A new vision for musical theater in Houston is emerging outside the Loop.
Leader of outside-the-Loop Queensbury Theatre says there’s an underserved niche
Marley Singletary has a new vision for Houston theater.
The leader of Queensbury Theatre speaks about her game plan with a tone that suggests a no-nonsense way of thinking. But make no mistake, her proposal, though rooted in practicality and insight into the local marketplace, is far from an easy task.
“I think there’s an underserved market for the musical,” she says, sporting a black-andwhite gingham dress complemented by a smartwatch and speaking over the din of a French coffeeshop close to her CityCentre building.
Singletary’s confident style of speech makes her dream for Houston’s newest professional theater company sound natural. But her gambit has potential gamechanger written all over it.
That’s because the former London-based theater director and co-creator of TUTS Underground — a counter-program at Theatre Under The Stars emphasizing smaller, off-Broadway musicals — wants her company to do something she believes no other theater company in town is doing: present intimate, new, sometimes offbeat and always high-caliber musical theater for less than $50 a ticket, while employing local talent in a bid to boost the health of the city’s theater industry.
For a city whose musicals sell out often, the strategy appears to fulfill a market that has room to grow.
Queensbury Theatre was formerly a nonprofessional theater company called Country Playhouse. Though its west Houston home means it’s not currently seen as a player in Houston’s largely in-the-Loop professional theater scene, its location was a gift that “fell from the heavens,” Singletary says.
In 2015, Microsoft moved its regional office to 700 Town and Country Boulevard. As part of the relocation, Microsoft agreed to build a new theater for the community theater that had existed there since before the explosive development of the mixed-use megacenter called CityCentre. Light showers the theater’s lobby through the two-story glass façade.
The lobby, a modern assemblage of curved surfaces that leads to either the mainstage or a black-box theater, can light up at night — making the building stand in stark contrast to the parking garages in the shopping/office complex near Memorial City Mall.
To match its state-ofthe-art home, Country Playhouse renamed itself Queensbury Theatre and is, three years later, Houston’s latest equity house — a professional theater that pays artists a livable, union-approved wage.
Queensbury, which hired Singletary in December as producing executive director, has just announced its inaugural season under its new identity. The 2018-19 season begins in September and consists of four musicals: “Violet,” “Elf,” “Side Show” and a brandnew title, “For Tonight,” an indie rock/folk musical about the Romani people that garnered some international attention in the new-musical development scene in 2015 but has yet to be produced.
The season suggests Queensbury could become a major player in the Houston theater scene, Singletary says. A few years down the line, she hopes several things will have happened as the result of her vision:
• Queensbury will sport a larger budget. In the seven months since her arrival, she’s helped grow the company to a $1 million organization. Its financial health is, like Theatre Under the Stars and Main Street Theater, rooted in a strong educational program via the K-12 Tribble School for the Performing Arts.
• The company will provide an alternative to musical theater that doesn’t currently exist locally. Singletary says there is a hunger in Houston for smaller, more affordable musicals featuring more offbeat titles.
• Queensbury’s local hiring will bolster the local theater industry, encouraging artists to remain in Houston or even move to the city for work.
• Queensbury will produce new, original work that could then travel nationally, making Houston an export market for musical theater titles.
“There’s no midsize theater doing high-quality productions,” she says. “That’s the niche we hope to fulfill here.”
Singletary got her theater chops in London, where she earned a master’s degree in directing. After arriving in Houston, she found a job at Theatre Under The Stars. In 2013, while working under then-artistic director Bruce Lumpkin as TUTS’ associate artistic director, Singletary and Lumpkin created TUTS Underground in a bid for the millennial audience.
“It was a slow build over three years. Audiences did want something new, something fresh, rather than million-dollar musicals in a 2,600-seat house,” she says. “Those audiences weren’t necessarily millennials. They ranged from young professionals to middle-aged and older audiences.”
TUTS Underground sported a “Rent”-esque, spray-paint-style logo and championed “edgy” musicals such as “Reefer Madness,” “Striking 12” and “First Date.”
Singletary smiles when asked, if big-budget musicals tend to draw more traditional audiences, where were the musicaltheater geeks who could sing every word to, say, “Heathers: The Musical”?
“Well, they were at ‘Heathers,’ ” she says, referring to one of TUTS Underground’s biggest hits. “It sold out before it even opened.”
Still, TUTS Underground struggled to fill its 500-seat auditorium. The program was discontinued shortly after Singletary left TUTS to become a freelance director.
Then, Singletary discovered Queensbury’s 250-seat theater.
“I was astounded by the beautiful space here,” she says. “I knew it was a great scale to do contemporary work.”
Singletary says her knowledge of the local talent and connections nationally in the musicaltheater industry make her right person to bring a TUTS Undergroundesque energy to the new theater.
Local musical-theater staple Holland Vavra, who performed in “Unlock’d,” a new musical presented at Queensbury in February, agrees that the theater is brimming with potential.
“Houston could be an epicenter for a lot of musical theater soon,” Vavra says. “And Marley knows incredible people. She picked a great season. ‘Elf.’ The world premiere. If you went to college, everyone knows ‘Side Show.’ I’d love to be a part of those shows.”
“I was astounded by the beautiful space here. I knew it was a great scale to do contemporary work.” Marley Singletary, Queensbury Theatre producing executive director