that in a conventional space. It’s really total freedom.”
If a troupe decides to settle into a non-traditional space, making sure that sort of freedom comes with the package is paramount. But then again, so is making sure that the space conforms to the company’s needs and aesthetic.
When the Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret wanted to bring their community-based style, including the serving of food and drink, to Manhattan’s theatre district, real estate prices were a problem. They found their solution in the unlikeliest of places.
“Our artistic directors came out of a reading and went into Bennigan’s for a drink,” says Pun Bandhu, one of the UNYYC’s board members. “They saw a flight of stairs leading up, and upstairs was this beautiful, huge space that Bennigan’s used for private parties.”
The restaurant was struggling, and when they realized they could bring in business during their slowest time of the day—when tourists were watching shows instead of eating—the restaurant offered the space to the UNYYC free of charge.
The company bought lighting, sound equipment and seats for the cavernous, high-ceilinged space, establishing a room that held 99 comfortably and allowed them to rearrange the surroundings as needed. They arranged for Bennigan’s waitstaff to take food and drink orders before shows began.
Over the next few months, the company performed two shows there—“Most Happy,” a world-premiere play about Anne Boleyn by George Tynan Crowley, and “Three Children,” a U.S. premiere by esteemed Malaysian playwright Leow Puay Tin.
But while the shows earned positive reviews, the company realized that their unconventional space had some unconventional problems.
For one, while they couldn’t beat the price, the size of the space made it a comedy killer.
“The acoustics weren’t great, and comedy wouldn’t play well there,” says Bandhu. “It was so big that things that might have comedic value on a smaller, more intimate scale became grand and majestic.” So for “Three Children,” a drama bent toward visual spectacle, the venue worked fine. But in “Most Happy,” an intimate chamber drama, the subtle humor fell flat. “It wasn’t really landing,” he says, “because it was so cavernous. So to that end, the location didn’t quite suit us.”
But another, possibly bigger problem for the UNYYC was that no matter how appropriate the space was or wasn’t, they couldn’t escape the stigma of performing in a Bennigan’s.
“One review in talkingbroadway.com, which was a rave, mentioned that it almost seemed weird to be meeting these characters in a Bennigan’s. We took that to heart,” says Bandhu, who saw a similar response in an article on the troupe in the New York Times. “That was the response everyone had, that Bennigan’s carried too much of a stigma. It didn’t fit our aesthetic as an edgy theatre that takes risks.”
Eric Dyer has also seen the non-traditional nature of his venue seep into public perception, but in his case, in a positive way. “When people write about it,” he says, “they often cite that it was a former auto body shop, so they know they’ll see something different.”
So unconventional venues, much like traditional ones, can work to a theatre company’s advantage or disadvantage, depending on their appropriateness to a company’s artistic goals. Antoinette Nwandu, managing editor of the theatre Web site offoffonline.com, has seen the best and the worst New York has to offer, but says that for those so inclined, a non-traditional space can inspire creativity.
“I think that sort of venue invites play,” Nwandu says, adding that the $2,000 to $3,000 per week charged by Manhattan’s black box theatres can make a company inventive in a hurry. “There’s that creativity that’s like, okay, we’re gonna do this in an old church, so how do we use the space? How do we set up the seats?”
Nwandu believes that not only can venues of this sort inspire a company, but that the physical arrangement of the theatre can shake up the basic relationship between performer and audience, and help make that audience receptive to groundbreaking work.
“In conventional theatres, there are modes of decorum,” says Nwandu. “We know we’re in a space designated for theatre, so we know we’re gonna clap at this time. In converted spaces, there’s a pioneer spirit. If a show is avant-garde, the audience is happier to go along, because they want to see forms of theatre that might not fly in a traditional space. It gives the company more leeway to be experimental.”
When a theatre of this sort is done right, it can become an everlasting treat for a community. P.S. 122 in Manhattan’s East Village was a functioning city school from 1891 to 1956, then sat in vacant disrepair for over 20 years. In 1979, several dancers seeking out cheap rehearsal and performance space took it upon themselves to use the building’s auditorium. Over 25 years later, P.S. 122 is one of New York’s most highly-regarded performance spaces, and while the presence of artists and entertainers is now officially sanctioned, the building itself has changed little since students roamed its halls.
