More Success...

A smaller, more intimate venue and a relatively unknown (in the Midwest, anyway) style of theatre, but I think we pulled it off with great success with "The Guys." And hopefully we're developing a formula by which we can do nine of these without too much undue stress. We'll see.

Anyway, it was a near-full house, albeit in a slightly smaller venue. We were actually performing in a large garage work area of a new Camden art gallery, The Warren. The proprietor, Duane, is this awesome guy who just has this goal of being a sort of patron of the arts. For now, he's offering free gallery space to Camden artists and has arranged to have his space be our venue for the entire run of the Reader's Theatre Series, with the idea that our crowds will get people in the gallery to look at the visual art.

Beyond providing the space, though, he was hands-on, helping us build risers for the show, clearing out the space, etc. etc. And the night of the show, he was absolutely giddy at having, by far, the largest number of people come through the front door in any one evening. The show, of course, was a pretty intense emotional downer, though appropriate in the days leading up to whatever other ways we US citizens are considering to commemorate 9-11. An awesome twist, however, was that right after the show, the garage doors were thrown open and the assembled were treated to a visit by some real "guys" from the Minneapolis Fire Department. Unbeknownst to anyone but Duane and our company, they had pulled one of their engines up outside the establishment in the final moments of the performance, in preparation to do some Q & A and a little demonstration following the show. Kind of cool-after the audience's emotional involvement with individual firefighters' lives in the eulogy-based script of the play, the guys in the real-life crew served as some sort of emotional release, as the crowd broke into spontaneous applause for them.

Anyway, the firefighters just eat up that kind of attention, so it was actually a little tough to get them to wind it down, but when it finally did-almost the entire cast, crew, and audience traipsed across the way to enjoy 1/2 off appetizers, beer, & wine at Rix (ah, it always comes back to Rix, doesn't it?) We got a personal meet & greet from the very thankful owner of the place, and it looks like we'll be partnering with them for a similar deal through the remainder of our season-they're taking out a running ad to feature our performance and their special deal in the City Pages. Great publicity, potentially expanding our draw (and theirs) into new regions of the city.

I will confess to having originally had some reservations about this particular show. It's pretty easy to feel "9-11'd out," though I definitely felt, after reading the script, like it touched on the human element of individuals, with limitations & foilbles that is very often missing in the various commemorative events. I still had/have a slightly odd feeling about the choice of the play. It was definitely a "safe" choice, and not one that was particularly artistically challenging. Especially in light of the fact that we are setting about to establish a little breathing room between ourselves and the notion of a "community theatre." I am glad that we took it on and did it (in my opinion) well. Our ability to execute this end (civic-minded, straight & narrow) need be in no doubt. And the great thing about the entire, 9-show series is that it really will give us a chance to try our hand (& our collective, audience regulars') at a variety of genres of theatre in rapid succession, if all within the context of reader's theatre.

Picture: Cast Along With the Brave Men of Minneapolis Fire Station #20