In blow to theater community, Vexler closing
The cast and crew of “Watson: The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes” at the Sheldon Vexler Theatre had just started rehearsals when the pandemic forced the space to go dark.
Roughly one year later, the Barshop Jewish Community Center, which housed and bankrolled the small theater, has decided it will remain closed for the foreseeable future.
Season pass holders were notified in an email Friday.
The theater, which opened in 1999, had a devoted following and a reputation for high-quality work. It has been a favorite venue for many actors, even though the Vex did not pay them.
Saul Levenshus, president and CEO of the JCC, characterized the suspension in an interview as a difficult business decision.
“We can’t meet the cost of operations if there are no shows, if we can’t fill the seats,” Levenshus said. “Somebody just wrote me this morning who wants to know why would we make this decision now, when (the pandemic) is almost over. We’ve thought it was over at least twice already, but at the end of the day, I don’t have a crystal ball.
“I don’t know when we are going to feel comfortable sitting next to one another in a 2,000square-foot space. Some of us aren’t even eating in restaurants yet. So sitting next to somebody you don’t know less than 6 feet away is just not practical.”
Ken Frazier, who has run the space since it opened with a production of Neil Simon’s “Rumors,” said the safety of the actors is another consideration. He said he has always loved the smallness of the space, though that is no longer a plus in this era of social distancing.
“In a pandemic sense, the intimacy of the room, which was its best asset, it its biggest curse,” he said.
It is possible that the theater will reopen at some point, Levenshus said, adding it has been an important part of the JCC’S cultural programming. To that end, lighting equipment and some of the theater’s cache of props and costumes are being stored in one of the dressing rooms.
Coats that had been amassed over the years have been donated to a homeless shelter, Frazier said, and some props and costumes will be given to school theater programs.
Levenshus said he is hopeful about the theater coming back,
but he added a caveat.
“I may be hopeful, but I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up,” he said. “Because it would be a mistake for me to say we will reopen.”
Reopening after being shuttered for so long would be a major undertaking, he said. There had been plans to renovate the space, including adding a lobby and refurbishing the dressing rooms, prior to the pandemic.
He said no decision had been made about what will be done with the theater space once it is cleared out.
The Vex’s last production was “These Shining Lives,” a drama based on the real-life story of the women whose health was severely impacted by their work with radium in the 1920s and 1930s. Other memorable productions include the 2007 staging of “Metamorphoses,” which took place in and around a pool of water that Frazier built with a crew of volunteers, and the 2014 production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which was presented on a hospital set in front of a wall of gears representing the interior lives of the characters.
The decision not to reopen the Vex is a blow to the city’s theater scene, said John Stillwaggon, who had been slated to play Sherlock Holmes in “Watson” and had appeared in such shows as “Hamlet” and “Peter and the Starcatcher” there.
“San Antonio is a vibrant theater town, but it’s a theater town where theater is in relatively few hands, and certainly,
high-quality, professional-caliber theater like the Vex did for 22 years, it’s a rare commodity,” Stillwaggon said. “It’s a massive loss. There is no one quite like the Vex, and the organization they’ve built and the family
they’ve built, so it’s pretty tragic.”
Frazier is on the payroll through the end of the month. He’ll be spending much of his time taking down the theater with his wife and frequent collaborator, Tammy, and production manager Dylan Brainard. He isn’t sure what he’ll do next.
“I’m putting my energy into doing this right,” he said.
Word that the space would not be reopening was met with shock and disappointment by the theater community. Many shared their grief on social media.
Belinda Harolds, who appeared in a number of shows at the theater, including “Female Transport” and “Little Shop of Horrors,” wrote a long post about the situation and emailed Levenshus asking that he reconsider. She also went to the Vex over the weekend, knowing she’d find Frazier there, to give him a hug and thank him for his work.
She said she is disappointed that the community wasn’t alerted to the peril the theater faced, because she’s certain people would have donated so it could reopen.
“The JCC has obviously supported the theater for more than 20 years — everybody is appreciative of that,” Harolds said. “I don’t want to take away from that. But now is the time they need it the most. We’re opening up, we’re starting to get vaccinations, things are starting to loosen up, people are dying to have interaction and entertainment and escapism and all the things theater provides. For them to pull the plug on it now, it doesn’t make any sense. “
Jennifer Colacino, who estimates she’s been in about 14 shows at the Vex over the years, including “The Rimers of Eldritch” and “Boeing-boeing,” said she suspects the JCC didn’t appreciate the treasure it had in the theater and those who ran it.
“I firmly believe the JCC is going to go, ‘Boy, we messed up here,’ ” she said. “They may never admit it to anybody. But I think they’re going to realize they’ve lost a real gem.”
Frazier said that people have often asked whether it was difficult for him to tear down the sets he worked so hard on at the end of each show. Early on, he said, he would play taps on his saxophone to say goodbye, though that ritual eventually fell by the wayside. And he came to see things very differently.
“A theater production is a big, giant sculpture, with a lot of hands involved,” he said. “At the end of a show, you mash up the clay and get to make something else with it. This is the first time in a long time that I won’t be able to remold the clay.”