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Theater A Sense of Community

"Dallas’ community theaters are young, erratic, zealous and committed."
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Community theater is difficult to criticize. You can’t plop down two dollars to watch a couple of high school students, a plumber, a housewife and an insurance salesman render their interpretation of Arsenic and Old Lace and expect professional quality. But it’s equally misguided to dismiss community theater’s output as little more than souped-up senior class skits. Community companies are capable of decent theater; they’re just not in a position to deliver it consistently.

In Tyler or Waxahachie – and a thousand towns across the country – community theater’s function is apparent. It’s the theater. But in Dallas, which has professional companies like the Theater Center and Theatre Three, its function is less clear. To an extent it serves as a theatrical sandlot where young talent can work and gain experience. More importantly, perhaps, it acts as an outlet for theatrical hobbyists who have nowhere else to perform. Finally, it offers the enjoyment of theater at bargain basement prices, or free, to those outside the usual theater-going community.

Dallas’ five community theaters are uniformly young, erratic, financially strapped, zealous and committed. Their quality and goals vary. We never came across the Old Vic in disguise and moonlighting between triumphs, but we also never left a production without finding something to be said in its behalf.

Heading the list is the Dallas Repertory Theater. DRT prefers to think of itself as an “amateur theater group,” following the definition of an amateur as one who cultivates any study or art, without pursuing it professionally. Whatever the name, DRT probably deserves a niche of its own and certainly attracts players with more heavily professional backgrounds than any other community/amateur theater in town.

DRT’s production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman rewarded us with some fine performances. Bob Magruder’s Willy Loman was exquisite. Miles Mutchler was a warm, incisive Charlie, and B. J. Theus and Steven Linn as Biff and Happy were rough early in the play but very creditable later.

Dejah Moore’s set design fit the theater and the play, although it was weak in the scenes taking place outside Loman’s house or in his imagination. Ed DeLatte, DRT’s director and founder, directed with quiet flair and competence, making Salesman by far the most competent and technically proficient of the community theater offerings we saw.

The Oak Lawn Community Theater (OLCT) is no longer on Oak Lawn. It’s on McKinney in the back room of the old Trinity Methodist Church. William Inge’s Bus Stop was playing when we stopped by. Two ancient gas heaters hissed and crackled to either side of the auditorium, imparting a real feeling of a cold Kansas March to the well dressed set. Cold and isolated, the audience huddled in little clusters, trying to generate small pockets of warmth.



Performances were generally competent. Belinda Jo Butler’s Cherie and Kent Barton’s Virgil stood out from the remainder of the cast, which ranged from adequate to uncertain as they struggled to cope with the outdated structure of the script.

OLCT is slowly finding a few worthy patrons and a modicum of community support. Under the guidance of Robert Eason and a loyal nucleus of founding members, the theater is reaching toward a season of substance. As the group matures, we may well expect a move toward the caliber of production now seen at DRT.

A community theater unleashed can be a terrifying thing to behold, as the Garland Civic Theatre’s (GCT) production of Butterflies Are Free reminded us. In this case, creativity and emotion ran amuck in one of the weirdest interpretations of a script we have ever witnessed. Donna Moller’s Jill was the one bright spot of the evening. The young lady is obviously gifted, but many more directorial maulings of this sort and she’ll have the talent beat out of her before she ever leaves high school.

GCT is the oldest community group in the area. Sponsored by the Garland Parks and Recreation Department, they must have more talent hidden away than Butterflies displayed. Their enthusiasm is certainly evident. And they have energy to spare. Too bad they didn’t have a good, strong directorial hand to pull this play together.

The Irving Community Theater’s (ICT) choice of The Haunting of Hill House was delightful, but the production never got off the ground. The budget was largely non-existent, but Haunting needed a little more imagination. The stage space is not sacrosanct and inviolable. In ICT’s case, the whole theater could have served as set, with spectres and illusions threatening us from all sides.

