Daily Memphian
Jill Johnson Piper
Theatre Memphis will open its 2020-21 season, their 100th, with a brand new look and a perennial favorite.
“August 21 is opening night with ‘Hello, Dolly!’ and we’ve got the grand staircase to go with it,” said executive producer Debbie Litch, referencing the familiar title number from one of the theater’s surefire sell-outs.
Actually, there’ll be two grand staircases: the one onstage and the one for patrons, easily the showiest feature of the renovated Theatre Memphis.
It’s been 35 years since the last facelift in 1985. During that time the audience has fluctuated, contracting during the Recession, but presently on the ascent, posting an increase of 35% in attendance and ticket sales since 2006, Litch said.
“It was vitally important that we do this renovation for our 100th season,” said Randall Hartzog, TM’s director of marketing and communications. “We want the facility to match the quality of what’s being presented on stage.”
Before the noise of a riveter drowned out the rest of her sentence, I heard Litch say something about “delivering consistent artistic excellence” – RATATATATATATATATATATAT – and “seven shows that sold out every performance last season.”
She has a hardhat in every color and goals for every week to bring this $5.7 million campaign of improvements to completion by August. The TM “Shine On” campaign seeks to raise an even $10 million to also create an endowment.
Theatre Memphis had an abbreviated season 2019-2020 in order to begin construction. The massive overhaul began in January with the expansion of the lobby, renovation of the Lohrey Stage theater, and the addition of patron restrooms. The renovation will bring the former sunken lobby up to the street level and add a covered porte-cochère on the south. On the west, a sparkling glass wall will afford a view of Audubon Park across Perkins Extended.
“We want you to get excited before you ever sit in that seat and before the first downbeat of the opening number,” Litch said.
It’s been a big week for announcements at TM: On Monday, Mayor Jim Strickland announced that the City of Memphis has given the theater permanent deed to the 6-acre lot at Perkins Extended and Southern Avenue. Theatre Memphis has leased the land since 1969, and owned the contemporary-style building since its completion in 1975. The first show in the Perkins location was “My Fair Lady.”
Also announced this week, the American Association of Community Theatre just gave its most prestigious award, the Diamond Crown Organization Award, to Theatre Memphis for 2020, TM board president Dabney Coors said in a statement. The annual award goes to an established community theater that has exhibited continuous growth over the last decade and shows potential for continued growth. The AACT represents 7,000 constituent theaters.
To get an idea how big a deal this was, I called my nephew, Nicholas Piper, associate artistic director of the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia, the oldest professional theater in the United States.
“That’s actually a huge deal for a community theater to celebrate 100 years of continuous operation,” he said. “There’s not a single person who’s in the theater who did not start in a community theater. They’re the artistic hub of any community.”
Theatre Memphis executive producer Debbie Litch talks about some of the new features of the lobby area on Feb. 27. (Jim Weber/Daily Memphian)
He also reminded me of the difference between a community theater (like Theatre Memphis) and a professional company (like Playhouse on the Square): professional theaters have a resident company of paid actors who are members of the Actors Equity union. Community theaters may have a few paid staff but volunteers do the performing, staging, costuming and directing.
Theatre Memphis’ renovation doubles the size of the dressing rooms, enlarges the property shop, provides a paint room for backdrops, and brings both stages up to municipal code with sprinkler systems. The design addresses long-standing challenges in making the facility entirely accessible for patrons with special needs. The audio system for the hearing impaired has been replaced, and the new design doubles the seating for those who use wheelchairs to 11 spaces in the last row of the center section.
Backstage was bustling last week as volunteers moved thousands of costumes into new climate-controlled storage. I spied Buffalo Bill’s jacket from “Annie Get Your Gun” and racks of beaded dresses from “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and Egyptian swag from “Cleopatra” and Victorian bustles from “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
And chairs. Hundreds of chairs of every style a character might need – office chairs, bedroom chairs, reclining chairs – are in storage. There’s a section just for typewriters: ancient Remingtons, IBM Selectrics, rusted-out Royals, all corresponding to the correct decade for a given show. I asked Bill Short, veteran prop master for dozens of shows since the ’70s, why that’s important.
“Props (and set dressing) can give the audience a much deeper understanding of the world the characters inhabit. Also, actors have told me that having the perfect prop has often had huge benefits for their confidence in performance. ‘Now it all seems very real to me,’ they say, which is their job to make it all real for us.”
Theatre Memphis organized in 1920 with 56 active members as the Memphis Little Theatre. The first season, 1920-21, had just one production, three one-act plays performed in Germania Hall at Third Street and Jefferson. The first four seasons, the players bounced between Germania Hall and the 19th Century Club until 1925, when they raised enough money to convert the carriage house behind the James Lee home into a 90-seat theater.
When the City of Memphis took over Clarence Saunders’ mansion in 1929 in lieu of taxes, Memphis Little Theater made its home at the Pink Palace for 46 years. Instead of the indoor swimming pool Saunders had envisioned, the space became a 250-seat theater. The move to 630 Perkins Extended came in 1975.
The emphasis of the 2020-21 season is on American plays, not unlike the theatrical trend that swept community theaters a century ago.
“After World War I there was a shift of rationale for the Little Theatre movement,” writes Dr. Twink Lynch for the American Association of Community Theatre. While many of the earlier groups were dedicated to the new European “art” of theater, producing plays by Ibsen, Maeterlinck and Lord Dunsany, prominent directors in the 1920s declared “that the future of the Little Theatre lay in training and developing the American playwright. ”
And that’s what’s coming to the 400-seat Lohrey Theatre: a solid season of mostly American classics. After “Hello, Dolly!” it’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” In December, director Jason Spitzer’s adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” with the moving bed will take the stage. That’s followed by “Our Town,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “You Can’t Take It With You” and “Ragtime.”
On the Next Stage, the 100-seat black box theater, the offerings are “The Secret Garden,” “Urinetown, The Musical,” “American Son” and “Cicada.”
