Urbanite Theatre prides itself on being cutting edge.
“We take a lot of risks in making theater in our 65-seat house,” said founder and Producing Artistic Director Summer Wallace. “We like to push the boundaries of what theater can be.”
This past season, Urbanite produced the regional premieres of “Spaceman” and “Jennifer, Who is Leaving” and the world premiere of “From 145th to 98th Street."
“We do a lot of new work,” Wallace noted. “What’s exciting about a new play like ‘From 145th to 98th Street,’ the playwright is still learning about the play. Script changes will continue to happen for the next production of this play. Audiences are really part of a new play, of shaping what a new play will become.”
Now Wallace is daring Urbanite’s patrons to take a risk, too.
“We have launched our subscriptions for next season,” Wallace said. “We’re calling it our Daring Subscriber Subscription because we put our subscriptions on sale without announcing what we’re doing yet. We will be making that announcement in August, but essentially audience members are taking a risk coming to see new plays that they haven’t heard of before so we’re kind of challenging our subscribers to purchase a subscription now before they know the Season 12 lineup.”
Although daring subscribers won’t know the titles of the plays that Urbanite will produce next season, they can be sure that they’ll be intimate, immersive contemporary plays that make them feel and think.
MORE INFORMATION:
For more on Urbanite Theatre, read “Sarasota’s cozy Urbanite Theatre known for offering contemporary plays in an immersive space.”
Wallace is confident that patrons will subscribe for season tickets just based on the reputation the theater has built over its first 11 seasons. Not only is there a preponderance of unknown, infrequently produced plays, but also a liberal sprinkling of plays that are still under development. Those are certainly the ones that provide audiences the opportunity not just to see something new, but to place their imprint on the final production.
“When you see an August Wilson play, that play has been done many, many times,” said Wallace by way of example. “It’s been reinterpreted many times at many different theaters. It’s already had workshops. It’s had a first, a second, a third production. It’s had a 10th. You’re seeing a polished script. When a theater like ours does new work, audience members are part of building what that play becomes.”
For example, playwright Nia Akilah Robinson was in the theater during rehearsals of “From 145th to 98th Street.”
“The playwright is included on all of our performance reports. Each night, she is reading what's working and what’s not. Once the play opens, she reads reviews and gets the comments that our audiences make during talkbacks or to our front-of-house people. She gets all that feedback on how this production went and can then make changes or not make changes for the next time this play is done.”
Because of this interplay between playwright, production team and audience, playwrights don’t entrust a new play or one that’s still in development to just any theater. It’s a monumental vote of confidence in a theater’s production team when a playwright like Robinson partners with a theater like Urbanite for a world premiere or Ken Ludwig has Asolo Repertory Theatre debut a comedy like “Lady Molly at Scotland Yard.”
“At Urbanite, we’ve done many, many new plays,” said Wallace. “We’ve done world premieres where not much has changed between this production and the next production. We’ve done plays where a lot of script changes were made. So it really just kind of depends on that, to me, is what’s really exciting about doing new plays.”
It’s also a huge payday for audiences to have a hand in a play’s final version.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
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