Plays lack playhouse

Sam Morris

Melanie Turner, left, and Terri Gandy read parts during a casting call Wednesday for Theater in the Valley’s “Crimes of the Heart” at a community center. The group has had a nomadic existence since losing its stage 18 months ago when its room at a Henderson center was converted for day care.

By Mike Trask (contact)

Friday, Jan. 9, 2009 | 2 a.m.

It’s Monday and they need actors — any actors — to walk through the glass doors of the conference room with green walls.

They also need some rehearsal space.

And a performance stage.

This is the reality for Theatre in the Valley, a struggling but tenacious community theater group that is holding an open casting for “Crimes of the Heart,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about three sisters reuniting after one shoots her husband.

It’s an ambitious play, one built on strong performances.

But this isn’t Broadway.

This theater group is homeless, having lost its stage 18 months ago when Henderson converted its room at a city recreation center into a city-run day-care center that had developed a 150-child waiting list.

Since then it’s had a nomadic existence. In April it used the Henderson Convention Center for “Tales From Americana.”

A local newspaper critic said it failed as good theater.

Seems pretty harsh for a nonprofit theater group that hadn’t had a home for more than a year.

For about 13 years, the group performed on a stage — actually, a pair of adjoining conference rooms with risers for a stage and seating for about 100 — in the Valley View Recreation Center.

After the group was kicked out for the child-care center, it performed “A Christmas Carol” outdoors, in front of Henderson City Hall.

Finding a permanent home is an issue for community theaters across the country, said Susan Austin, a coordinator with the 1,500-member American Association of Community Theatre.

Next month Theatre in the Valley will come in from the cold. The group has talked a pair of communities into hosting one-night stands.

The group’s production of “Crimes of the Heart” will premier with a single show Feb. 13 in the Sun City Anthem Theater, a new 300-seat facility. It also has one date set for Sun City MacDonald Ranch. And it is looking to add dates, so if you have a church basement, recreation room or back yard, you can probably land a performance.

That is, if it can find six actors.

On Monday the group needed four women and two men, “30ish.”

Only two experienced actors show up for this, the first day of auditions. They come with head shots.

On the spur of the moment, I read for the parts of Barnette and Doc.

“That’s great, really good stuff!” director Jim Williams tells me. Turns out he says that to everyone.

If this lack of qualified actors concerns the Theatre in the Valley leaders, they aren’t showing it.

Instead they debate whether the actors should use Southern accents. Just then a few kids dribble basketballs down the hall outside.

(Later in the week, enough real actors turn out to fill the cast.)

City officials say they are trying to find some rehearsal space for the group, probably at the Henderson Pavilion on Green Valley Parkway. And they say the group is welcome to apply for a city arts grant.

For now the group holds auditions in the Henderson Multigenerational Center, clinging to the excitement of the journey to the stage, wherever it may be.

“I’m very corny,” says Williams, a retired casino manager with a passion for the stage. “We’re all in this together ... I’ve done plays with one person in the audience.”