|
The History of "Surprise Theatre"
“Surprise
Theatre” is the culmination of the “intimate
theatre” idea that developed over three years of doing theatre at Natasha’s.
One-act plays hidden in restaurant service
with no advertisement of story or cast,
intending to “spring up” suddenly during an
evening of dining taking their audience off
guard first occurred in July 2005.
The concept of embedded
theatre was extremely attractive to owners
Gene and Natasha Williams and stimulated
their thinking not only about how to use the
space creatively, but how to take “intimate
theatre” into a new direction. Partly its
origins could be traced to “theatre
friendly” restaurants in New York City that
they had visited over the years. These
restaurants were staffed with so many actors
that servers would break into Broadway Show
Tunes for musicals running at the time as
advertising teasers. But before "Surprise
Theatre" came into existence, there was just plain old provocative and intellectually
entertaining theatre combined with Natasha's
regular dinner service. In the beginning it
was
just called “Balagula Dinner Theatre” and
which set out not to be your standard “bell,
book, and candle whodunit? dinner theatre."
The owners and original founders of The
Balagula Theatre decided that the foremost agenda of
their theatre should be to provoke thought
as well as entertain. To utilize to the
fullest the in house talent of artistic
individuals who made up the restaurant staff
and creatively make the most of the
restaurant space itself.
The Balgula’s first production Kissing
Christine premiered April 30th 2003
featuring Joe Gatton, Anitra Brumagen, and
Kim Dixon. This story of two strangers
getting to know each other on a blind date
set the tone for future productions of
intimate theatre. The Balagula Theatre would follow
this concept in future plays they produced
such as Phyro Giants!, Accidental Death of
an Anarchist, and Death and the Maiden.
The Balagula Theatre also hosted productions
created outside the business in need of a
space to perform and after hosting a
production of Neil Labute’s Bash Gene &
Natasha tapped some of those performers
(Tamara Bentley, Edmund Desiato, and Eric
Ryan Seale) to
help create the first ever night of
“Surprise Theatre.”
The initial “noble experiment” of “Surprise
Theatre” took place as part of the four day
celebration to honor Natasha’s Café
successful four year anniversary downtown.
The idea of hosting several evenings of
one-act plays although formed over time, now
was assembled in just over a week. Three
shows were chosen by critically acclaimed
playwright David Ives from his collections
“All in the Timing” and “Time Flies.”
 Rich Copley’s review in
the Lexington Hereld-Leader which came out
on the final night of “Surprise Theatre”
packed in the audience and showed a demand
to extend the run, although schedules never
allowed for any more performances the idea
to do more nights of “Surprise” stuck
around. (Read Review)
In August of 2005 Gene and Natasha Williams
made Eric Ryan Seale Artistic Director of
“Surprise Theatre” and decided to create a
brand which would deliver monthly events
with each month featuring new installments.
The idea was to build on the initial concept
continuing to utilize the in-house talent
of the employees as well as bring in actors
from Lexington’s theatre scene.
“Surprise Theatre” kicked off its official
inauguration on December 15th & 16th 2005
with another evening of one-acts by David
Ives.
 This run also
showed the need to add more dates and led to
an encore performance on New Year’s Eve of
Degas, C’est Moi and Dr. Fritz (with Eric
Ryan Seale replacing Nathaniel Barrett who was
unable to attend). |
