$20M off-Broadway project planned for Arts District

Whenever he’d visit his mother and sister in Las Vegas, Darren Lee Cole would invariably end up talking about a hole he’d noticed in the city’s theater scene.

After several years of that, he’s ready to do more than talk.

Cole, the artistic director of New York’s SoHo Playhouse, has plans for four new theater spaces, a project estimated at $20 million, that would bridge the gap between Las Vegas’ existing theater companies and the touring productions that set up shop in The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

Most of what excites him about live theater falls into that middle ground where off-Broadway lives, Cole says, “and that’s what seems to be non-existent in Las Vegas.”

Helping artists grow

SoHo Playhouse has a rich history in off-Broadway theater — a designation based on a venue’s seating capacity, not its location — since 1994, a decade before Cole joined.

The building’s theatrical history, though, dates back to 1928 and includes a stint during which playwright Edward Albee oversaw the production of early works by Sam Shepard, Terrence McNally and Lanford Wilson.

More recently, SoHo Playhouse is where Phoebe Waller-Bridge performed “Fleabag,” the play that launched the TV sensation, in 2019. And it’s where, the year before, Hannah Gadsby brought her groundbreaking “Nanette” for a sold-out run before its Netflix debut.

Perhaps the marquee entry on Cole’s producing resume is “Killer Joe,” Pulitzer-winning playwright Tracy Letts’ debut work. The drama was first performed in a 64-seat theater, Cole says, graduated to 99 seats, then 200, before making its way to a thousand-seat theater in London’s West End.

“I want to help provide the trappings for that kind of organic process in Las Vegas,” he says.

To accommodate that sort of progression, plans for SoHo Playhouse’s Las Vegas outpost include a cabaret space, a 99-seat theater, a flexible black box theater that could serve up to 199 audience members and what Cole calls “a real, formal, off-Broadway-style 299-seat theater.”

The SoHo Playhouse team is focusing on spaces in the Arts District in hopes of being up and running by the end of 2022 or early 2023. They’re looking at existing properties while considering building from the ground up. Two options are in play: a performing arts center housing all four theaters and a series of buildings, like New York’s Theatre Row, that would work in harmony.

‘Not coming in as saviors’

As part of his introduction to Las Vegas, Cole and his team have been meeting with local arts leaders.

“They understand the need to ingratiate themselves as part of the existing arts community, and they’re not coming in as saviors,” Majestic Repertory Theatre founder Troy Heard says. “They want to become a part of what we’re doing.”

Off-Broadway shows tend to be the sort of boundary-pushing productions Heard traffics in, but the director only sees positives in the SoHo Playhouse plan.

“Competition’s great,” Heard says. “I think artists tend to get very lazy when they’re the only ones operating in their area. So when you have somebody else coming in that meets that bar or exceeds that bar, it makes you work a little harder.”

Ally R. Haynes-Hamblen, director of cultural affairs for the City of Las Vegas, sees a pent-up demand for such a project.

“I think the pandemic has really made people hungry for arts and culture,” she says, “and hungry for that shared experience of going out to shows. … So many people have felt so isolated that I think it actually is a really good time to birth projects like this.”

Myron Martin is familiar with SoHo Playhouse, which he calls “a pretty amazing place,” through his roles as president and CEO of The Smith Center. He met with Cole and is excited to learn more about the group’s plans, but Martin says he doesn’t know enough about the details to weigh in.

“I’m really hopeful,” he allows, “because I think expanding the theater community in Las Vegas would be wonderful.”

A career in theater

Some of the details of the SoHo Playhouse project remain unsettled.

Fundraising has begun, with the capital goal targeting donations, corporate sponsorships and, potentially, public funding.

Haynes-Hamblen says she hasn’t been contacted about the financial side of the plan, but she notes that any public funding requests wouldn’t necessarily involve the city.

Like Cole, she noticed the same off-Broadway-sized void in Las Vegas’ arts scene when she moved here four years ago.

“We don’t really have a professional equity producing theater in Las Vegas,” Haynes-Hamblen says, referencing theaters like SoHo Playhouse that use Actors’ Equity Association talent. “We’ve got wonderful theater being produced in Las Vegas, don’t get me wrong. But the fact that we don’t have a professional equity house is pretty surprising considering the size of our metropolitan area. So I’m excited for what Darren and his colleagues are proposing, and I’m cautiously optimistic that they can pull it off.”

Cole is still undecided on whether to use those theaters, should they come to fruition, to produce existing shows or original works. For now, he’s open to both.

“One of my ambitions here is to show those artists I want to create a scenario where they can envision making a career out of theater here,” Cole says. “I want to help them, in any way I can, continue doing whatever it is they’re doing, because I believe so strongly in the theater.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.