Theaters produce dramatic highs

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Playhouse on the Square soon cuts the ribbon on its new facility at Cooper and Union. Jackie Nichols gives a tour.

It's hard to say why Memphis has such a love affair with the performing arts, or how a city its size can sustain as much theater, dance and music as it does. Despite the ongoing recession, arts survivors include an opera company, a professional dance troupe, and almost as many stages as there are actors to perform on them.

Within a week, Playhouse on the Square will cut the ribbon on a brand new theater and arts center at the corner of Cooper and Union. Conducting a $15 million capital drive during a time when donors -- corporate and individual -- are seriously pinching pennies is nothing short of Memphian in its audacity. Other theater companies across the country are scaling back or even closing their doors. Here, we're making room for an extra 350 theatergoers. That's moxie.

Photo by Nikki Boertman, Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal

Anita Johnson and Johnathan Tuzo, of Opera Memphis' "Treemonisha," written by composer Scott Joplin.

Photo by Alan Spearman, Alan Spearman/The Commercial Appeal

Playhouse on the Square soon cuts the ribbon on its new facility at Cooper and Union. Jackie Nichols gives a tour.

Voices of the South performs the original work "Cicada" by Jerre Dye.

A new theater won't necessarily mean new and improved art. You'll see the same homegrown talent as before, the same costume and lighting designers, and the same people running the show.

But the act of building a multimillion dollar stage during a recession says something about the ambitiousness of local artists and the gambles they make on art.

They truly believe that the arts make this city a better place to live. There are larger metropolitan areas where one can't find five plays or musicals to choose from on any given weekend.

It couldn't happen without the seemingly bottomless local talent pool, where new actors, singers and hoofers regularly come out of the woodwork to audition for shows. (Maybe it's in the water. Let's not forget that two local women -- Lil Rounds and Alexis Grace -- made it to the finals on "American Idol" last spring.)

2009 was a very good year for Memphis theatergoers. The hits outnumbered the misses, and even folks who only rarely see shows could find reasons to venture out more than once.

The Orpheum had a banner season of touring Broadway productions. Among the most memorable: the well-performed "Drowsy Chaperone," a vintage revival of "Fiddler on the Roof" starring Topol, the original Tevye, and the box-office smash "Wicked," which did so well that it's already scheduled to come back.

In addition to building a new theater, Playhouse added a "SoloWorks" series -- eight individual performers doing their self-penned one-person shows. Some of the works were outstanding. Darian Dauchan's "Entertainer's Eulogy," which told the story of black icons in the 20th Century, Suzanne Morrison's "Yoga Bitch," a comedy about trying to find enlightenment at a yoga retreat, and Jayne Amelia Larson's "Driving the Saudis," about her stint as a chauffeur to Saudi royalty, were the kinds of top-notch, insightful monologs often seen in New York and San Francisco that are just now finding an audience here in the Mid-South.

The productions that stood out most to this critic were the ones that capitalized on the strengths of local artists: creativity, originality, resourcefulness and vision.

Michael Ching of Opera Memphis created a new framework for the Scott Joplin opera "Treemonisha." The company, which often rents sets and costumes, built the production from scratch, and the result was a piece that can now be leased to other companies.

Once again, the small theater troupe Voices of the South produced one of the year's most memorable shows. "Cicada," written by artistic director Jerre Dye, was a Southern ghost story with a surprise ending that got better with multiple viewings.

In the next few years, there's no reason local theater groups couldn't craft original material that might go on to receive national recognition, especially with an added A-level performance venue modeled after the famed Steppenwolf theater in Chicago.

When the musical "Memphis" opened on Broadway this fall, it had gone through six years of workshops in cities from Seattle to La Jolla, Calif. It never got anywhere near Memphis, the city that inspired it. Among other factors, there wasn't a space here conducive to a pre-Broadway tryout.

Now there will be.

The new Playhouse on the Square will have the size and the technical capacity to put on bigger and better shows, maybe Broadway-bound.

The audience just has to stay hungry for more theater. And trust me, there will be more theater to come. A lot more.

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Theater Highlights of 2009

Voices of the South, "Cicada": Written by Jerre Dye, the play examines more than a handful of great Southern literary themes, including love, loss, ghosts, coming-of-age and death. Viewers will remember Cecelia Wingate's remarkable performance as a hard-nosed Mississippi widow fighting a losing battle with the weeds in her yard. Young director Leslie Barker translated Dye's poetic language into mysterious, emotionally wrenching movement and imagery.

Irene Crist's direction of "Much Ado About Nothing" at Bartlett Community Theatre: She made Shakespeare fun and contemporary, setting this battle of the sexes during the 1960s and bringing together a cast of enthusiastic performers.

Opera Memphis, "Treemonisha": Once in a while, the company throws its full artistic might behind a production. They build the sets, make the costumes, rework the story and score some new music, and when it finally hits the stage, the audience can accept even the weakest of plots because the performance seems so fresh and vivid. Thus was the company's production of "Treemonisha," the opera written by ragtime composer Scott Joplin.

Standout actors of 2009: David Foster acted against type in Playhouse's "Santaland Diaries," and the upbeat production was still surprisingly funny. Jude Knight and David Shipley brought the house down in "Souvenir" at Theatre Memphis. Jerre Dye gave a tour de force performance as the title role in Theatre Memphis' "Cyrano." Tim Greer was the veritable reincarnation of the great country balladeer in the Circuit Playhouse musical "Hank Williams: Lost Highway."

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