SETTING THE STAGE
Carpenter Square Theatre launches its 36th season while readying a bigger downtown home
Carpenter Square Theatre launches 36th season while readying bigger home in downtown Oklahoma City
Carpenter Square Theatre is planning to build more than sets as it readies for its 36th season.
The community theater signed a new lease in May on a warehouse at 1009 W Reno Ave., with volunteers, technical staff and board members doing demolition on weekends to prepare for construction.
“We're doing a lot of the work ourselves,” said longtime Artistic Director Rhonda Clark. “We want to be able to grow. … We want to be able to go further with our education
Carpenter Square Theatre's 2019-2020 season
Carpenter Square Theatre will begin its 36th season at 800 W Main, with plans to move soon to 1009 W Reno Ave. For more information, go to www.carpentersquare.com.
• “The Legend of Georgia McBride”: Sept. 6-28. • “Holmes and Watson”: Oct. 18-Nov. 9. • “The Santaland Diaries”: Nov. 29-Dec. 21. • “The Mystery of Love and Sex”: Jan. 10-Feb. 1. • “The Library”: Feb. 21-March 14. • “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City”: April 3-25. • “Advance Man”: May 15-June 6. • Ken Ludwig's “A Comedy of Tenors”: June 26-July 18.
programs, and right now, we don't have an appropriate space to have classes.”
Carpenter Square will open its 2019-2020 season Sept. 6 at its current location, 800 W Main, with the comedy “The Legend of Georgia McBride.”
“Sometime this season we hope to make the move. When? I don't know,” said Rick Allen Lippert, president of the theater's board of directors. “We're really stoked about building a new theater.”
Contemporary theater
Started in the Carpenter Paper warehouse where the Oklahoma County jail now stands, Carpenter Square's actual stage has changed several times, with the players performing in a converted department store, the Myriad Gardens, Kerr Park, Stage Center and a hotel before the community theater moved eight years ago into its current space on downtown Oklahoma City's now-bustling Film Row.
But the nonprofit theater's mission has remained the same: to produce live theater with a focus on contemporary plays. Clark said seven of the eight upcoming titles are OKC premieres.
The season opens Sept. 6-28 with Matthew Lopez's “The Legend of Georgie McBride,” about a down-on-his-luck newlywed named Casey who gets fired from his gig as an Elvis impersonator at a rundown Florida bar when his boss replaces his “The King” routine with a drag show. To provide for his pregnant wife, Casey decides to become a drag entertainer.
Clark is planning for Carpenter Square to stage at least the first three shows of its 36th run at its Main Street home, and the season will continue Oct. 18-Nov. 9 with Jeffrey Hatcher's mystery “Holmes and Watson,” based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic characters. Carpenter Square will celebrate the holidays subversively Nov. 29-Dec. 21 with the return to Oklahoma City of the David Sedaris comedy “The Santaland Diaries,” adapted by Joe Mantello.
Eclectic lineup
• Carpenter Square will ring in 2020 with Bathsheba Doran's romantic comedy “The Mystery of Love and Sex,” about childhood friends Charlotte, who is white and Jewish, and Jonny, who is black and Christian, and how their relationship changes as they grow up.
• Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns' timely play “The Library” will be staged Feb. 21-March 14 as part of the theater's outreach for at-risk high-school students. After a deadly school shooting, a survivor must cope with rumors that fly about her encounter with the gunman.
“What most of the play is about is the aftermath of it, being able to look at `what are the consequences when something like this happens?'” Clark said.
• The April 3-25 production of Halley Feiffer's comedy “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City” will center on the relationship forged by two strangers when their cancer-stricken mothers become hospital roommates.
• The theater will close its 36th season by producing its first show by Mac Rogers, a space-travel mystery called “Advance Man,” May 15-June 6, and then staging a new title from Oklahoma City favorite Ken Ludwig, “A Comedy of Tenors,” June 26-July 18.
New home
Even as the shows are about to go on, Carpenter Square is raising funds for its new, larger home. The theater has a 10-year lease — with first-refusal rights if the owner opts to sell — which is a relief after operating on a month-to-month lease for more than a year as development in Film Row boosted the value of the theater's current location.
“I joked last year in my letter in the program that if you wanted to know where the next hot area of Oklahoma City was going to be, just find out where we end up. Because that's been our history: We go into a blighted area and it blooms around us and then we can't afford it anymore,” Lippert said.
“I want to consolidate all of our properties and possessions under one roof,” he added. “This allows us to do that and provide a rehearsal space — a separate rehearsal space — that can also be used for teaching classes. … The opportunity for us to offer more theater classes for at-risk high school students is very excited to us.”