Theater looks to the weird, the risky
So far, Lightup Shoebox has asked audiences to choose one show’s title and contemplate tattooing in another.
And the company’s season is just getting started.
Still to come: Moira Buffini’s rarely produced dark comedy “Silence,” with themes of gender and sexuality, and Jeffrey Hatcher’s theatrical adaptation of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” with its ideas about innocence and repression.
In addition, the company continues its series of “Play Dates,” which finds new ways for artists to stretch their creativity.
“It’s all about encouraging people to tell their story through art and encouraging people to try art,” producer-director Clark Levi says of the Lightup Shoebox mission. “It’s also about how you make works relevant to the direct community around them.”
Body art was the focus of “Ink Addicted,” Lightup Shoebox’s latest presentation.
Tattoo artist Chris Trovador’s one-man show made its local premiere a couple of weeks ago before heading out on a Fringe Festival tour. It’s a lively show, with stand-up bits, physical comedy and recorded sketches. Its biggest strength is Trovador himself, who captures the audience right from the start. The free-wheeling spirit is pure Fringe, and so is the dollop of heart among the silliness.
Could “Ink Addicted” use some tightening? Look for ways to better distribute Trovador’s emotion, which is mostly saved for a long final monologue? Sure, but Trovador has undeniable appeal. And creative exploration is part of Lightup Shoebox’s DNA.
A couple of times a month, Lightup Shoebox runs a “Play Date” for those interested in pushing their artistic boundaries. Started by actors and educators Robin Olson and Monica Long Tamborello, who turned over the idea to Lightup Shoebox, “Play Date” has done things such as creative-writing exercises, stage-combat workshops and even made a short film in two hours.
“I’m really proud of it,” says
Levi of the program, which has received support from Orlando’s Renaissance Theatre and draws between five and 10 people to each session.
The company’s creativity showed up onstage in March, when a group of artists devised multiple short new theatrical works through a process of collaboration. They were then combined into “The Audience Will Choose the Title of This Show,” in which the audience not only named the production but decided what order to view the different segments, which ranged from comedy to drama to burlesque.
It was presented as part of Timucua Arts Foundation’s Wordplay Festival and attracted a few dozen curious theatergoers. Trovador’s show, at Imagine Performing Arts Center in Oviedo Mall, drew an even bigger crowd.
“It was validation to me as a young producer that we did the right things,” says Levi, who also works for Orlando Fringe on its development team, writing
grants and assisting with sponsor relations. “I appreciate the Orlando artists that have helped facilitate the original, unique, smaller-scale and more-outthere shows I’m doing this year, and the people who show up for that work,”
He’s excited to put the Lighthouse Shoebox spin on established works during the remainder of the season.
“Silence” will run June 28-30 at Timucua. Written in 1999, it draws on contemporary concerns about gender and sexuality but is set in England’s Dark Ages, during which a woman disguises herself as a nobleman. Levi thinks it will resonate with Central Floridians.
“We can get an audience to feel empathy for these characters,” he says.
“The Turn of the Screw” is based on James’ atmospheric 1896 novella about a governess living in the remote countryside who begins to fear she and her young charges are being haunted.
“I think it gets lost how much the show is about sexual repression,” says Levi, saying the show reinforces the idea that young people mustn’t be kept in the dark about important topics such as sexuality.
“If we don’t have conversations about that,” he says, “it leads to tragedy for all involved.”
It will run Sept. 13-15 at Timucua.
Levi has previously produced shows such as “Carmilla: An American Gothic” and “Leviticus” at the Orlando Fringe Festival, as well as “The Devil’s Coda” at an original-play festival presented by Breakthrough Theatre of Winter Park. He’s convinced there is a niche for Lightup Shoebox’s
approach.
“I want to bring back what I’ve heard about Orlando’s theater scene — the low-budget shows, the weird shows, the shows that ask people to take a little risk,” he says. “I’ve seen growing audiences for new and less-familiar
works. I want to be part of that.”