Theater, like so many industries, are battling to bring back the customers they had before COVID.
Many organizations are taking an approach that says those who love theater will return when they are comfortable. In other words, business as usual. They tend to choose recognizable titles that offer audiences some comfort.
Others are taking the approach of audience development. Their mission is to bring new people into the theater. For them the path to building new audiences is to choose material that is lesser known than traditional fare.
To illustrate: this week two area companies are offering work that even devoted theater obsessives hardly know. In Catskill, Bridge Street Theatre is a company who prides itself on producing material that is both edgy and non-commercial. Their current offering is a barely known play, “Sympathetic Magic.” It fits their motto “Experience the unexpected.”
Keeping to that catch-phrase, “Sympathetic Magic,” is a work by Lanford Wilson. Bridge Street is calling it an overlooked masterpiece, which remains to be seen.
Without doubt, Wilson, a once popular playwright in the 1970s is finding himself truly neglected. Little of his work is being revived. The exception is “Talley’s Folly” a two-person, one-set sweet romance. But rarely do plays like “Hot L Baltimore” or “The Mound Builders” find new productions.
Indeed, “Sympathetic Magic”, one of Wilson’s later plays written in 1997, is a kissing cousin of “Mound Builders.” Each play uses a potential cultural-altering discovery to make the audience better understand the contemporary world in which they exist.
In “Sympathetic Magic” it is an astrological find on the outskirts of the universe. Wilson uses the discovery as a device that has the central characters rethinking their thoughts on life on earth - especially in regard to repopulation. The play urges you to realize that dark matter exists not only in the universe, but within the DNA of all humanity. It runs through Sunday, November 19.
Another relatively unknown play available this week is “The Sound Inside” by Adam Rapp. It was given its world premiere at the nearby Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1998. The next year it opened on Broadway and was nominated for six Tony Awards. However, COVID quickly relegated the play to the unknown in rapid fashion.
It’s being offered by Creative License, now in its third season of being the resident non-musical theater company at Cohoes Music Hall. It opens Thursday and runs until Sunday November 26.
Aaron Holbritter, a co-founder of the company says their goal is to select plays that the avid theatergoer will enjoy. They choose material that is cinematic in its telling. The hope is that those who love movies will discover live theater.
They also choose works in which language plays a critical role in enjoying the play. Holbritter says, “Anyone who enjoys reading will fall in love with ‘The Sound Inside.’ “
As the director of the production, he is treating the play as a mystery. Clarifying his thought, he explains it is not a work where a dead body is discovered and the search is for the killer. Instead, he describes the play about a once famous female novelist who is now a professor of English at a small remote college who agrees to mentor a gifted student writer as mysterious.
As they work together a mystery develops. It becomes difficult to know when truth is being spoken. You don’t know who is deceiving who, or even if there is genuine deception taking place.
He adds, “Because the play doesn’t end with a clear resolution it’s the kind of material that has you thinking and discussing it long after the 90-minute production.”
In a couple of weeks comfortable meets the unconventional - head on. The Rep, the professional company in Albany offers a month long run of “Million Dollar Quartet Christmas.” It is a musical that features Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash singing holiday songs. It runs downtown Albany November 24-December 24. It should draw thousands of people over that span of time.
During that period, December 7-12, Harbinger Theatre Company presents “Mrs. Packard” at Albany’s Theatre Barn. It’s a true story about an Illinois woman in 1861 who was placed in an insane asylum by her husband Reverend Theophilus Packard. The legally accepted reason was her liberal beliefs had her disagreeing with her husband.
Yes, this is a true story based on historical events. After three years she was deemed incurably insane and released. The assumption is they were making room for “more curable patients.”
Upon her release Mrs. Packard became a successful advocate for reform in sanitariums and for women’s rights. The play will likely draw a few hundred people.
It’s easy to be negatively judgmental about why a musical revue should be so much more popular than a socially relevant drama. It’s another case of arguing the value of art versus entertainment. However, the truth is - If you don’t support the unknown, you are left with the overly-familiar.
Bob Goepfert is theater reviewer for the Troy Record.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
