Death of an influential playhouse

It has been 15 months since Theatre de la Jeune collapsed in a sea of debt. The Minneapolis Warehouse District building that the Franco-American troupe had occupied since 1992 remains vacant, and is still for sale after a deal fell through. The company's archives are now housed at the University of Minnesota.

The troupe's principals -- Dominique Serrand, Robert Rosen, Barbra Berlovitz, Steve Epp and Vincent Gracieux -- have landed around town and around the globe. While Berlovitz, Rosen and Epp have acted, directed and taught, Serrand traveled to France and New York, won a 2009 artist's grant from the Bush Foundation and has been looking for work. Gracieux joined the Europe-based Footsbarn traveling theater two years before Jeune Lune closed and has been gallivanting across the continent.

Jeune Lune did not have a franchise on beauty or inventive stagecraft in Twin Cities theater. Many companies present cleverly compelling work that arrests viewers visually and aurally, work that lands like an epiphany. But what Jeune Lune did, when it hit its imaginative groove, was to mix elements in an often breathtaking way. Almost every show, even the failures, had elements of magical production, even if it sometimes came with a haughty sneer.

Every now and then some magnificent scene flashes across an area stage that evokes the best of Jeune Lune. It could be a playful piece of physical theater, such as the surprising use of a bicycle in a show at the Children's Theatre or even Cirque du Soleil. It could be the 10 multi-use refrigerators that become bookshelves or closets in "My Father's Bookshelf" at the Guthrie. It could be the elegant use of billowing sheets in an Ananya Dance Theatre piece at the Southern Theater.

The loss of the fractious, cantankerous company has left a hole in the Twin Cities theater scene. It's as if a giant tree has been felled, upturning the earth in its wake.

"Jeune Lune is missing, but nobody is going to step into that place," said Berlovitz, who completed a $25,000 Fox fellowship and has taught at Augsburg, Carleton and the University of Minnesota. "What we did is very specific to us because we had been a company that had worked together for 30 years."

Theater deconstructionists

Company members used to famously insist "we do not do plays," meaning that regular, repertory theater was not their thing. Instead, they deconstructed classical texts or created new things entirely. It was labor-intensive stuff that often brought new light to such shows as "Cyrano" or Mozart operas.

Making the adjustment post-Lune has not been easy, and they are all hankering for roles in regular plays. Berlovitz has acted with Ten Thousand Things and at the Guthrie, where she and Rosen starred in "Bookshelf." Rosen teaches at the University of Minnesota and, with his choreographer wife, Shawn McConneloug, runs the Ivy Building for the Arts in a former iron foundry in Minneapolis' Seward neighborhood.

Serrand has been searching for work, and traveling, to New York and Paris, to see shows. He won a $50,000 fellowship from the Bush Foundation. Epp, who also teaches, won a $25,000 McKnight Foundation fellowship. From the ashes, all the players are cobbling together a life. But none of their recent efforts has had the cumulative effect of their best shows such as "Carmen" or "The Miser" or "Hamlet."

"We built an organization and did the work that we still wanted to do," said Rosen. "It is still a shock to the system to be in this position, but you try to build a new model."

Serrand, who sometimes threatened to take the company to Berlin and who, along with Gracieux, was knighted by the French government, said he could not have imagined how difficult it would be to find work.

"These 14 months have been awful, horrendous," he said. "I've always worked, and now I'm an unemployed actor. It's very difficult to deal with."

That the company collapsed just before the U.S. economy went into a tailspin made it even harder, said Epp. "My huge reputation hasn't added up to much," he said.

Epp is not waiting around for something to come to him. He has written a show, "The House Can't Stand," that will be directed by Serrand at the Southern Theater in October. It's a one-person play that speaks not just to broader history -- it is a biblical phrase from the book of Matthew -- but also to theater history. In light of the political environment, it may also be timely.

The two collaborators hope that it will be a jumping-off point for a rump or renewed company. Even as the Jeune Lune principals move on, they cannot help but look back.

"The further away I get from things, the more my memories are exceedingly joyous," said Berlovitz. "What we did there was pretty extraordinary. But I believe I still have some great days ahead of me."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390