Home Theatre

In an instant, an epiphany dawned on me.  A vision so exciting, so compelling, that a scant few weeks later I was reading every book I could on the subject.

“So you want to produce a play.  Before I congratulate you, allow me to ask  one question: are you completely out of your mind?”   So goes the first sentence of A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amateur Theatricals, by John Kenrick.

“Oh John, you silly chicken little,” I said to myself, confident that with eleven years of stage experience as an actor, I certainly had this whole directing and producing gig down pat,  “Surely, you must be joking.”

Well, I can’t say he didn’t warn me.

The idea to produce small, flexible, low-budget volunteer theatre is not a new one for me; back in the high school days several friends and I formed the group “Acting Off the Shelf” to tour around libraries in the Boise area, performing adaptations of literature for youth.  We had a wonderful time, and I still hold the hope that we made some literary difference in at least a few kids’ lives.  But in those days we were nomadic, completely without financial means, and lacking theatrical experience of any kind.

So, when five months ago when I first  stood in the emptiness of the garage in my first purchased home and that vision hit me, I knew that this time, even if I still didn’t know what I was doing entirely, I had a leg up on the previous project.  Now, I had a decade of theatre experience.  Now, I had financial means.  Now, I knew friends who loved  and could apply the various aspects of theatre, technical and artistic, who might be persuaded to help me.

As I write this today, that vision is slowly beginning to take shape.  Thanks to the experience and excitement of several friends rounded up from local community theatre we actually realistically expect to produce a short play in my garage this June.

I have a full production team working on the technical aspects and planning for future shows; in addition to myself in the roles of producer and artistic director, I have excellent people in the positions of production stage manager, technical director, lighting designer, sound designer, scenic designer, and props/costumes designer.  Far from being volunteers I have to coax, I find that my team’s’ enthusiasm for the project is such that I often feel the need to rein in the energy to avoid having it take off out of control (and thus melt my credit card).  Barely had rehearsals of our first show started when half-serious propositions came in to produce HMS Pinafore, in my garage no less.

So far, “Voices” by Hortense Flexner, a beautiful piece about the ravages of war and the power of the individual spirit, is in rehearsal and my two young actresses are doing splendidly well.   After a fun trip to Lowe’s, a theatrical lighting system for my garage is nearly complete.  Acoustic tests and sound mixing move on apace, and the set is in design.

It has been a beautiful and heartwarming thing to see so many friends get excited over a crazy idea of mine, most of which are silly and juts fizzle out.  But it seems that this time, I’ve managed to find one among the few ideas of mine that somehow snowball into grand schemes (that I eventually lose control of… cross your fingers not this one).

This being the first time I have directed in any formal capacity, naturally I underestimated both tasks.  But even though it is far more work, money, and time than I ever expected, I cannot express how enthusiastically excited I am to see this project continue to grow.

Stay tuned for further updates as events unfold.