Video by Courtney Pedroza
Actors move between a series of ceilingless rooms that illuminate the chilly, black-walled warehouse. Over the noise of cars driving on Interstate 10, ominous sounds come from speakers surrounding the structure, and voices project from different rooms.
This warehouse on West Culver Street in the Grand Avenue arts district is the rehearsal and performance space of Phoenix theater company Orange Theatre. Inside the building, company members are preparing for their upcoming show, “Herakles.”
Orange Theatre, founded in 2010 by Matthew Watkins and Stephen Christensen, has not always existed in this warehouse. The first show took place in a house that the founders moved into specifically with the goal of using it for performances.
“There’s a really great energy about performing in a really small, intimate space,” Media Designer Tucker Bingham said. “You get this relationship with the audience that’s really unique. And then we became a grown-up theater company, a big-boy theater company and got a space, and we kind of lost that quality of being in a house.”
But Orange Theatre is a multimedia performance collective that executes “artistically rigorous, artist-initiated performance projects,” their website says, through the use of contemporary theater methods. The company is always finding new ways to recapture that intimate feeling.
“We’re all here because I think we’re interested in not kind of settling for the artistic status quo but pushing through that and finding new challenges, finding new things,” associate artistic director Joya Scott said.
Scott added that through experimental multimedia work and re-envisioning old pieces, Orange Theatre is aiming to be part of an experimental theater tradition that exists in other cities but not yet elsewhere in Phoenix.
The company has a standing ensemble of seven individuals who consistently work together and manage the company. Scott said the core ensemble has drawn in a following similar to that of a band.
Another trait that keeps audience members coming back is the price of tickets to Orange Theatre shows.
“All our tickets are pay what you can, for all our shows,” Scott said. “We’ve been really committed to that because we don’t believe there should be a barrier to seeing art.”
Each show has a suggested ticket price, but audience members can choose to pay as much or as little as they want. The company appreciates when an audience member can pay more than the suggested price in order to support the show and allow others who cannot pay as much to see it. Scott said this policy has drawn in more repeat attendees and more young people.
Orange Theatre’s upcoming show, “Herakles,” adapted from the text by ancient Greek playwright Euripides and directed by artistic director Matthew Watkins, is a performance that allows the members to test new techniques while maintaining the creative process and goals they hold as a company.
“We’re talking about domestic violence, or we’re talking about a number of issues that are easy to wag our fingers at, but we’re just trying to create a space where we take really powerful images from that kind of subject matter but not pass judgment,” Bingham said. “It’s not about telling you what we think, its about asking you what you think.”
Watkins said that although the specific struggles faced by characters in “Herakles” are not completely relatable in modern day-to-day life or relationships, the magnitude of the issues is relatable to today’s audience.
“Yesterday, there was a person who went into a center for people with disabilities and killed 14 people,” Watkins said. “I haven’t experienced that first hand, but that’s the sort of soup that I’m living in, and this play is about those types of intense situations.”
To convey the situations of an ancient storyline in a modern, relatable way, Orange Theatre is experimenting with live video footage of the action and innovative sound engineering techniques.
A performer with a camera follows and films the action up close, and those scenes are played live on monitors around the structure so that audience members can watch from any angle. Members of the audience will follow the action and different actors around the space at their discretion.
“We’re interested in multiple things on stage that are in tension with each other as opposed to sort of all going along the same track,” Scott said. “We put a lot on the audience. The audience has to choose what to look at.”
Technical director and sound designer Christensen developed a sound system that he can control on a touch screen device where he uses a virtual 3D model of the space to pinpoint where he wants the sound to come from.
“It really just comes out of not having an outlet to create the work that we all think is really interesting,” Christensen said. “Nowhere else would anyone give me the time of day or the money to install a 42-channel sound system and spend six months trying to program software to make it work.”
Scott said there is always the struggle of making enough revenue to do all the things they want to do, especially in Arizona where state arts funding is some of the lowest in the country. But in the future, the company hopes to tour more shows and continue to share their art.
“It does not have the same tangible benefit as people who argue for policy reform or direct action or whatever it is,” Scott said. “But I think this is important too. I think we need this too, or we’ve lost something.”
Herakles is playing on selected dates and times from Dec. 11-20 at Orange Theatre’s space at 1711 W. Culver St. #7. There are only 25 available tickets per show in order to allow the audience to move about the space freely. More details about dates, times and tickets can be found at orangetheatre.org.
Contact the reporter at mallory.prater@asu.edu.
