Theater is essential for its immediate nature, and for its ability to exist suddenly and without warning by people left out of pop-cultural conversations. For a few of my friends, the theater is something different, a fun but limited part of their media diet; for the rest, the theater is that place where they do
Hamlet over and over again, so why bother?The New Hazlett Theater’s CSA (Community Supported Art) program, in many ways, is a rebuttal to that interpretation of the form. Their upcoming season, which begins on October 26
th, contains the 5 most disparate shows I’ve seen performed at a single theater. All of them play with expectation, and all of them feature stories you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else. It is, in other words, a very active space.
“The thing I most enjoy about this program is that it isn’t static. We don’t believe that it can be,” says Bill Rodgers, CSA’s Director of Programming. “The CSA can give artists a launch pad of sorts. It can provide an opportunity for seasoned individuals to experiment.”
In other words, this is a program in which fresh voices are given an opportunity and a budget to bring their work to life, and artists with known-work under their belts are able to take risks and push boundaries. It’s a breeding ground for new thoughts.
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