New theatre writes latest chapter in MacDougal stage lore
By Chad Fasca
Two Planks and a Passion - an Old English expression meaning that to do theatre, all you need is two planks to stand on, and the passion to do it.
Though it only takes two planks and a passion to put on a play, the founders of manhattantheatresource added several hundred more for good measure. The results—a brand new theatre, built from scratch on a historic theatre block —debuted earlier this year. Offering a “playground for passion and ideas,” manhattantheatresource seeks to add greater legitimacy to Off-Off Broadway through its own productions, while opening its doors to other performers and small companies to produce their own works.
manhattantheatresource has also embarked on an ambitious plan to become a mini-service organization complete with a theatre book exchange (playsource), industry mailing center (mailsource), discount tickets to Off-Off Broadway productions (ticketsource), infrastructure for fundraising, press and marketing campaigns (infosource) as well as workshops and classes (studiosource).
Roughly eight months after breaking ground on its endeavor, the fledgling group has attracted a core “tribe” of loyal volunteers, friends and community members. manhattantheatresource also sits a few buildings away from where the Provincetown Players originally settled (139 MacDougal) and a block away from where Jose Quintero held the first meetings for Circle in the Square (19 MacDougal). Proximity has its advantages as walking tour retracing MacDougal Street's theatrical lineage is in the works with the group playing an active role in its formation. The tour will visit former haunts of the Washington Square Players, Provincetown Players, and Circle in the Square Theatre, including the site of the Provincetown Playhouse.
Provincetown Players, who gave Eugene O’Neill his start, originally settled at 139 MacDougal in a space that O’Neill dubbed "The Playwright’s Theatre." They would later move to the Provincetown Playhouse. Some years later, Jose Quintero held the first meetings for Circle in the Square—New York’s first "Off-Broadway" theatre—at 19 MacDougal Street.
An open invitation
“We are not trying to foster one person’s success. We are trying to foster a place where everybody’s work can be better,” says actress Fiona Jones, one of the six co-founders behind the theatre/arts space.
This statement permeates the fledgling group’s work. Creative people with a passion to produce, direct, act, design or just learn have an open invitation to join manhattantheatresource. Money does not drive the group, which requires only that performers seeking space have a passion for what they do and the chutzpah needed to see a work through its closing.
manhattantheatresource operates by a simple, four-rule bushido:
Principles before personalities.
Share your information.
Practice generosity of spirit.
Clean up after yourself.
“It is completely possible for anyone to walk in and rent this theatre for two weeks, no matter how much money they have when they walk in,” says director Chad Stutz, one of co-founders, underscoring the group’s “formula.”
manhattantheatresource does not run on a hierarchical structure designed for one person to reap all the benefits. Rather, the space thrives on a communal atmosphere built around ensembles and the development of new works.
“It’s really something that’s divided up much more like a pie. And if you are taking this much pie, you are putting this much pie back,” Fiona says.
How to Get Involved
There are a number of ways to gain access to the theatre and space. The group’s performance space (Flophouse Performance Workshop or FPW), a 50-plus seat theatre, houses main stage shows on Wednesdays through Saturdays, children’s theatre on Sunday afternoons, multimedia events on Sunday evenings and classes on weekday mornings. manhattantheatresource devotes Monday and Tuesday nights to its FlopNight Development Series, which are free nights in the theatre. The FPW can be rented on a Wednesday-Saturday night basis for $1500 a week.
The staff can provide you with ideas for fundraising and other options should a big production or long run be needed to satisfy the producer’s goal. For new or developing projects where a short run is preferred, the manhattantheatresource staff suggests interested stagers apply for a FlopNight—free nights, which emphasize collaboration and creation ahead of finished works. This process amounts to a simple application and meeting. FlopNight applications are available either at the space or on their Web site (www.theatresource.org).
“It's really our goal to provide anyone with passion, creativity, energy and no fear of hard work, a playground for their imaginations,” Fiona says. “The [Manhattan Theatre] Source is living proof that you don't have to have a lot of money to build something beautiful and exciting.”
Flop, Flop again, Flop better
The idea that fostering a collaborative atmosphere would lead to creative rewards finds its source in a pre-cursor to manhattantheatresource, the Flophouse. Begun in the spring of 1998 by Andrew Frank, Fiona Jones, Eric Ostrow and Lex Woutas, the Flophouse took aiding other independent theatre companies and individuals in producing work as its mission.
