Curtain Up
New theater companies take the stage in NHs
By Heidi Masek hmasek@hippopress.com

Actorsingers of Nashua celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2005. Community Players of Concord goes back 79 years. But 2006 saw fledgling drama ventures sprout all over southern New Hampshire. The reasons are varied, but overall local theater veterans are responsible. In the case of StageCoach Productions, which presents its inaugural musical, Jane Eyre, at 14 Court St. Theater in Nashua Friday, Jan. 19, three teachers discovered a common desire to bring lesser-known, challenging plays to the area. Pirate Stage participants share profits and perform edgier material. An acting school at the Amato Center and the Derryfield Repertory take advantage of great performance space. Best Foot Forward Productions wants to give kids more say in running a company and the training to do so. The quick growth leaves others wondering if there’s room for everyone.

Enter StageCoach
Michelle Henderson, Judy Hayward and Tim L’Ecuyer knew each other from years of working in 14 Court St. L’Ecuyer, a Merrimack High English teacher, directed for Peacock Players, which is housed there. Hayward was a Peacock music director. Henderson runs a vocal training studio with her husband in the building. She’s been a professional singer for 40 years, an opera singer for 30 and two of her students are now auditioning for Broadway.

“It didn’t feel right to have people with so much talent not being immersed in something they really loved to do,” Henderson said, after various personnel changes happened at Peacock and elsewhere. Henderson mentioned starting a company to Hayward, who said she and L’Ecyuer had discussed that, too. Soon, they had a board of directors, a name and a business number. For Henderson, StageCoach also provides a showcase for vocal training.

“We are all busy. We don’t need to invest all kinds of energy if it’s not going to pay off. I would love to take it as far as we can take it,” Henderson said. Right now they have three musicals scheduled and designs on adding straight plays, opera and an education arm. “What we don’t want to do is dilute things. We want to add and contribute something that isn’t there yet. Broaden everyone’s horizons as well as our own.”

Jane Eyre is probably the most accessible of the pieces they chose for adult actors. It’s “very ethereal” and evokes the “dark and Gothic” mood of the Charlotte Bronte novel, Henderson said. They perform Sondheim’s opera-like Sweeney Todd in July, and Jason Robert Brown’s Parade in October, she said. Parade is based on an historic court case in which an innocent Jewish factory owner was accused of raping a young girl and lynched.

Ahoy, mateys!
Kevin Roberge formed Pirate Stage for his wife to perform a one-woman play. In November, the company expanded to produce The Rocky Horror Show at 14 Court St. The seacoast staple is rarely done in Nashua or Manchester. It didn’t sell out but attracted more than 150 people to each performance.

Formerly a producer in New York, Roberge decided to use Pirate Stage as a troupe that “shared the booty,” as pirates do. Gas costs to get to rehearsals add up. In this cooperative, participants get a share of ticket income, and part of the profit is reserved to fund the next performance.

Roberge wants to bring the level of performance as close to professional as he can. He pulled together his “dream cast” for Rocky Horror, including Billy Butler as Frank.

In April, Brett Mallard will direct Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Muddy River Smokehouse in Portsmouth for Pirate Stage. The show is set in a restaurant and Butler returns to perform. Roberge is waiting on rights for his summer shows and also until other companies announce so dates don’t conflict.

“Therein lies the biggest problem with new companies. There’s a lot of shows, and sometimes not a lot of actors,” Roberge said. If five big musicals are going on at the same time, the need for actors becomes desperate, particularly for male parts.

Pirate Stage is doing stuff no one else does, Mallard said. Hedwig has only been done once before in the state. “It’s a great show. It’s fun. It has a rock edge, more like a concert — so it really caters to an entirely different audience.”

“I know there is competition as far as getting a season together, I’ve felt that,” said Leah Belanger, education director at Acting Loft in Manchester. But variety is good. “People who don’t normally go to the theater find shows they connect with,” she said.

