It all starts in a tavern

Well, I've just posted to Facebook that The Penny Seats are auditioning for Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), so I guess it's time for me to actually discuss the company here.

The Penny Seats began - now this isn't the official story, but this is the part I was there for - after an audition for a local company. My sister Lauren and I were getting a drink with Roy, Vicki and some other friends at some awful sportspubmicrobrewerbar, and our dissatisfaction with certain aspects of not having our own theatre led, as such talk tends to do, to the conclusion that we should have our own theatre. (I assure you, there were all kinds of highfalutin' ideals flying around during this discussion. They - the highfalutin' ideals - continue to do so regularly amongst our crew.) I wasn't the first to say "we should just say screw it and start a theatre," but I clearly remember telling the others that I hoped they were serious about it. (Also, that was when Roy and I bonded about Sam Shepard and other stuff. What a neat guy.) Fast-forward a few months...if memory serves, Lauren had just closed Oklahoma and I was recovering from Gypsy and trying to find my footing with my day job. I walked in and Lauren asked me if I wanted to start a company, and that was it. The core members were assembled within a month.

The idea to take our shows outdoors was Lauren's, inspired by the goofy but cherished work of Wisconsin's American Folklore Theatre, combined with news that the city was renovating the West Park Bandshell. Also, having a niche is nice, and to our knowledge - then - Ann Arbor didn't have any outdoor summer companies. As it happens, this will be the first year of Blackbird's Shakespeare West program, which will use the space right before we do. (It's just happenstance that we're doing a Shakespeare-derived play; seems fitting, though.)

At some point I really do intend to go into the paperwork, filings, licenses and other such tasks necessary for the formation of the company. Or I'll just make Lauren and Matt write about it in a Featured Guest Post (this is not yet an institution here on Reactionary Meter, but they don't know that yet). Anyway, we formed a board of directors, hacked out a reasonable schedule for the year, a budget, all that. We decided to use Kickstarter for our initial fundraising campaign, and I'm pleased to say we hit and exceeded our mark.

On a sidenote, this campaign prompted Jacqui and me to write and produce the very first Penny Seats video, with music by our affiliate Hard Taco. (The thinking was: We're not going to be the billionth Kickstarter company to stare at the camera and mutter a sales pitch.)

Thus far, we've had two additional fundraiser cabaret events, both held at Mediterrano in Ann Arbor. We plan to have more of these - actually, I could probably write a fairly meaty post about the company's plans for easy-to-assemble, out-of-a-box venue shows, but that will have to wait, since this is getting long enough as it is.

I guess it's clear that I'm skipping vast swaths of important information about the formation and intentions of The Penny Seats, but there will be time for that. For now, let's focus on the fact that we're registered as a nonprofit, seem to have attracted some interest in these parts, and are starting pre-pre-production (um, there's a lot to do) on our first full show. Reactionaries, please keep me honest and make me document the company's formation, detail our ethos and all that. That's what shared blogs are for, yeah? If you're really curious (or even just kind of curious), you can check out our website.