Breathing new life into theater works that have lived a long time is only one part of the equation for the Out of the Box Theatre Company. The other part is allowing actors who have lived a long time to bring the passions and talents gained by long experience to roles they may never have had a chance to play before. The idea is the brainchild of an alumnus of the Brooklyn College MFA program in theater, Scott Robinson, ‘92, who founded the company and serves as artistic director.
Last summer Out of the Box presented its first production, Moliere’s The Miser, set to the music of Mozart. Robinson says that “many of the plays we plan to do are either forgotten or so stereotyped in presentation that they lose much of their character. We want to bring them new life.”
But that isn’t the company’s only goal, according to Robinson. They will also primarily feature actors, directors, and set designers over the age of fifty. “One thing that I thought would make my theater company special,” he says, “was if I allowed older actors a chance to revisit roles that maybe now they’d be too old for commercially.”
Out of the Box was incorporated in August 2006, and Robinson lined up a number of Brooklyn College alumni to work with him: John Scheffler, the set designer, is the former director of the College’s set design program and a professor emeritus of the Theater Department; Lin Snider ‘94, a cast member and vice-president of the theater company, is also a graduate of the MFA program in theater; Peter J. Coriaty, ‘73, is another cast member; Marge Linney, treasurer of Out of the Box, was director of the graduate program in acting and is also a professor emerita of the Theater Department; and Oscar Award winner F. Murray Abraham, an honorary board member, taught in the Theater Department.
This summer the company will produce a classic temperance play of the nineteenth century, Ten Nights in a Bar Room, by W.W. Pratt, based on the novel by T. S. Arthur. The performance will continue the musical tradition begun with The Miser, Robinson says, and will “blend the words of the playwright with the music of a recognized composer.” And Arthur’s sensational classic melodrama, he says, will be staged with “special effects in the Perils of Pauline fashion, including vaudevillian olio acts–a type of theater rarely seen in New York City.” The company hopes to tap the Brooklyn College Theater Department’s costume-design students to help create period clothes for the play.
Out of the Box’s innovative treatment of Moliere’s classic also incorporated the traditional “showboat” melodrama format both between and during scenes. Performers provided musical interludes, or olio acts, as comments on the dramatic action. Robinson describes it as a “musical approach to a straight play without its becoming a musical comedy.”
The group’s Equity showcase productions (an arrangement that gives union actors a chance to “showcase” their talents) run at Greenwich Village’s Bank Street Theatre, which Robinson, who directed last summer’s production, hopes to make his company’s regular home.
After graduating from Brooklyn College, Robinson began a career in television commercials. He also served as executive producer and artistic director of the Lake Area Performing Arts Guild in Lake Ozark, Missouri, where he learned all aspects of running a theater company, from fundraising to ticket sales. “It was extremely good training ground for what I’m doing now,” he says.
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