September 2008

Big step for the Rep

By Megan Malugani

The Rochester Repertory Theatre has created edgy drama onstage for almost 25 years, but last fall they had to deal with some major drama offstage as well.

Members of the all-volunteer theater company were informed that the downtown building they’d leased on the 300 block of South Broadway since 1984 would be razed in just over a month. But what could have been a tragic tale instead turned out to be a success story.

The Rep quickly found a new building to lease temporarily, in the old Studio Academy building at 103 Seventh St. NE. They were only required to cancel one production, their holiday show Comfort & Joy. And despite the expense of the relocation, the theatre is still operating in the black. According to Jeanne Skattum, a founding director of the Rep, the theatre has not only survived the shake-up, but thrived as a result, inspiring both the company’s creative forces and its supporters.

“You become sedentary when things are okay,” Skattum says. “When you run into a crisis situation, all of a sudden everybody realizes how important the organization is to them and their community, and they come out. That’s what we were really pleased to find. We actually have a place in this community that people find to be significant. Different representatives from various arts organizations came out in force to offer support,” she says. Skattum and other Rep artists are enjoying experimenting in their new location, which has seating for 100 and is just as “intimate” as the previous site. “It’s fun being in a new space, trying new things, and making it look fresh and new,” she says. The Rep will hold all of its 2008-2009 season shows in the temporary location.

The Rep has always prided itself on taking chances, from performing to sold-out houses for Hair in 1986 (the Rep’s version didn’t include nudity) to pushing the envelope with Warm Wind in China (focusing on AIDS and a gay couple) in 1993 to the more recent Vagina Monologues in 2004. “Our focus when we started the theater was to provide edgier material and to provide a totally different venue for people to experience it in,” Skattum says. “We wanted to do things that were a challenge to artists, and that is still what we do today.”