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Feature Stories | Backstage | August 12, 2005

Learning In the First Year

By Simi Horwitz

So how is the fledgling Phoenix Theatre Ensemble faring one year after its inception?

Pretty well, according to actor Craig Smith, who, with four other actors, forged the company after they left Jean Cocteau Repertory last year. For starters, the group's inaugural benefit production, Eric Bentley's "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?," and its second show, an adaptation of Franz Kafka's "The Trial," were well-received and well-attended. Indeed, "The Trial" was sold-out in its run at the Mint Space and could have been extended, according to Smith, and the theatre's Play in a Pub series has also enjoyed acclaim.

Play in a Pub is just what the name implies: plays staged in a pub or bar. There is even a canon of such site-specific works, says Smith, including a lesser-known Tennessee Williams work, "A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot," which was one of two shows in this season's program at the Bacchus Room on the Lower East Side. (The other was "Can Can," written and directed by Romulus Linney.)

Despite the group's success, creating a theatre company is daunting and the past year has been a learning experience in many ways, not least the struggle to function as a true ensemble, Smith says: "Our mission has been to create an artist-driven collective with five co-equal voices. But we're so used to the corporate world with a hierarchical structure in our day jobs that achieving our goals has been challenging. We actually brought in a consultant to help us."

While a fair degree of consensus is likely early on, he explains, later that sense of purposeful unity can disintegrate into conflict, with five people voicing five different, possibly irreconcilable opinions.

To help ward off dissension, "at each meeting we have a rotating leader," he continues, "and each year we'll have a rotating ensemble director. This year it was me. Next year it'll be Michael Surabian. The ensemble director casts the tie-breaking vote if consensus on a subject can't be reached."

The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble has a curious history. Smith and the four other co-founders are former longtime members of Jean Cocteau Repertory in the East Village. Smith, for example, was a central player in the group for three decades, having performed in more than 200 productions, before deciding to jump ship last year.

He and the other actors -- his wife, Elise Stone; Surabian; Angela Madden; and Jason Crowl -- had become disaffected with the Cocteau's direction, seeing it as a violation of the theatre's original mission to produce classics with an ensemble group of actors, who would appear in virtually every production.

As Smith described it last August, the Cocteau was no longer committed to producing the classics -- he cited its production of the musical "Dames at Sea" as the breaking point -- and just as troubling, many productions were no longer employing the Cocteau's core members but instead hiring actors who would make an appearance in one show and then move on to something else. In short, the collective sensibility that had defined the company was gone.

"The theatre has become more of a producing organization than an ensemble," Smith said at the time of the actors' defection (four Cocteau board members departed as well). "As the theatre is now being run, if you appear in one play you're considered a member of the company. One appearance doesn't reflect passion on the actor's part. To be a member of a true ensemble theatre requires passion. That passion is not there today."

In an effort to regalvanize that passion, the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble was born. Its founders' plan was to marry elements of the old Cocteau with some new ideas. Nevertheless, misconceptions have plagued the ensemble from the outset, asserts Smith: "We did not leave the Cocteau to re-create the Cocteau -- or even the Cocteau of 30 years ago."

Although the ensemble is still in the process of defining precisely what it wants to do, at the moment it plans to annually mount one classic revival (next season's has not yet been nailed down due to copyright issues), one or two new plays, and a couple of pieces (including one that will be commissioned) for the Play in a Pub series.

"We're especially excited about doing new work, specifically the work of Glyn Maxwell," a 42-year-old British poet-playwright known in England but not yet well-known here. "His play 'The Lifeblood' had its premiere at the [2004] Edinburgh Fringe Festival and is now on stage in London," Smith says. "We expect to be doing his play 'Broken Journey,' a kind of 'Rashomon,' the same story told from three different points of view, all written in verse. Four of us will be performing in it. 'Wolfpit," another play by Maxwell, will be done in the spring.

"We're also hoping to produce 'Count Down,' a play by Dominique Cieri, whose piece recounts her experiences as a teaching artist in a residence for abused women and girls," he continues. "There are so many great plays that are done outside of New York and not known here."

The company has a social mission as well: Last year it donated 50% of one evening's box office from "The Trial" to Doctors Without Borders. And "Count Down" will be produced for the benefit of social-service organizations that combat family violence.

Smith says the group seeks out new plays in a variety of venues, including the Internet: "We do Google searches to find out, for example, what's being done at various fringe festivals. Elise discovered Glyn Maxwell when she read about his play 'The Lifeblood' on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival website."

The theatre is not seeking unsolicited manuscripts, but it is open to actors who have "a collective sense of theatre," he says. "And they must be comfortable handling verse and text-based material. Classical training helps. We're especially interested in seeing ethnic and racial diversity in our casts."

The still-homeless theatre operates on a budget of $250,000, which represents money earned through ticket sales and individual contributions. Smith concedes that the company has benefited from its affiliation with Cocteau, developing a following among audience members who know the actors from their former home.

Maintaining that audience -- and generating new audiences -- will be a challenge. Although he's concerned about losing the Cocteau's former audience -- a graying demographic if ever there was one -- some have expressed discomfort with the Play in a Pub series: "They were afraid that it might be interactive, and generally they just prefer seeing plays in a traditional theatre setting."

But even so, Smith is determined not to lose any audience member (senior or Gen Xer) because of missed opportunities or miscalculations. He recounts an error he made last season -- one he doesn't plan to repeat.

"'The Trial' was doing really well and we should have extended its run and gotten [an Equity] Mini Contract," he recalls. "But we were just afraid if we were to close the play down, even for a short period of time to find a new theatre and get the new contract, we would have lost momentum and the audience. As producers, we should have understood that it would have been worth it in the long run. We're learning."