John Sefel, who founded Ghostlight out of Salem to perform lesser-known works a few years ago, agreed. “There had been an assumption that the audience was the senior segment, and I appreciate that money, I do,” but potential patrons were ignored, he said. Yellow Taxi Productions, a five-year-old professional company, found the intellectual ticket buyers. The “irreverent” audience base was ignored until Ghostlight and Pirate Stage came along, Sefel said.

“I guess that’s the New England way. It seems like when things aren’t happening the way you want them to, you go out and make it happen,” Billy Butler said. He’s currently producing The Warmth of the Cold at the Players’ Ring in Portsmouth. He and the author, Nashua playwright Lowell Williams, were on NHPR’s “Front Porch” radio show Jan. 4 to promote it.

A benefit of opening your own company is that you get to perform your own work. Roberge just returned from a trip to Dallas, where he researched Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby, a straight play, will be set in a strip club since that’s where Ruby worked. Roberge expects to produce it in a year.

“We’re not here to shock ... we’re trying to do some of plays other people might not do,” he said.

Sinking ships
Brett Mallard started his own company a few years back but now freelances. “For myself I guess I didn’t like the choices I had in directing,” he said. Policies and bylaws can make a director feel like his hands are tied. If you are underwriting it, “it’s your baby, you can say how it goes,” Mallard said.

Actorsingers is probably one of the most financially stable organizations, and Mallard had success working with them on Ragtime and Titanic, but they probably wouldn’t produce Hedwig or Rocky, he said. For local playwrights, that pattern “makes you carefully consider what your next project as a writer will be,” Williams wrote in an e-mail.

The “Annie”s and “Oliver”s “put butts in the seats,” Mallard explained. “Even though [theater companies] are nonprofit entities, they need to make money to be operable,” Mallard said.

New England Academy of Music and Drama produced one show, Wit, which had nudity and won a NH Theatre Award for best show. Mallard’s son Brandon and Michelle Henderson had formed the company with him but they split over artistic differences and had no fundraising expertise. The academy produced Brandon Mallard’s first cabaret show. That morphed into Caberet De Boheme.

“One of the challenges is the risk that you are not going to get an audience when you are doing something more artistically challenging,” Mallard said. Yellow Taxi does it, but knows how to find grants.

Kevin Riley has been doing much of the organizing for the fifth annual NH Theatre Awards, which take place Feb. 2 at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. Riley was part of Misfit Toy Players, which was developed three years ago and has since dissolved.

New groups might register as nonprofit, create bylaws, find a board of directors and get insurance, “but here’s the deal ... you still need capital,” Riley said.

Initially, participants might fund the first shows, hoping to be reimbursed and make enough to invest in the next. Venue rental is expensive. Few venues donate space for performance although they might for rehearsal. Lights, sets, costumes, tickets, programs and advertising require cash and smart groups start finding it early, Riley said. New companies need good planning, fundraising and publicity. Sally Nutt, president of the NH Community Theatre Association (NHCTA), echoed that and said many skill sets are needed beyond acting and directing.

Misfit Toys lost money on every show except their last, Dining Room, which they produced last spring to enter in the NH Theatre Awards. Riley funded it.

A Darwinian view
“Even if all these startups die, if established groups become more versatile because of it, it’s good for the state,” Ghostlight’s John Sefel said. “It shows large companies that something is missing ... they need to restructure to fill the void that other companies are trying to fill.”

As in a healthy economy, not every new venture survives, Nutt said.

Sefel has noticed Nashua Theater Guild and Majestic Theatre adding more interesting shows to their seasons.

Majestic has found they can do obscure pieces in their dinner theater series, and recognizable shows in their regular season to draw in crowds. They present Andrew Lippa’s jon and jen in March, a musical that only Yellow Taxi has done in New Hampshire.

Community theater has gotten better so the audience expects more, said A. Robert Dionne, Majestic founder and a vice president of NHCTA. Actors may be spread thin, but he thinks they are more skilled. There were only a handful of companies who produced all year when Majestic started 17 years ago, Dionne said, “but you have a lot of people who’ve grown within the art.”

