Las Vegas theater companies increasingly play with new ideas
Hip-hop Shakespeare. A new theater company. New venues. Venues transformed into wrestling rings — and Skid Row flower shops. Showcases for original works.
They’re all on the program as Las Vegas’ local theater season launches in September.
There are still plenty of familiar favorites on tap, from the female version of “The Odd Couple” (opening May 5 at Las Vegas Little Theatre), featuring mismatched women roommates, to “Oklahoma!” (which kicks off Super Summer Theatre’s 2017 lineup May 19 and 20).
But some local companies are betting on the audience’s growing appetite for new, offbeat and otherwise challenging theatrical fare.
“Audiences are hungry for just about anything,” says Troy Heard, who just left the Onyx Theatre after two years as producing director to launch the new Majestic Repertory Theatre.
Majestic Rep’s first season will include most of the productions Heard slated for the Onyx — including “Little Shop of Horrors” in a downtown gallery transformed into Mushnik’s Skid Row Florists (opening Oct. 6). There are also a few switches, among them a revival of Heard’s 2014 zombie-fied “Anton Chekhov’s ‘Cherry Orchard of the Living Dead’ ” (opening Jan. 19).
Majestic’s ultimate goal, however, is to “find in Las Vegas the voices that will change American theater,” Heard says. “Good theater reflects the community that’s seeing it (and) documents the time we’re in for future generations.”
Overall, “the Vegas clientele is always in search of a new fix,” according to Christopher Edwards, artistic director of UNLV-based Nevada Conservatory Theatre, which kicks off its 2016-17 season Sept. 2 with “Bomb-itty of Errors,” a hip-hop adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors.”
NCT and Cockroach Theatre continue their annual collaboration this season with the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced,” which focuses on Islam and assimilation (opening March 31).
Cockroach kicks off its own season Oct. 2 with “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety,” set within the world of wrestling — which means downtown’s Art Square Theatre will be transformed into a wrestling ring.
It’s Cockroach’s fifth season at Art Square — a welcome home base after eight years of presenting shows at various locations, notes artistic director Levi Fackrell. “It’s hard to cultivate an audience when they’re chasing you.”
That’s the challenge for Asylum Theatre, which begins its 20th year of “doing new plays in the middle of the Mojave Desert,” notes artistic director Sarah O’Connell.
Although Asylum often works with Cockroach to use Art Square, it’s harder to find a space than it is a project, she explains. “It’s a perpetual challenge,” because of limited resources.
Another sometimes peripatetic local company, A Public Fit, has found two new homes for this season’s productions.
The company’s staged readings will be presented at the Clark County Library, while fully staged plays will be performed in “The Usual Place” at Fremont Street and Maryland Parkway — the setting for last season’s award-winning “A Summons From the Tinker to Assemble the Membership in Secret at the Usual Place.”
That production included an audience-participation sequence in which viewers debated the main character’s fate. “Audiences really enjoyed being challenged that way,” notes Joe Kucan, who heads APF with Ann Marie Pereth.
Making spectators part of an event as opposed to part of a play is key to creating something new and exciting, Kucan says.
The process of creating new work can extend over a period of months — or years.
Cockroach playwright-in-residence Ernie Curcio recently did a reading of his “Unfinished” at the Summerlin Library — presented by Asylum — and “got really good feedback.” It’s the latest step in what’s been a six-year process — so far — with major changes made since Curcio “brought it out of the ashes.”
More local playwrights have more work, he says, but “we’ve still got a long way to go.”
This season, Poor Richard’s Players will present “Dick Johnson: Private Eye,” a revamp of two shorter “Dick Johnson” mystery spoofs originally presented at the annual Vegas Fringe Fest.
It’s a signature production for Poor Richard’s, which is working to develop its brand, explains artistic director Benjamin Loewy. “But we don’t want people to forget we also do drama.”
Along with the annual fringe festival, hosted by Las Vegas Little Theatre, LVLT and Broadway in the Hood are sponsoring contests to find — and stage — new works.
“What isn’t important about creating and producing new works?” says Broadway in the Hood founder Torrey Russell. “That’s the way things become classic.”
Even the old warhorse “Oklahoma!” will get a new twist in the new season; Super Summer Theatre’s season opener will feature the winning bidders from the group’s first casting auction, to be held during a Sept. 11 benefit gala.
As for original works, they’ve been part of the Las Vegas theater landscape for longer than many realize; they’ve been part of the Rainbow Company Youth Theatre’s programs since the troupe was created in 1976.
This season’s installment in the company’s ongoing Nevada history series will be the 23rd, according to Karen McKenney, Rainbow’s artistic director.
In Loewy’s view, “the audience is out there — but they don’t know it yet,” he says. “The majority of Vegas audiences don’t know they like new theater.”
But they will — as long as the theater’s more than just new.
“If you can deliver high quality,” the Cockroach’s Fackrell says, “the audience will trust you.”
Read more stories from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.
