Greetings,

Sunday we took a trip out to Williamston Theatre, a Small Professional Theatre Equity house about an hour outside the city, where we saw John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar.

As I typed the name of the play I was reminded of how absolutely enthralled and affected I was. This was hands down the most technically proficient and heartfelt performance we’ve seen during our trip.

The play is set in present day Ireland — so there were accents. It was so refreshing to hear the accent done well, (especially knowing these actors did not have a dialect coach).

But that brings up another thing: it’s dicey to do an Irish play for an ethnically diverse audience base. In fact, their entire season is comprised of plays by white people, and only one by a woman.

But this is no accident, they know their audience: we were by far the youngest in the house and Ryan was the most diverse. Not surprising knowing that Williamston is 94% white (there are 36 African American residents).

Furthermore, the lady next to Ryan drove over 80 miles to see the show. That’s the result of 11 years of advertising and cultivating an audience.

Tony with the cool frames. 

As the lights fell Artistic Director Tony Caselli hopped onstage to announce the show. He assured the audience that the haze effect is safe: “It’s exactly like being at Woodstock: breathe deep.” The joke worked, everyone laughed — he knows his audience. He also mentioned some awards they won recently: “The Williamston Theatre was recently awarded grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA) and the Capital Region Community Foundation. The theater was also recognized by the American Theatre Wing as one of the most promising young theatre companies in the country” (article, Capital Gains Media).

After the play we sat down with Tony to talk business.

They just bought the building in 2014 at a great price from a landlord who was apparently a dream to rent from. Tony co-founded the theatre in 2004 with three others (one of whom, John Lepard played the lead). Before that, Tony was the Associate Artistic Director at Purple Rose Theatre Company, founded by Jeff Daniels in 1991 in Chelsea, MI.

He described Williamston Theatre’s niche as “warm human comedies” meant to make people “laugh and cry and leave wanting to call the people they love.” He said that this is what people want; “you are not going to get people to come see Sartre’s No Exit…blend in the challenging stuff with more populist work…we’re in Michigan, which is not very metropolitan even in the metropolitan areas.”

By “metropolitan” he means dense in population; there aren’t a whole lot of people, meaning fewer potential audience members.

So should that deter us? Or do we just do the work we want to do?

Let’s be honest, we can’t just “do the work we want to do”. That would be self-indulgent. The work has to resonate to truly be worth doing, and we definitely want that. However, we have to put our ear to the ground a bit more in a new place, since we’re unfamiliar with the culture and the social dialogue. And even in Winston-Salem we would still have to satisfy an audience base.

Art Gallery in Williamston’s space

If you only work for you, you won’t make money. And while we’re not money-grubbing fiends we’d rather not have to rearrange our lifestyles to accommodate abject poverty.

That’s why we’re in Detroit to begin with: we’re nobodies with a lot of skill and talent trying to become somebodies.

And as a nobody starting out, you don’t have enough clout to get a directing job immediately. So we asked Tony how we could be hired to direct in other theaters (which we’d do in the off-months between one summer and the next). His advice: “Get your foot in the door somehow.” Right after college he worked as a stage manager to work and observe other directors processes. He also said that he had an assistant who started by volunteering 15 hours a week; now she directs at least one show a season.

Good lesson in persistence and saying “yes”.

He also spoke about the importance of community within theaters. “We trade comps with every Equity theater in the state.” This means they’re in communication, and his kind of community could turn into collaboration (since they’re not in competition).

Tony mentioned the the growing popularity of co-productions; saves money and you get to know other theaters’ designers. He said that this would be a good thing for us to try, maybe with some of the smaller semi-pro companies in the area.

And he says the area is fertile: “95% of our talent comes from the state…our reasons are financial, we have no place to house them.” Plus, his theater is trying to do work that’s “by, for and of the people in the community”; what better way to do that than employing local actors? Not only that, but they mostly live in the metro Detroit area. That bodes really well for us: this production was phenomenal, and if we can find actors like this in metro Detroit we are in business.

Most of these actors were Equity, though. An Equity actor has to get approval from the Actor’s Equity Association to work in a non-Equity house (which we would be starting out). However, the reverse is not true. According to Tony “as an SPT (Small Professional Theatre), half of our cast over the course of the season has to be Equity.” Not show, but season. That leaves a good deal of wiggle room. But if we start out as non-Equity it’ll be much harder to hire Equity actors. Of course, there is a lot of amazing non-union talent out there, generally younger actors who deserve an Equity card but don’t have enough points; they’re just harder to find.

Williamston Theatre also has a relationship with Michigan State University students and faculty. Tony says “I teach a class, direct a show, and we do shows with student opportunities” like design and stage management positions. They have an apprenticeship program (like JET) in which students can earn Equity points working on shows as stage hands and the like.

This would be a wonderful thing for us to do, however it’s unlikely that we have enough clout to work in higher education rather than elementary, middle and high schools. Ryan and I will have BFAs, but you generally need an MFA before colleges will give you a class of undergrads. And although we are very interested in working with public schools, colleges would offer the opportunity to hire out of the student body much easier and sooner.

This was a very eye-opening conversation. Thank you, Tony, for giving us the time and advice.

And thank you for reading about it.

All the best,

R&R