Theatres, theatres everywhere
Last Thursday night I drove down to bucolic Fullerton, California for the first reading of my new one-act play, “Next Time,” at Hunger Artists Theatre. The play is going to be staged this fall as part of the theatre’s Beyond Convention festival of original one-act plays that, as you can see by the graphic, “break the rules.” I couldn’t be more thrilled, especially given the theatre’s strong artistic reputation.
I’m not always sure what those “rules” are, but my immediate exposure to Hunger Artists showed one rule they’re breaking: the theatre is in an industrial park. You know: those trailer parks for business. I pulled into the industrial park, conveniently near railroad tracks and other trappings of industry, motored past small warehouses, and found Hunger Artists. When I walked in and saw first the literary manager and then the managing director, I said to each, “Cool! You’re in an industrial park!” To which each of them replied, more or less, “oh, ha ha.”
But no, I was serious. It is cool. For years I’ve been saying that theatres should be everywhere (especially neighborhoods). I hadn’t given industrial parks much thought, and now I saw the allure: lots of large flexible space, lots of parking at night because the other tenants tend to be daytime businesses, lots of potential partnership with those other businesses in donorship, sponsorship, attendance, and so forth. For the businesses, theatres like Hunger Artists can be the cool, hip kids on the block — something fun and different they can be part of. For theatres like Hunger Artists, the businesses can provide board members, used equipment, and cold hard cash.
So when I shared this, the managing director, Emily, said, “Oh. You’re serious. We thought you were kidding.”
Clearly, I was not, and repeated that being in the industrial park was very cool and presented enormous opportunities.
“You’re the first person ever to say that,” she said.
Hunger Artists, which dates back 11 years, has been in this space for six years.
Why did Willie Sutton rob banks? “Because that’s where the money is,” he said. Theatres are going to have to go where the people and the money are. We should have theatres in malls and shopping centers, street corners, inside and outside and nearby high schools that are dark at night, next to corner markets, in bars, and yes, in industrial parks.