Washington, DC is about to get another new venue, the Spooky Action Theater located in the lower level auditorium of the Universalist National Memorial Church at the corner of S and 16th Streets NW in downtown Washington, DC.
The Spooky Action Theater company which had been on production hiatus for two years except for two shows in Capital Fringe, announced that it will be mounting three productions in the 2010-2011 season from the new space, beginning in October, 2010.
Reminiscent of 1st Stage, whose founders and volunteers picked up hammers and saws to build its own theatre space within an existing structure in Tysons Corner, VA, Artistic Director Richard Henrich is busy at work, doing a great deal of the buildout himself under the director of architect and Spooky Action board member Kim Sammis of InEx Design. Henrich has put out a call to carpenters ($12.50/hour) and laborers ($10.00/hour) to help make the space stage-ready. (If you are available, you can email him here).
Henrich spoke with DC Theatre Scene today. Taking a break from mounting acoustic tiles, he talked about the upcoming season, then added: “I hope our new space will be a resource for the community and that other theatres needing space will take a look at what we have to see if it fits their purposes.”
Spooky Action Theater will celebrate the opening with a gala fundraiser October 2, 2010 where guests are invited to dance to the music of Halley Shoenberg’s Jazz Quartet playing a repertoire of 1930s -1940s swing music.
The Spooky Action season will lead off with Samuel Beckett’s one-actor play, The Lost Ones, which will run from October 21 to November 14. Carter Jahnke will reprise his role as the Aged One, surrounded by a fantastic world of tiny model humans, and their astonishing society and theology. The Lost Ones ran to critical and popular acclaim in the 2009 Fringe Festival (a review of that production is here.)
Spooky Action will follow this production with two area premieres: after the quake, which will run from February 10 to March 6, 2011, and Einstein’s Dreams, running June 2-26, 2011. After the quake is a Frank Galati adaptation of two short stories – one realistic, one dreamlike – in a collection of stories about the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe earthquake written by Haruki Murakami. The adaptation first played in the Steppenwolf Theater in 2007.
Einstein’s Dreams is a Kipp Cheng adaptation of the Alan Lightman novel of the same name. The play takes us through the dreams which bombarded the great scientist during the time he was formulating his theory of relativity, and Einstein’s purportedly out-of-wedlock daughter, about who little is known, serves as our guide.
Spooky Action’s new season, as well as the venue itself, comes about through the generosity of the Universalist National Memorial Church, The Marpat Foundation, the Julian R and Varue W Oishei Foundation, and private donors.
It’s a nice space and a great location, and with some TLC ought to be fine new home for the Spookies.