GROWTH SPURT
Overton Square’s young Hattiloo Theatre expands
Open less than 18 months, the Hattiloo Theatre in Overton Square soon will be joined by a complementary second building — an adjacent two-story “Hattiloo Theatre Development Center” that will expand the black repertory theater group’s mission along with its footprint.
The new building is necessary because “we were not prepared for the growth that accompanied our move to Overton Square,” said Hattiloo founder and chief executive of- ficer Ekundayo Bandele, 44. “And it wasn’t just the physical growth but the audience development, the donor engagement and the interest from outside of Memphis, as well.”
Already funded by $750,000 in donations, the Development Center should be open by the first of December. Construction is ex- pected to begin in mid-March on the grassy slope immediately northwest of Hattiloo, in a vibrant theater district that also includes Playhouse on the Square, Circuit Playhouse and TheatreWorks.
Bandele said the new building has been designed to be compact but large enough to accommodate “not just what we need now but what we’ll need in the future, because we cannot be in a perpetual state of construction.”
With Barry Alan Yoakum of the archimania firm as principal architect, the Development Center will consist of two stories, each measuring 1,200 square feet. The bottom floor will consist mainly of office space, while the top floor will be a rehearsal hall. Children’s theater, a program for “special needs” adults and musical theater workshops for high-school students are among the initiatives planned for the center.
“This space will help us achieve our goals as a local, a regional and a national presence,” said longtime board member Cardell Orrin, Memphis director for the education advocacy group Stand for Children.
Founded in September 2006, to provide a venue for the work of African-American performers, directors and playwrights, Hattiloo was housed for most of its existence in a cramped storefront on Marshall Avenue. Following an extensive capital campaign that raised $4.3 million (including $3.3 million for the building, according to Bandele), the Hattiloo Theatre in Overton Square opened in July.
Also designed by archimania, the one-story, 10,600-square-foot building at 37 Cooper includes a large lobby, a main stage, a black box theater, offices and backstage areas. The space allows Hattiloo to present ambitious productions with complicated sets (such as the musical “Once on This Island” and the Broadway show “Stick Fly”), but office space and rehearsal space have proved insufficient, Bandele said, thanks in part to the increased ticketing and administrative duties demanded by the jump in tour-group and out-of-town attendance.
Bandele said Hattiloo’s ticketing software keeps track of the ZIP codes of audience members. Since the move to Overton Square, he said, 31 percent of ticket-buyers have been from outside of Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, in part because the new theater is large enough for tour groups. In the past, no more than 10-12 percent of attendees were from beyond the tri-state region.
Bandele said the Development Center will open “debt free,” as did the Hattiloo Theater. The center’s $750,000 price tag was covered primarily by an anonymous donor who gave $450,000, he said. Other ma- jor contributors include the city of Memphis ($50,000), the Hyde Family Foundations ($50,000) and the Assisi Foundation of Memphis ($150,000).
Bandele said the planned program for high school students at the center could prove especially valuable. “There really isn’t a lab in America that helps African-American students create musicals,” he said. “It’s an expensive and elaborate process, and even in Memphis, where we have so much musical talent, young people don’t know how to approach musical theater. We’ve booked 18 musicals at Hattiloo, and only six of those were actually written by black people.”