Technically speaking, the theater shows a lot of work and effort on the part of the members. It’s all jury-rigged under nearly impossible conditions, but looks and feels nice. Now, if they can just learn how to use it.

The most political of the area outfits is the Dallas Minority Repertory Theater. DMRT works out of the Bethany Springs Presbyterian Church. They stage productions there and everywhere. DMRT tours community centers, churches, colleges and the Federal Correctional Institution at Seagoville. That’s community with a capital C.



DMRT is an idealistic bunch and think of themselves as a “people’s” theater group. In a sense they are. An Evening of Lunacy, a put-together polemic, was still pretty shaky when first we saw it. Time and love seem to have smoothed out many of their problems, though, and the ensemble is learning to play together and trust each other. It remains to be seen whether they can match their sense of commitment with the dedication needed to produce and sustain quality theater.

The problems faced by community theaters are many and similar. Most of them work in nearly impossible situations. They have to make do with next to nothing. Sets – which for the most part looked pretty good – were bits and pieces of second hand junk. Electrical equipment was the strangest assortment of make-do one could possibly imagine. But that’s good in a way. It reminds one that all the technical froo-fraw isn’t necessary. The desired mood can be caught with a tin can light as well as with an array of the most expensive theatrical lighting systems.

The hard core groups sustaining the theaters are small – about thirty people. Some of them work with more than one of the theaters, helping out where and when they are needed. Whatever the outcome, they help give the play-goer something more interesting than most of the current TV fare, and at a good price.

The main problem facing community theaters is their directors. Ed DeLatte at DRT is an exception, a far cut above the rest. He allowed Salesman to make its own statement instead of walloping us with the message. The Garland and Irving directors lie at the other end of the spectrum. Butterflies is a delightful little show, but under Virgil McClaran’s direction it was mucked up with superficial, penny ante artsiness. A simple, warm story of a young blind man trying to make it on his own was turned into a stormy, maudlin account of young love transcendent, replete with sporadic interpretive dance numbers.

The Haunting of Hill House is supposed to scare the pants off you. But the scary part was patently unbelievable. No one but Sam Pevehouse, the director, can be faulted. Nothing ever happened. The blocking was wooden and the characters undeveloped.

Bad directing affects everyone. The weaknesses of actors who aren’t really bad are emphasized. The particular theater and community theater in general get a bad name. There are good directors around – lots of them, trying hard to get a chance to do those first shows. How a community theater finds them may be another question, but find them it must if it wants to become something more than a toy for a few interested people. There is quite simply no substitute for good, imaginative directing if the situation is a scrape-by one.

Four of the five theaters suffer from a lack of publicity and, more importantly, criticism. Seldom reviewed (DRT is the only one regularly reviewed), they are forced to assess themselves. Timely, competent and continuing criticism from outside their own tightly knit organizations – even though it may hurt some feelings – would no doubt help raise their standards more rapidly than local interest and self-analysis ever will.

Problems aside, community theaters in Dallas are here to stay. They are growing, and working hard to get a little better with each show. Overall, they fulfill their functions. Young talent is finding a place to grow. Interested and sometimes very talented people do have an outlet. And the community is served. Senior citizens, for example, see most OLCT and ICT productions for free.

With growing patronage from thecommunity at large, communitytheater could add at least moderatedramatic quality to the list of its virtues and grow to be an importantand exciting part of the Dallas theaterscene.

Granny’s:

Nearly funny Nearlyweds suffered droll debut in Dallas. Pat Cronin stole the show if you could wait long enough.



Windmill:

6 Rms Riv Vu was strictly Saturday sitcom stuff. An overlong script funny in spurts through the efforts of George Maharis and Anna Shaler.



Crystal Palace:

A lukewarm Last of the Red Hot Lovers cooled between laughs. Caesar is king, but the play’s the thing.



Country Dinner:

Roman Conquest was the fluff doris daydreams are made of. Ruta Lee may be D-FW’s darling but it was Rudy Tronto’s show.

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