Joy Zinoman’s Studio Acting Conservatory, which must vacate Studio Theatre this summer, will be safe to continue on, Zinoman announced on Kojo Nnamdi’s show today. The City of Washington has helped locate temporary space for her program at the Garnet-Patterson Middle School, which was also the 3 year nesting ground for Duke Ellington School of the Arts, actress Billie Krishawn added. Both were speaking, along with Alex Levy of 1st Stage, on Kojo Nnamdi’s show “Can Small Theatres Thrive in a Rapidly Changing Washington? on WAMU 88.5.
All three panelists are personally familiar with the impact that happens when theatres move into once culturally arid communities.
Zinoman founded Studio Theatre in 1978 and moved it to the corner of 14th NW and P Streets when the streets were littered with trash. Many said she was crazy to think audiences would follow her.
Alex Levy heard something very similar. When he came to town to interview for the Artistic Director position at 1st Stage, a writer explained to him that Tysons Corner was a backwater, and no place for a theatre company. Especially when it is located in a strip mall, next to a pet spa. Actually, audiences found the actor-built 1st Stage theatre pretty early (DCTS has been there since its first show). We have seen 1st Stage audiences growing, as fast as its reputation for quality productions. Levy has learned that you can’t build a community, which Tysons was clearly in search of, without a cultural life and that is what 1st Stage is creating.
Krishawn grew up around the corner, neighborhood-wise, from where Adele Robey would locate her second theatre, Anacostia Playhouse. Krishawn, who attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts, never envisioned that the community would one day be home for a thriving arts and theatre scene. She now has a featured role in Blood at the Root, produced by Theater Alliance at Anacostia Playhouse, which closes March 24.
Still, the search for new spaces and neighborhoods that welcome them continues. Zinoman is now looking for a permanent location for her Studio Acting Conservatory in Columbia Heights. “Perhaps we’ll make that an arts corridor,” she said.
As neighborhoods get revitalized – as theatres are followed by bars and restaurants and residences – space for young companies to rehearse and perform become scarce, causing those theatres to compete not only for audiences, but for performance and rehearsal spaces. Zinoman and Levy are both from Chicago. There, theatres have moved into unused industrial spaces, a rarity here.
Broadway producer Ken Davenport has another idea. New York, too, is running out of space for all the companies that want to work there. Writing on his blog for The Producer’s Perspective: “How Theater Can Save the Malls … of America”:
“Shopping for stuff in stores is out. Live entertainment is in. If I were a Mall with a bunch of empty storefronts, [ex-Payless Shoes, Sharper Image, Sears, Penny’s, and the like] I’d invite new emerging organizations in.. . and start a Mall Theater Movement. There’s probably even a tax credit in it for them.” Or, he suggests, small companies can make the first move, and cut the deals themselves.
Chicago has a theatre in a mall. And so do we. Best Medicine Rep has staked its claim in the Lakeforest Mall in Gaithersburg, MD.
An arts district in a Mall? There have been crazier ideas.
Jayne beat me to it … back before Imagination Stage was Imagination Stage, it was BAPA (Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts) in White Flint mall! Tiny little space but it worked. And MetroStage was in a store front of a strip mall at one time.
Imagination Stage was in a mall before getting its own building.
So happy the acting conservatory found a new home!