Studio Roanoke artistic director Todd Ristau and Board of Directors president Kenley Smith are seeking more visibility for their small playhouse, which opened at 30 Campbell Avenue last year. Studio Roanoke, which was created with new and emerging playwrights in mind, is featuring a work, “Ashville,” by New York playwright Lucy Thurber through Sunday (Feb. 14). Showtime is 8 p.m. each night, with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.
On Monday, Smith and Ristau invited several dozen people to the final dress rehearsal, including Roanoke Mayor David Bowers, downtown developer Ed Walker and members of the local arts and media community. The goal in part: raise the awareness level for what Studio Roanoke is doing.
Bringing in Thurber, a friend of Ristau’s and now a board member, was a small coup of sorts for the theater, which also stages readings, poetry nights, acoustic music shows, the improvisational “No Shame Theatre” and standup comic events. “This is the kind of background I come from,” said Thurber, the author of seven plays, at a question and answer session afterwards, referring to community-based theater. “I really fell in love with what Todd was doing down here.”
Thurber warned against getting too big and losing sight of what community theater is all about — people putting on plays because of their passion for the art form. Also on hand was Paul Meshejian, who runs a new play conference in Philadelphia every year. Now a Studio Roanoke board member as well, Meshejian called the venue a “viable Petri dish,” for new plays and works in progress, before they head off to bigger stages. “This is like that little theater movement happening again,” he noted.
Monday’s dress rehearsal was also a chance to trumpet Studio Roanoke’s new fundraising drive, the “Spotlight Achievement Fund,” which includes a matching grant challenge from a group of donors willing to pledge $30,000.
The current play, “Ashville,” is well worth the $15 admission price; billed as a “dark, sad little comedy about blue collar, small town America,” many may see themselves in younger days – drinking, drugging, looking for love and acceptance, dealing with single motherhood, etc.
There are no major revelations at the end of “Ashville;” the characters reassure each other things will be okay, or that they love each other. One is left with the feeling that in ten years most of the principals will be in much better places.
The cast is uniformly good; Hollins student Katelyn Hansell is outstanding as the lead character, 16-year-old Celia, looking for love, sometimes in the wrong places. “I get touched, but nobody touches me,” laments Celia. Local veteran actress Kris Laguzza is her struggling single mother, Shelly.
“We do the best we can, don’t we?” she says between cigarettes and sips of Johnny Walker Red. Patrick Henry graduate Patrick Lyster is Jake, Celia’s boyfriend. “I feel lonely a lot of the time,” he tells Shelly, while he waits for Celia to return from a tryst with another man – after she accepts an engagement ring from Jake.
Ristau promises more interesting plays like “Ashville” and visits from accomplished playwrights like Thurber – if the funding for Studio Roanoke is in place. It costs $6,000 a month just to keep the doors open, he noted. Future plans for the 80+ year-old building include dorms for visiting directors and playwrights, and a rehearsal space, that is, if the Spotlight Achievement Fund drive is successful, and people turn out for works staged there.
Ristau said corporate sponsors can even have naming rights, if the price is agreed upon. “We’ll name an elevator [for them],” he joked.
(See StudioRoanoke.org for more on the current play, “Ashville,” and other upcoming events, or call 343-3054.)
By Gene Marrano [email protected]