THEATER PREVIEW
"The New Electric Ballroom." June 5-15. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. $15-$25. Georgia Public Broadcasting (Studio B), 260 14th St., Atlanta. 404-692-0053. www.aristheatre.org.
The Irish word “aris” (pronounced ah-REESH) roughly translates as “again” or “encore.” What a fitting name, then, for the newly launched Aris Theatre, which hopes to pick up where the former Theatre Gael left off several years ago, by appealing to local audiences with a taste for Celtic-oriented fare.
Veteran Atlanta actress Kathleen McManus, one of Aris’ nine co-founding members, explained it this way: “Almost all of us are alumnae of earlier Theatre Gael shows (and) we’d been talking for some time about a possible resurgence of Celtic theater here. We all recognized the importance of keeping that tradition alive, that there was a void, a specific segment of the theatergoing public that wasn’t being served.”
Earlier this year, McManus and fellow co-founder Joanna Daniel co-starred in a black-box staging of “Whistling Psyche,” which imagined a fictional encounter between two real Victorian-era figures – Florence Nightingale (Daniel) and Dr. James Barry (McManus), a woman who lived most of her life disguised as a man.
Now, Aris is preparing to open its inaugural 2014 season with a full-fledged production of “The New Electric Ballroom” (June 5-15), a memory play by Enda Walsh (“Once”) about three sisters in a rural Irish village. McManus is directing the show, which features two other familiar faces and Aris co-founders, Patricia French and Holly Stevenson, in addition to Barbara Cole Uterhardt and Steve Hudson.
Later in the year, the company will mark the 50th anniversary of Brian Friel’s nostalgic comedy-drama “Philadelphia, Here I Come!” (Sept. 25-Oct. 5), and Winslow Thomas, another Aris co-founder, will appear as Lord Byron in George Costigan’s one-man show “Trust Byron” (Nov. 13-23).
“Our goal is to do Irish plays, Welsh plays, Scottish plays, to mix it up as opposed to confining ourselves to just one national identity,” McManus said. By the same token, she said, “We want to alternate between all sorts of varying styles and genres, too.”
“This is an opportunity to bring some great plays to Atlanta that are very rarely done. That’s what we’re most excited about,” said Daniel, who’s serving as a producer on “Ballroom.”
Dealing with financial or budgetary matters may not be quite as much fun as acting, she admitted, but it’s just as rewarding. Instead of earning a round of applause during a curtain call, “I guess the feedback a producer gets from the audience has more to do with ticket sales,” Daniel said with a smile.
Similarly, although “Ballroom” co-star Stevenson is best known for her work onstage, she’s also been appointed as artistic director of the fledgling company. As she put it, “That certainly doesn’t mean that I’m at the helm of the whole ship. This is very much a collaborative endeavor. We’re a collective of people, all of equal value (but) each with different, individual skills and strengths.”
Daniel agreed that an all-for-one work ethic should serve Aris well and keep the group from enduring some of the same hardships that eventually were faced by Theatre Gael, which ceased regular production in 2008 after 20-plus years on the local scene.
“We’re all involved in sharing the load and the responsibilities, which ought to make it easier in the long run, in that everything isn’t basically resting on the shoulders of just one person,” she said, like it did with Gael founder-artistic director John Stephens.
McManus, Stevenson and Daniel go “way back” together. McManus and Stevenson came out of the Academy Theatre company in the 1980s and previously co-starred in a 1998 Gael staging of Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa.” Stevenson and Daniel first met doing an independent production of former Atlanta playwright Barbara Lebow’s “The Empress of Eden” in 1995. Before “Whistling Psyche,” Daniel and McManus appeared together in a 2011 Theater Emory version of “Persuasion.”
Other Aris co-founders include Kyle Crew, Safaa Sammander, Robert Shaw-Smith and Judy Thomas, all of whom also have established track records locally.
Daniel, McManus and Stevenson don’t deny that reaching a consensus within the group is a challenge at times. “We’re learning how to do it, gradually if not quite completely yet,” Daniel said.
McManus concurred. “Some of us are gentler in our communication styles, some of us are more fierce. Some people are easier to read, some people have exteriors as tough as nails. It’s all about keeping the lines of communication wide open.”
“It’ll be an ongoing process,” Stevenson said. “We’re basically creating a new tribe, defining ourselves and making a lot of things up as we go, not only building an audience but also shaping our own identity. We might all have varying opinions about this or that, but we’re all approaching the work from the same place.”