Fruit flies?
“This has been a trend, I think, that has been around forever: groups multiply like rabbits and die like fruit flies,” Sefel remarked. “There are so many creative minds ... that want to do so much.”

Ghostlight’s One Flea Spare will compete at the regional community theater festival in March. They did a live horror film parody at Halloween written by Sefel, and will perform three Shakespeare plays in the spring. Titus will be set in modern Afghanistan, Hamlet performed as Japanese Noh, and MacBeth traditionally.

“I don’t really see myself as a producer,” Billy Butler said. “I don’t really see myself as a moneymaker even though I have been making money.” As a closet visual artist, “I produce a show almost like an installation,” he said. Designing through lighting, sets and directing allows him to combine visual and performing arts. “I’m filling a need for myself.”

Ryan Brown started RB Productions in Concord four years ago, when he was 18. “In the first couple of seasons, we were fortunate. We grew very, very quickly,” Brown said. They filled a void for high school and college-age youth looking for summer theater. Thirty actors auditioned for their first show and 100 auditioned for their third. “For me it really was my life, I used to compare it to having a baby,” Brown said. RB faltered in August after a “series of unfortunate events” and their Godspell production, a back-up play choice, never made it to the stage. Recently, Brown has let his board of directors take over so he can pursue theater and film degrees at Emerson College in Boston.

Brown feels New Hampshire Theatre Awards helped develop interest and raise standards. It’s great if new groups survive, but it’s also important to collaborate, he said.

Theater majors
“I think it repeats itself periodically,” Van McLeod, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Cultural Resources, said about new theater groups. A major change is that actors and directors no longer stick to their own community’s troupe. They will commute all over the state for a show.

“Add that to the element that almost every university now has a theater major,” McLeod said. Schools are “putting out a lot more people with theater majors in the world than we actually need.”

Specialized roles can be tougher to fill. “There are very few good music directors out there, probably 10 I know of personally,” Henderson said. “Peter did leave a great void and he’s sorely missed,” Henderson said of Peter Bridges, who musically directed many area shows and who died after an illness in 2006.

Nutt points out that the growth in drama here might be tied to population, and said southern New Hampshire is one of the fastest-growing regions.

Community theater and her children supplied Nutt’s first introductions to each town her family moved to while her husband was in the military. “It’s being a part of something that’s bigger than themselves,” Nutt said about the draw for participants.

Laurel Devino, visual and performing arts department chair at the Derryfield School, Henderson and Butler remarked that the region is unique in the amount of talent produced.

Acknowledging the youth programs from Actorsingers, and the Palace youth programs that expanded this year, Henderson said she thinks more kids are learning to act.

“No matter what, the poise and confidence they get from doing these shows and being involved in theater, there’s nothing like it. It’s life-changing and it’s fun,” Henderson said.

Drama geeks
Derryfield, a private Manchester school, wanted to make better use of their campus and performing arts center so they offered a summer drama camp in 2006 for the first time in years. Devino and Scott Severance, former Peacock Players director, attached to it a new Derryfield Repertory company. They handpicked Derryfield and Peacock alumni to serve as camp counselors and repertory actors. Most were in performing arts college programs.

Derryfield Repertory will probably produce two shows again this summer, and Devino wants to attract more campers to finance the project. They have had a planning setback because of the death of actor Jared Nathan, 21, of Nashua after a car accident in Hollis Dec. 28. The Juilliard student and longtime Peacock Player was a close friend of Devino’s daughter. The two acted in Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party in August, in a new similar expansion of Peacock’s summer drama camp. Those college-age counselors had the opportunity to do a more mature and musically challenging show together at 14 Court St.

The Palace Theatre also started Teen Company this year, an addition to their youth program, but with more access to professional actors. They also did one community production with many of the parents of their students, breaking from their usual professional musical repertoire.

