FAYETTEVILLE — It makes sense.
A group of theater professionals saw a void in their community, so they decided to change the status quo.
They wanted to see a professional regional theater, and the resulting vision is TheatreSquared. As the area’s first fully professional, locally produced theater company, it will stage its first show this week on a stage that is its temporary home.
The group spent the last two years planning. They have a contract with the Actors’ Equity Association, the country’s labor union for actors and stage managers.
They are the new venture in a community that is traditionally fond of theater.
The now-defunct Ozark StageWorks worked with trained and amateur actors, but never had a home performance space. TheatreSquared organizers hope to raise money to construct a permanent home.
Arts Live Theatre, which pays its staff and teachers, focuses on producing high-quality children’s theater cast with young amateurs. TheatreSquared complements the work done by Arts Live Theatre. It will provide professional-quality theater for children and adults, says Kassie Misiewicz, managing artistic director.
With Northwest Arkansas ’ population growth, there are enough people here to make an audience, organizers say.
“We’re riding this crest of economic growth in the region. I’m not sure it could have happened 10 years ago,” says Bob Ford, one of the company’s founders and its playwright-in-residence.
Towns with a great quality of life have varied arts and entertainment offerings, notes Amy Herzberg, TheatreSquared associate artistic director and Ford’s wife. The only other professional theater in the state — also an Equity theater — is the Arkansas Repertory Theatre in Little Rock.
Her other motivation is this: For years, Herzberg, a University of Arkansas associate professor of drama, has taught and trained actors with whom she’d love to work. Yet, they have to move other places for paying professional jobs.
“These are national-level actors who can’t stay and can’t come back — until now,” Herzberg says.
One of those is Rebecca Harris, a Fayetteville native and former student of Herzberg’s at Trinity University in San Antonio, who’ll perform in the premiere show, Bad Dates, starting Friday at the Nadine Baum Studios in downtown Fayetteville.
“Now, she gets to come home,” Herzberg says.
David Pickens has spent his professional acting career — including the film My Dog Skip — working elsewhere. He’s performed at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre and spent years traveling to regional theaters before coming to the University of Arkansas for graduate work — and staying. “This place was so ripe,” says Pickens, producing artistic director. They thought “if we don’t do this, somebody else will.” Pickens calls the TheatreSquared plan “insanely ambitious,” but he says it’s solid and feasible. In a good season, they might make back 40 percent of their costs from ticket sales; the rest they’ll have to raise. Though no one’s seen their product yet, they’re trying to “balance what we are artistically with [wanting to ] be responsible financially,” Pickens says. The company sent out letters to family and friends. A playwright acquaintance sent $ 25 for the first donation; Misiewicz’s grandmother sent $ 10. Jim Blair, attorney and philanthropist, gave $ 7, 000 to help with the premiere show. They’ll soon look to small businesses, corporations and vendors for financial support.
MERGING INTERESTS Misiewicz and her husband, Daniel Hintz, moved to the area in the fall of 2003 to be closer to family. When in Seattle, they were looking to start a professional children’s theater company. Hintz is now executive director of Fayetteville Downtown Partners.
Meanwhile, Ford, Herzberg and Pickens had been offered a space for their professional adult theater company on the downtown square.
“The moment we met, it was like a chemical reaction,” Ford says.
Though that space didn’t work for them, the idea of theater with that location inspired the company’s name, TheatreSquared.
Now, Misiewicz says, as they’re merging adult and children’s theater, the name suits the “exponential theater” they envision. “There are no bounds to what we could do,” she says.
The Walton Arts Center, which opened 14 years ago, has increased its audiences as it has expanded programming. People now expect theatrical and performance experiences in the area.
“We would not be here if the Walton Arts Center wasn’t here,” says Misiewicz. “They’ve educated an audience that is wanting more live theater — more professional live theater.” While the Walton Arts Center aims to appeal to a wide audience, Pickens says, TheatreSquared can focus on just the pieces it wants to tackle. The arts center is a presenting entity; TheatreSquared is a producing one.
Pickens says it fills a niche between the area’s many community-produced amateur theaters and the Walton Arts Center’s touring Broadway-style shows, and “fleshes out that whole performance arts landscape.” Herzberg says that a “homegrown” theater company can reflect the issues and interests of the region in the material it produces.
They can connect through My Father’s War, a piece written by Ford that tells about the relationship between Herzberg and her father, a World War II veteran. When that’s produced next spring, the company can also connect to local veterans.
Small casts will allow them to have five shows in their first season. They’re also planning youth education, workshops and theater talks — “things that enhance and deepen the theatrical performance,” Misiewicz says. A new play workshop is also in the works.
Morgan Hicks brings her box office and administration experience to her role as general manager. The five board members have nine master’s degrees between them, and Hicks says it’s important that this is an “artist-driven company.” “We also want to get paid for what we do,” Misiewicz says. “Eventually we will get paid through TheatreSquared to do what we do.” She teaches drama at Root Elementary School and the Walton Arts Center, but her main love is directing. After waiting for seven years, she will direct TheatreSquared’s summer production of Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, which will have seven actors, all adults, cast in multiple roles. Cyrano is another family show. Adult shows — including The Last Five Years, The Drawer Boy and My Father’s War — tell stories of relationships, redemption and, often, love.
The shows will run three weeks, about three or four nights with some matinees. Additional shows could be scheduled, depending on audience demand, Misiewicz says.
They’ll use “guerrilla marketing” with the Groundlings, an e-mail group that can be joined on their Web site.
The group’s members speculate that no one has really tried establishing a regional professional theater company before because the timing wasn’t right. And, like them, others likely had other jobs demanding their energy and attention.
“We’ve learned to be open to things coming out of left field,” Ford says. “It’s one piece at a time.” Part of establishing an identity includes building a permanent performance space. They’ll begin a capital campaign in 2008 to raise $ 3 million to $ 5 million for a 250-seat performance hall, rehearsal space, scene and costume shops, offices, kitchen, restaurant, bar and coffee shop. It might be part of downtown Fayetteville’s cultural scene, but they want to make sure it’s seen as a regional entity.
“We are filled with visions of what can be done,” Ford says. “For not having actually produced a play yet, we’re doing really well.” For the TheatreSquared box office, call (479 ) 571-2728. For company information, visit www. theatresquared. org.
THEATER Bad Dates Friday-June 4, TheatreSquared at Studio Theater, Nadine Baum Studios, 505 Spring St., Fayetteville Showtimes: 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Admission: $ 22 ($ 18 for seniors at Sunday matinees ) (479 ) 571-2728
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