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Photo Sue Harrison
Director Susan Grilli will head up the winter scheduling at The Provincetown Theater for Counter Productions. |
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Grilli is ready to fill the seats
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
Susan Grilli is no ingénue when it comes to theater. She’s been there, done that, and now wants to put on a packed winter season of theater and events at The Provincetown Theater. Her thrust will be full performances coupled with a teaching program for adults and kids to train the next generation of community theater actors and techies.
Grilli, the head of Counter Productions (CP) with partner-producer Joy McNulty, staged two plays this past summer, “Bingo the Musical” and “I Am My Own Wife” at the Provincetown Inn. They have leased the theater located at 238 Bradford St. for the winter from the Provincetown Theater Foundation (PTF). Next summer CP will return to the Provincetown Inn and programming at The Provincetown Theater will revert back to PTF.
This winter’s schedule includes four fully staged plays; a four-day improv workshop in February for adults and youths followed by a performance; monthly afternoon performances by Harwich Junior Theatre; artists in training programs in acting, musical theater and technical aspects on Saturdays; a Sunday music program in the lobby; and the Susan Glaspell Women in Theatre Conference in May. Artwork will be shown in the new winter gallery slated for the lobby and the ballet classes begun last month will continue.
Other events and programs may be added and Grilli is especially interested in hearing proposals for short-term productions by other groups. All events begin in January and continue through May. At this point April has been left largely open and CP is listing an open call for work. Also in April, Tom Wilson Weinberg, who created the 10 Percent Review, is planning on bringing in “60 Years with Bruhs and Gean.”
“Starting this week we will spruce up, starting out back,” she says. “We will also reconfigure this room [the stage and seating area] but that will be a surprise. We have to treat it as if it was our own.”
Grilli wanted to focus her energy this winter on the Glaspell conference but realized that taking on the theater offered great opportunities in teaching and directing. She was nervous about operations but says that McNulty and other board members have the expertise to make prudent financial decisions freeing her to concentrate on the creative side.
“We want to take really good care of this space and of theater in Provincetown,” she says. “That’s the whole reason we started Counter Productions. A lot of people want a lively theater and want this building to work.”
Grilli is already a familiar face in Provincetown theater circles. She and John Andert were two of the first people who put on performances in this new theater back before it was built, when it was still an auto repair garage. She and Andert rehearsed their short plays in the repair bays and she knew then it would be a great theater space.
Grilli ran Provincetown Theater Works from 1987-92, but by ’92 was tired of the endless search for performance space, space that usually was already in use by day and where her sets had to be broken down and redone nightly. She has long been part of the short plays produced by the Provincetown Theatre Company — now the New Provincetown Players — as part of the Playwrights Lab. That playwriting workshop sponsored by NPP will continue and meets in the lobby on Sundays.
Kevin Hardy who does set work and other technical duties with Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater is in discussion with Grilli about his availability to work with her this winter and possibly do some techie training.
The training aspect, Grilli says, is core to what she hopes to accomplish long-term.
“Honestly, the real reason I pushed for the winter is because I believe we have to have people trained,” she says, noting that through training the next generation of community theater will be born. Without training, she says, it’s certainly possible to put on shows, but to reach the level that Provincetown community theater has reached in the past and should reach for in the future, training is essential. “I want to work toward expanding [the complexity of skills required] for future productions,” she says. Even if there was a core of four to five highly trained actors, far more ambitious productions could be tackled. With five anchors, lots of other actors can be used and everybody looks good, she says.
Then there is the Actors Equity issue. If a production uses more than two Equity actors a whole new set of expensive rules, including the need for an Equity union stage manager, comes into play, so Equity has to be used sparingly.
Grilli’s past out-of-town credits include production manager at La Mama, working with a literary agency, teaching in the Brooklyn school system, playwriting, acting and directing. She has been in Provincetown off and on for 30 years and permanently since 2000.
She will open the theater season on Jan. 10 with “Doubt.” It will run through Jan. 20 and be performed Thursday through Sunday. Following is “Kimberly Akimbo” Feb. 14-24; “Anna in the Tropics” March 13-23 and “Souvenir” May 15-26.
Next summer’s CP schedule at the Provincetown Inn includes “Tick Tick Boom” June 15-July 9, a Family Week presentation July 19-25, and “The Full Monty” Aug. 3-27.
She knows that running the theater is a challenge but one worth taking on.
“It’s easier to dislike something and complain than to make changes,” she says. “Hopefully everybody is willing to work toward change. We are going to put a lot of energy into this building and create lots of ways for people to support theater, whether it’s kids and ballet, productions or other kinds of training.
“We are community theater. But we are not content to just put on [what might be considered the lower standards applied to] community theater. We aspire to put on good theater.”
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Community party to assist women in need
Outer Cape Gallery Listings
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Nov 8th, 2007