“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” says Mike Brooks, co-founder of Theatre [502], “but ‘you must be the change you want to see in the world.’”
It’s early evening on a Sunday, and we’re sitting in the Holy Grale. Brooks has just come from a rehearsal for the upcoming Theatre [502] production of “Hunter Gatherers”, which he is directing. I’ve asked him a question that was initially more for my own edification than it was in service of this article: “Where do you find the courage?”
In this economy, in an already densely populated theatre market, in a city where our orchestra is struggling to survive, how does someone come to the decision to start a new theatre company? Not just any new theatre company. Theatre [502] isn’t putting up shows in a church basement. They’re not casting your dotty Aunt Edna, who will also sew the costumes and do everyone’s hair before the show. They’re going big.
“At some point it became a moral obligation,” says Brooks.
Brooks says that the decision came after five hundred or fifteen hundred conversations over beer with fellow theatre professionals here in Louisville about how “someone ought to.” Someone ought to create a new local theatre company whose business model doesn’t replicate the mistakes of other local producers. Someone ought to be paying actors for their work. Someone ought to give local talented artists an incentive not to leave town in order to practice their art. Someone ought to treat everyone involved in the process like professionals.
Eventually for Brooks and Theatre [502]’s other three co-founders, that “someone” morphed into “them.”
As someone who has lately been (mostly unsuccessfully) waging war against self-doubt and a chronic case of the “can’t-s,” I am agog listening to Brooks wax eloquent about the courage to take such a leap. He has all of the charm and confidence of a motivational speaker with none of the smarm. Brooks acknowledges that a lot of doubts preceded the founding of Theatre [502], but he says, “over time, it became less and less forgivable to bend to those arguments.”
Theatre [502] didn’t just happen over night. Its first season was two years in the planning and was crafted by four artists deeply entrenched in the Louisville theatre scene. Amy Attaway, Gil D. Reyes, Brian Owens, and Brooks have all clocked some serious time both on stage and behind the scenes for more than a dozen local theatre groups. In part, says Brooks, they believed in this project because of their confidence in the strong network of theatre professionals and theatre-goers here in Louisville.
Even though Theatre [502] has only launched one show so far and is in rehearsals for the second, Brooks has boundless optimism for the company. One of the founders’ goals was to create an organization that would “outlast [their] involvement.” So often, theatre groups are the brainchild of a single strong personality. When that person’s commitment wanes or is otherwise compromised, the company tends to wink out. Not the case with Theatre [502]; Brooks hopes that in fifteen or twenty years there will be someone helming the enterprise who barely even knows Brooks’ name.
“This isn’t about any one, five or twenty of us – it’s about creating an environment where theatre artists can work and grow here, in Louisville, without having to split for New York or Chicago. Just in the months since we’ve publicly launched, we have seen work from dozens of amazing artists we had never met, and can’t wait to get them on stage,” says Brooks.
Brooks’ first directing gig with Theatre [502] will go up at the Victor Jory Theatre at Actors Theatre. “Hunter Gatherers” is a play by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb whose comedic “BOB” was an anchor of last year’s Humana Festival (and at least tangentially a love story to a certain White Castle on Market Street right here in Louisville). Brooks says, “Peter is an incredible thinker and writer and his work speaks to me about something that I think is absolutely central to the arts, and to theatre specifically. Our lives are so short, ephemeral, but our stories survive across generations; our stories are the eternal in us. Peter was a dual theatre and biology major, and between his anthropological understanding of the real story and his showman’s gift for telling that story, I’d put him up against “Planet Earth” any day for best biographer of life.”
This is Brooks’ second go at Nachtrieb’s work. Two years ago, he directed “boom”, an apocalyptic comedy, for the Necessary Theatre. Brooks says “boom” and “Hunter Gatherers” are both “testaments” to how awe-inspiring humanity is. “[We are] a hot, beautiful mess of 6 billion empirical miracles. Think about it: it’s only been what, 50 generations, 60, since the fall of Western Rome? Two since the civil rights era? We are an incredibly young socio-biological experiment; we are masters of science and economics – we have a space station! – and we can’t stop thinking about everybody else’s privates. We are amazing, we are hilarious, we achieve incredible heights and still generally ruin everything, and Peter has got our number.”
It’s not surprising that Brooks is drawn to plays that are love stories to humanity. Theatre is responsible for his own love story. Brooks met his wife, Susan, when she auditioned for a part in a play that he’d written. “She wound up doing the show, and then a few months later cast me in a play she had written for her company, Kingsley Productions,” Brooks explains. “We started seeing each other during that rehearsal process and a few weeks later took a trip to West Virginia to the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. It was on that trip that we pretty much knew that we had hit the jackpot. In light of all this, I forgive theatre for every late-night rehearsal, every empty house, every lousy review it has ever or will ever throw my way.”
Catch Hunter Gatherers at the Victor Jory Theatre October 14-22. Tickets are $15. Email info@theatre502.org for advanced reservations.
–Melissa Chipman
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