OnStage: Getting better, not bigger

Alan Berks and Peter Hansen are on the cutting edge of a trend in Twin Cities small theater. Once the domain of tiny troupes that staged older plays, the landscape has shifted toward new plays and company-created work. Hansen, who has been on both sides of the equation with his Gremlin Theatre, gives his stage over to Berks' noirish mystery, "Everywhere Signs Fall." It opens Friday at the Loading Dock Theatre in St. Paul.

The two have teamed up before. Gremlin produced Berks' "Almost Exactly Like Us" in 2006. He and Berks like the idea of small theater being a vehicle for writers developing their craft and looking to be produced and not workshopped to death.

Gremlin is not alone in using the small stage for new work. Red Eye, which next weekend opens "Have You Seen Steve Steven?" by Anne Marie Healy, has produced work by Trista Baldwin and Jordan Harrison. Baldwin is a member of Workhaus Collective, made up of playwrights who have produced their own work this season at the Playwrights' Center. Emigrant Theatre's mission is to stage new American plays and recently has produced work by Harrison and Melanie Marnich. Urban Samurai dedicates most of its energy to plays written by artistic director Aaron Christopher, and Bedlam has for years created its own shows.

For Berks, who grew up in Chicago, it is the most natural thing in the world that small theater would be the incubator for playwrights.

"I would go down to see Steppenwolf and North Light in the early days," Berks said. "I saw a George F. Walker play called "Nothing Sacred" in a tiny little space in Evanston that was unbelievable. The audience was too stunned to stand up at the end."

For all the attributes of the Twin Cities small-theater scene, Berks misses that sense of discovery that existed in off-Loop Chicago stages. Audiences were eager to go to these small spaces, hoping to find the next Steppenwolf (which, of course, has grown quite large now, and just celebrated ensemble member Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize for drama).

"It's inherent in the Chicago style, the structural element, that small theaters was where the energy was," Berks said.

Hiring top talent

Tracey Maloney is featured in Berks' play at Gremlin. Her appearance points up another piece of the small-theater evolution -- the use of Equity actors. Shawn Hamilton took a slim paycheck a few years ago for the opportunity to play Walter Lee Younger in Starting Gate's "A Raisin in the Sun." About that same time, Gremlin used Claudia Wilkens and Richard Ooms in "A Long Day's Journey Into Night." Gremlin also has tapped Equity actors Stacia Rice and recently Carolyn Pool in "Orson's Shadow."

Maloney has put together a string of work at the Guthrie, including a major role in "The Glass Menagerie" and a contributing part in this winter's "Peer Gynt." She is not a stranger, though, to the micro stage, having worked with Ten Thousand Things (the best-paying small company) and Hidden Theatre before that. Maloney also has thrown in her lot with Berks and other writers in Thirst Theater, which is devoted to bringing new scripts to life.

"You use muscles that don't often get used," Maloney said of creating new work for a small theater. "It has to be more collaborative because we don't have the budget."

Berks talked with Maloney a year ago about the role in this play. Director Leah Cooper (who is married to Berks) said Maloney's participation was a "condition of doing the show."

It wasn't a tough sell.

"It has great dialogue, and I love mysteries," Maloney said.

This is Berks' fourth play in the past few years. His "3 Parts Dead" last fall with Burning House Group was a terse, nightmarish thriller built on the physical quirks of the company. It was the kind of gripping theater experience he speaks so fondly of in Chicago. It also didn't sell well, raising the question, what are small-theater audiences looking for in the Twin Cities?

"It fluctuates," said Hansen. "Sometimes it's friends of the cast, sometimes it's people we've never seen before. There are a few adventurers in there. But it's very hard to predict."

Cooper, who ran the Minnesota Fringe Festival for five years, said that if someone could bottle that audience experience and give it to small theaters, they'd have something.

"In the Fringe, you have this large group of eager individuals at your disposal and they're hungry to see a show," she said. "They understand they might see a great show or a bad show, but quality isn't the issue."

So how do you create that same buzz over the year, on a less-concentrated schedule?

"That's the Holy Grail," Cooper said.

For now, Cooper, Berks, Hansen, Maloney and the others involved in this show hope that it raises the visibility of Gremlin and continues a trend toward new work and a distinct experience in the small theater.

"It gives you a chance to experience a spontaneity that larger theater doesn't allow," said Hansen. "It's a different forum for artists to tap talents from the community."

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299