When Eric Ryan Seale started working with Balagula Theatre at Natasha's Cafe,
there was one play he really wanted to do there: David Mamet's American
Buffalo.
"I thought American Buffalo fit right in with their mission," Seale
says of the play, in which criminals plot a robbery in very businesslike terms.
"We want to do plays that aren't getting produced as much, especially good
plays. We want them to be challenging, and we want you to think about them when
you leave."
That, in a nutshell, is the mission of Balagula Theatre.
Most theaters have mission or vision statements that help define what they
present and how they present it.
"The mission statement of the theater is its constitution," says Richard St.
Peter, artistic director of Actors Guild of Lexington. "It says what you stand
for."
Jim Clark, president and chief executive of LexArts, Lexington's umbrella
arts organization, says, "It is important for an arts group to have a clear
artistic point of view so the audience knows what to expect."
Three Lexington theaters are opening shows this week that are highly
indicative of their missions.
Studio Players presents Robert Harling's Steel Magnolias. Considered
contemporary when the theater opened it in 1990, it is becoming a classic.
"It's a tried-and-true play," says the theater president, Ellen Hellard.
"It's an audience pleaser, and it plays well on this stage."
To Hellard, programming is a matter of trust. The 54-year-old theater has an
established audience that knows what it likes, she says.
Studio Players is a community theater using unpaid local actors. It tries to
present seasons composed of one classic, two comedies and two dramas, one of
which should be a contemporary work. "We're not trying to do fringe theater
here," Hellard says. "We don't want to do anything too violent or too risquŽ."
Studio Players wants its audience to know there won't be any unpleasant
surprises.
Paragon Music Theatre, which opens Man of La Mancha this week, would
seem to have defined itself by its very name. The company is filling a void left
by the 1996 closure of Lexington Musical Theatre.
But Paragon hammered out an even more defined role for itself with a mission
statement that includes performing musicals consistent with the author's intent,
that are family-oriented and with local talent.
La Mancha, which opens Thursday, "is an iconic piece from the standard
repertoire of American musical theater," says Ryan Shirar, music director of the
theater. "A major part of our mission is preserving the art form."
Balagula Theatre, which will open Buffalo on Tuesday, wants to make
you think.
"We want to provoke thought and discussion about what is going on in the
world," Seale says.
Thus, the theater has presented The Eyes of Babylon, a one-man play
last summer in which a Marine who is gay dramatized his experiences in Iraq, and
last month's production of Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, in which two
celebrated physicists discussed the implications of atomic weapons.
"If you're thinking when you leave the theater, we've done our job," Seale
says.
Balagula's venue, of course, is a restaurant. Seale acknowledges that
dictates what they do to an extent.
"If they moved to a more traditional theater, that may change their
relationship to the audience and what they do," Clark says.
Lexington has seen a theater move and reset its compass in recent years.
Actors Guild was once a very edgy theater with a mandate not to do any plays
more than 5 years old in its loft space on Short Street. But a move to the
Downtown Arts Center and a national search for an artistic director that
resulted in the hiring of St. Peter, from Richmond, Va., signaled a change of
pace.
"That was a mission statement for a niche theater in a smaller space," St.
Peter says of the old, "compelling contemporary theater" mantra. "But in this
space, we need to present a broader slate of works with a more populist appeal."
AGL rewrote its mission and vision statements recently to reflect the new
direction.
In addition to providing direction for the companies, mission statements help
define theaters' places in an expanding arts landscape. Two of the theaters
opening shows this week, Paragon and Balagula, are younger than 5 years old.
A mission statement "helps us say what makes us different from other theaters
in town," Studio Players' Hellard says. "What do we do that the other theaters
don't do."
Of that expanding landscape, Clark says, "The great thing is all of these
theaters are finding audiences."