Toby Tarnow, a professional radio, TV and stage actor from age 10, was taking a rest in New Hampshire while helping her husband with his business. “I realized the thing I loved most about theater is the creative process and I wanted to give it to children.” She started drama classes in Hollis but the Souhegan Boys and Girls Club, which houses the Amato Performing Arts Center, asked her to use their space. “Each of the classes is not only connected to a production, but in the case of the one-act play festival we are creating one-act plays from scratch,” Tarnow said. Students range from age 9 to 18 in the School of Theater Arts, which is a year old.

Christine Frydenborg was part of developing a new theater group years ago, which folded after she left. She said the key is creating something different. “That’s what we’ve set out to do with BFF and so far we’ve had a very successful year,” Fydenborg said.

Frydenborg and Tim Dargon started Best Foot Forward Productions last April to address problems they saw with children’s theater. About half of their board members are teenagers. This is so kids learn to pick shows and understand business and legal needs. BFF has a mentoring program so students can learn every aspect of production, including music direction and choreography. BFF keeps fees low and rehearsals flexible. They’ve made their performance home Sandown’s Town Hall because parents pointed out that there was little youth theater available in that area. People say they like the inclusive approach.

About 50 people per show saw Bye, Bye Birdie, with a Saturday night audience reaching 100, surprising since Sandown is so far from highways, Frydenborg said. The group has been hired as corporate entertainment for an insurance company, and also produced Voices from the High School.

StageCoach Production’s Michelle Henderson said no matter how many summer drama camps open, there never seem to be enough. Before they expand to education, Henderson and her partners want to make sure they can offer something unique. “We definitely don’t want to step on our neighbor’s toes,” Henderson said of Peacock, and so far they’ve been collaborating. She would like education groups eventually to be able to create an umbrella to foster cooperation and not worry about competing for audiences on the same weekends.

Good manners
“Six Annies going on within a three-month period within a 10-mile range, that’s crazy, that’s lunacy,” Mallard said. The state badly needs a “clearinghouse” of season plans, Mallard said. Some companies think others will steal ideas if they discuss schedules.

There are attempts to mitigate this. Van McLeod facilitated a roundtable of theaters at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord last year and said he’s working on a follow-up.

Brett Mallard runs a web forum, nhtheatre.org, with discussion groups and a master calendar for shows and auditions. The calendar is public, and 390 members use the forums.

NHCTA encourages members to e-mail season schedules as soon as possible, so others can plan accordingly. However, there are about 70 different community theater groups in New Hampshire, said NHCTA president Sally Nutt.

Nutt also wants members to use NHCTA to share resources. Concord Community Players, Actorsingers and New Thalian help new groups, Nutt said. The Majestic has moved a show from an overbooked weekend, and seeks to support all community theater, founder Dionne said.

“I love the selection. I don’t love fact that there’s five High School Musicals,” Butler said. “That is not a theater community that communicates and it shows that we need to start talking to each other so we don’t hurt each other’s feelings and don’t hurt each others pocketbooks.”

Leg room
While some bemoan a lack of venues in Nashua and the high cost of renting the Palace in Manchester, McLeod doesn’t see finding venues as a problem. Church basements, recreation facilities and town halls can all be used. “Physically you can put on shows almost anywhere,” he said.

Butler said it would be good to have a Players’ Ring-style house in Manchester to give the new groups a home. The Players’ Ring takes 33 percent of ticket income, and the production company takes the rest. About 15 shows per year are produced by small companies or playwrights there.

“If an organization like the Palace could stop worrying about the bottom line and let at least one of these organizations in a year without nickel-and-diming them to death,” it would alleviate some problems, Butler said.

Regarding the prevalence of safe well-known musicals that seemed to spark so many splinter groups with departing visions, “It’s all entertainment in the end and it’s all art in the end,” Butler said. “I think Orson Welles put it best when he said ‘people go to the theater to feel.’” And, if you feel something watching Oklahoma!, that’s great, he said.