A resident theatre company at Synchronicity Space (55 Mercer Street), the group rented every available off night at Synchronicity Space for the year, then turned around and opened the theatre up to individuals in search of places to create. Providing help with tech, programs and advertising in exchange for the box office proceeds, the Flophouse managed to produce more than 25 different evenings as well as a four-week run of “Theatre of the Film Noir” by George F. Walker. At the end of the year, Andrew and Fiona did lose money ($500 each); however, the endeavor succeeded in attracting the talented people needed to conceive the manhattantheatresource. Ed McNamee, a playwright and lyricist, arrived and infused the company with new ideas for marketing and promotion. Fran Kirmser, a choreographer and participant in the FlopHouse series, carried expertise in producing.
At the time, Fran ran her own company, Fran Kirmser Projects, which managed press campaigns for various productions on Broadway, off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway. Her company would eventually merge with manhattantheatresource and become the backbone of manhattantheatresource’s infosource, which provides marketing, PR, and grant writing services to artists. She also provided the link between manhattantheatresource and its current fiscal conduit—the Circum-Arts Foundation.
Circum-Arts provides 501(c)(3) status and accounting/compliance services for small performance groups in exchange for a percentage of their fundraising income (we’ll feature Circum-Arts, among others, in an Umbrella.org funding special coming soon). Meanwhile, manhattantheatresource has applied for 501(c)(3) status on its own.
The Flophouse experiment also won over its skeptics who believed the entire concept would lose gads of money, leading to a turning point for the incipient group. Last spring, when Synchronicity Space decided to move after ten years, Andrew Frank was offered the lease at 55 Mercer Street.
Group gets lease, loses leases, finds new lease
“The challenge, the pure challenge of ‘Here you want a 10-year lease? You can have it; come up with a proposal’ was like this bait that inspired, at the time it was, Fran (Kirmser), Fiona and myself,” Andrew says.
With the later addition of Ed, they had come up with a proposal for taking over the whole space. They raised the initial capital, landed the interest of a Broadway producer and made arrangements with several artists to rent the space’s galleries, all in amatter of a dizzying few weeks. But in a classic New York twist, the lease vanished, leaving Andrew, Fran, Fiona and Ed back at square one. However, they had already fleshed out a plan and investors to open a new theatre; now these efforts only needed to be redirected.
“Of course…theatre like anything else is site specific,” says Andrew. “That was a 99-seat theatre with two art galleries and a rehearsal space, so we had to completely redo the entire format and redo the layout of the space, but all of the main objectives, all of the main groundwork…”
“The innards…” Fran adds.
“…the main investors and philosophies had been hashed out, gone over and built up,” Andrew adds.
Undaunted, the group sniffed out a new space, listed in the New York Times, that offered a prime location with a good landlord—all at half the price per month of every other space they examined.
“It was very bizarre,” Andrew recalls.
“Fortuitous,” Fiona adds.
“But, you had to see the theatre in it,” Ed says.
Of course, they did. And while the 55 Mercer Street site would have compromised their mission, forcing them to live with a great deal, “this place was going to have the theatre where we designed it; the bookstore, where we designed it. We weren’t living with an already pre-existing set. And, we had time to bring Chad and Daryl in,” Andrew says.
With the fall additions of Chad Stutz, a director who had been in a directing class taught by Andrew, and Daryl Boling, an actor with business experience, the six directors of the newly formed manhattantheatresource became complete. And shortly thereafter, on December 20, 1999, work commenced on the space. Thirty volunteers showed up in the first six weeks of construction. Over the next 6 months, the manhattantheatresource founders and volunteers completed 99 percent of the work themselves.
“Lots of our initial volunteers had worked with us on some project, in some capacity or were friends who owed us favors and just enjoyed the process (lunatics, in other words, and thank god for ’em),” Fiona says.
“I’m flashing back to Josh Trutt, a doctor friend of ours, and the day he spent in the closet in the bathroom cleaning out muck and grime,” Chad says. “After a day of doing his residency, he came down here and did that for four hours.”
“He had heart surgery that morning,” Ed McNamee deadpans facetiously.
Results
And through this process a new formula for managing a theatre took root, one that eschews dependence on grant money.
“We look at things differently,” Fran (Kirmser) says. “Theatre self supports itself. It’s not dependent on a NYSCA grant.”
Even in its infancy, the company has achieved a measure of success. The Flophouse Performance Workshop has been booked solid through much of the remaining year. The group's commitment to the development of new works and the development of undiscovered works by established authors has paid off. The recent world premiere of "Change," a comedy written, directed and produced by Kirven Blount sold out its two-week stay. For three weeks, starting September 20, the group will devote its energies to the staging of recently-discovered, unpublished work of Tennessee Williams. Titled "Derelicts & Dreamers," the show includes the world premiere of the preface to "My Last Duchess." You can check up on manhattantheatresource or find out how to get involved at company's home page: www.theatresource.org.
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