PRINTColumbia: the new drama queen
Rebecca H. Romano
Sarah Phillips, left, performs for the participants of the Independent Actors Theatre’s improvisation class, including Daniel Shar and Chrissy Stiehl, March 8, at MU’s Fine Arts Annex.
March 20, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Last August, Charles Willis, Shawna Kelty and Ross Taylor brought to life a new type of theater in Columbia. They had discussed the possibility of producing plays that were different from the usual family-oriented productions. Over whiskeys at the Heidelberg, the three decided they didn’t want to bring just one play to Columbia; they wanted to build a community of actors that would continue to push the limits of Columbia’s idea of what a play is. Willis, Kelty and Taylor were determined to introduce Columbia to contemporary theater’s love of harsh reality, despair and sex. They were going to bring the drama. “We tend to like things a little darker in life,” Taylor says.
The Independent Actors Theatre sets out to “stimulate the hearts and minds of the adult community,” its mission statement says. Its members also are working to create more demanding roles for local actors whose only options in the past were being cast in a university or family-oriented theater production.
IAT’s first production, David Hare’s The Blue Room, focused on passion and the emptiness of sex. The audience sat in chairs spread across the now-closed Shattered club’s dance floor. Timothy Ponce, the assistant Web designer for Columbia College, attended The Blue Room. Ponce was moved by it and says IAT is all about the art form whereas Columbia’s university theater productions are about ticket sales and learning. “It felt like it had more heart because it was so small,” Ponce says.
“Although it had an amateur appearance, there was nothing amateur in its delivery,” Willis says. He thought there was an audience seeking contemporary, adult dramatic elements. “I didn’t know the audience would be this diverse or this many,” he says. Finding venues for the plays has been difficult though. So far, they’ve leaned on bar and club owners who let IAT rent or merely borrow the space.
Willis has had his own dramatic relationship with theater. After he earned his bachelor’s degree in theater from MU, he remained in Columbia for 10 years and bounced from one office job to the next until he landed a job at MU’s law school. He was encouraged by the dean to go into law and decided to take the LSAT. “When I told my dad, he was pissed,” Willis says of his entrance to law school. “My mother asked me to reconsider.” A year and a half into his law degree, he did reconsider and decided to return to theater.
After three productions, IAT is beginning to see that Columbia does have an audience for the provocative plays its members have performed. The group expected to sell just 20 tickets for The Blue Room. Instead, an audience of 60 showed up. Their second and third productions — David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries and Tennessee Williams’ Confessional — had much larger crowds. Willis was even forced to turn away people from Confessional because Eastside Tavern had reached maximum capacity.
“It’s a hard thing to believe that people in Missouri would seek out (theater),” Taylor says. “There is a pocket buried underneath your conservative mainstream that wants something more.”
IAT is also working to expand what they offer the community. Beginning in January, IAT began holding eight-week acting classes. MU theater doctoral student Brett Johnson was hired to teach the Stanislavsky system, a method of learning the art of acting. Taylor holds classes on improvisation. Most of his students are made up of alumni from Stephens College and MU, but there are also others, like one father-daughter pair, who is in it for the fun. IAT hopes to find a broader audience for their classes in the future. “We want (IAT) to be a member of Columbia’s community — not just MU’s,” Willis says.
IAT’s next show, Craig Wright’s Orange Flower Water runs May 15 -17. It tells the story of a love affair between two people who are already married. In order to be together they abandon their spouses and children. Their actions shed light on the ultimate cost of love. Kelty laughs when she says her friend calls it the Midwestern version of Closer.
The company is still young and working to create a reputation among audiences and a repertoire of actors in Columbia. “We’re recognizing the impact that we’re beginning to have,” Willis says. “We’re trying to really figure out what it is that we’re going to do and what our second season is going to look like.”