“Our upstairs space has two huge columns right in the middle of the stage, and we perform around them,” says Anne Dennin, P.S. 122’s executive director. “The building is essentially still an old school house. The upstairs theatre was an auditorium we’ve turned into a black box, just painted it black, and our smaller theatre downstairs was a gym. So it’s a challenge for artists working here—very little has been done. But artists use it the way we have it set up, as a theatre with columns.”
So while such venues have their challenges, having an unconventional venue can be a fantastic alternative to a costly traditional space, if it meets your needs. After two shows, the UNYYC left Bennigan’s for the Laurie Beechman Theatre, located downstairs from a restaurant. The Beechman provides a more conventional theatrical set-up with stage, sound and lights already in place, while also making food and drink available to their clientele.
While their rent at the Beechman is not free, Bandhu says the move was terrific for the company.
“We moved forward with Bennigan’s solely because the space allowed us to keep costs low,” he says. “But in the end, a space helps to define not only your theatre company, but also the show itself.”
“Being in a theatre, for our work, would almost be a disadvantage to us,” says Dyer of how the nature of his space helps to define his troupe. “We’re not a very conventional theatre company. For example, we don’t like our walls black, and we don’t use conventional theatre lighting. We build our own lighting. So we don’t really need to be in that type of space.”
Bandhu says that with the real estate market spelling the death knell for many traditional venues in recent years, the need for creativity in that area will only increase in the years to come.
“There are so many official venues that used to serve the off-off-Broadway community that are closing because real estate prices are rising,” he says. “Smaller companies can’t afford to pay those prices. So there is a crisis.”
But as long as smaller companies have their creativity and ingenuity, the ability to adapt non-traditional venues to their needs should keep them thriving through even the toughest times—and the weirdest spaces.
“If you have a group of people who can see their circumstances in a positive light and use those circumstances to their advantage, then I’m always excited to see what happens next,” says Bandhu. “How did these people take the space and allow me to suspend my disbelief and go on their creative journey with them? That’s what theatre is about.”
Continue the conversation online in the forums at www.dramabiz.com/forum.
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Embracing the Past to Create
a Total Theatrical Experience
Unconventional theatre situations are not particular to big cities and small venues. Take the case of the Janesville Armory in Janesville, Wis. Local architect Mick Gilbertson decided to convert an old military armory, where soldiers had trained during World War II, into a dinner theatre, and with that came many of the same challenges and triumphs faced by the town’s big city counterparts.
In their case, Janesville had a much larger—and yet more restricted—space to contend with.
“The building is a national historic landmark,”
says Gilbertson, “so there’s a fair amount of constraints as to
what could and couldn’t be done to the interior. To make sure the space
is preserved, the drill hall had to remain a big open space. So that was probably
the biggest stumbling block—how to make efficient use of the space.”
Designing the theatre from existing guidelines and restrictions, as opposed
to creating it from scratch, proved a challenge.
“If you’re building it from scratch, you look at the pro forma, calibrate operating costs, decide how big seating capacity should be, then set those sightlines and the stage. In this case, we only had a set size that would work for the theatre and the seating. So the goal was to maximize seating capacity, but at the same time balance it with having an adequate stage area for the production, and enough support space on that floor level for backstage areas.”
On top of existing restrictions, the decision to make it a restaurant as well opened up a hornet’s nest of logistical maneuvering. Since the main room had just enough space to hold a roomy 230-seat dinner theatre, the decision was made to house the kitchen downstairs. While this was the only logical choice, it led to some concerns.
“We were worried about the cooking and dishwashing activities, all the things that happen in a kitchen, telegraphing and transmitting into the theatre itself,” said Gilbertson. Luckily, the design of a military armory, combined with smart architectural follow-up, was conducive to noise abatement.
“We were very fortunate it was an existing building,” he says, “and the gymnasium floor is a maple wood floor with concrete, steel and plaster below that. But we did not allow any vertical penetrations to go into the theatre below the kitchen, and all the mechanical ductwork and plumbing had to be wrapped around the theatre to the second floor.”
While the conversion provided some difficulties, the ultimate advantage to using a historic site for a theatre, in addition to the local name recognition—the theatre is called the Drill Hall Theatre, and it’s accompanied by The Bunker Lounge and Lieutenant’s Restaurant—were the traditional architectural touches that give the theatre a sense of history and class.
“We preserved the brickwork of the building,” says Gilbertson, “and there were some iron window grates we incorporated into our logo. So there’s a repetitive motif carried into the new design. Just the fact that it was an old 1930s building with some nice detailed brick work and aesthetics—it really worked very well.”
