An interview with Lisa Scheps, Patti Neff-Tiven, and Natalie George
The Austin theatre community will soon have a new, much-needed theatre. Ground Floor Theatre will open its first show December 1st - Fusebox Festival's 60 in Sixty - at its location on Springdale Road in east Austin. The theatre will reside in location-cubed perfection in the former giant Segovia Produce warehouse, now being repurposed severally by innovative craft and artisanal firms, near the intersection of Springdale Road and Airport Boulevard.
Ground Floor Theatre is the brainchild of Lisa Scheps, formerly the owner of !play Theatre Group, Patti Neff-Tiven of Weird City Theatre, and Natalie George of Fusebox Festival, other theatrical groups, and her lighting company Light Bastard Amber. This committed group is building a board of directors as it builds the physical space. The current board has five directors including George and is growing in number. Scheps and Neff-Tiven as staff are managing the theatre’s development plans, productions, and administration. This reviewer met with them to discuss the concept and the potential of Ground Floor Theatre.
Why this one , why now; what is your goal with Ground Floor Theatre?
Lisa: The mission of the Ground Floor Theatre is to do new works by and for underrepresented communities. That’s the line we want to take and run with, and make it work.
So our goal would be: we want to make and do groundbreaking, incredible work that shines a light on areas that aren’t necessarily lit, generally speaking.
One of the things I am personally very excited about is focusing on areas underrepresented in underrepresented communities. For instance, the differently abled community is underrepresented. The Asian American community is underrepresented. In our town, in Austin, the African American community is an underrepresented community within underrepresented communities. And there are other underrepresented communities that we are excited to work in. In the area of LGBTQ equality, it’s very exciting now—in the world. So, yes, it’s a lofty goal.
Yes, yes, it is. What about performance art? I know elements of the LGBTQ community in the 90s had a thing called gay theatre. Is that still around?
Lisa: There are some LGBT theatres that specialize specifically in LGBT performances. Now, performance art to me is theatre. So that’s all included.
Some of these things are within the development of new work.
Some of these things will be submissions playwrights give us
Another thing we are excited about is taking things and developing things from scratch.
And that could come out in the form of a narrative play, or a musical, or a performance art piece, or something that is inclusive of a lot of different art forms. So the sky’s the limit with regards to the type of theatrical art form we would like to see here.
Can we put in right now about some of the programs you already have?
Lisa: Along those lines, we’re opening the theatre on December 9, 2014 with the Fusebox Festival’s 60 in Sixty short play series. And in 2015 we’ll be the venue for Fronterafest Long Fringe. The best venue in my opinion.
Patti: And we’ll be the home of Fronterfest Long Fringe. We actually saved them because they didn’t have one for this year.
Lisa: And also the Fusebox Festival is going to be here next April.
Are you interested in putting dance programs in here?
Lisa: We would, but there are two points or issues to deal with before we get there. The first is, we have to work within our mission.
The second is that currently our floor is a concrete floor. We would need a more dance appropriate surface--specifically a floating floor—and that’s going to take some time and some money.
Natalie: But we do have the capability to rent appropriate flooring. That’s how the Off Center and SVT can do dance. We can do that too, so we can have a dance in here instantly.
Lisa: My dance goal would be to have a nice floor like what the Rollins has. Which is a nice permanent floor, you can drill into it, and blah, blah, blah. You can quote me on that last part.
Let’s put in a nuts and bolts bit right here: do you have a capital plan about a floor, chairs, other things?
Lisa: we have all that.
That’s in your capitalization plan right now?
Lisa: Right, right. So what we’re going to have here in the theatre space, available for rental, are audience platforms, tiered platforms, up to 140 seats, stage platforming, , lighting system, and a forty-two channel sound board. We have wonderful dressing rooms and a green room, lobby facilities, house management, concessions; we’re going to offer limited program design, and here’s a big one: PR. Part of the rental will be a limited amount of marketing through our partnership with Hook ‘em Marketing. It’s not just me sitting on the computer and typing out tweets.
Altogether, most of it is Patti and I. Patti’s going to oversee our development side; artistic direction, if you will, will fall on my side, but most of it is both of us together. The buck stops with us.
Another thing we are not going to be doing is curating our rental productions. So you don’t have to pass our test to put on a show here. That being said, if you’re going to come here and do something that is racist or homophobic . . . .
Patti: We reserve the right to say no.
Lisa: Right, we reserve the right to say no.
So if you can pay the rent, you can come in here and put on your show.
Patti and Lisa: Right, right.
Lisa: And one thing we want to do if our fundraising efforts are successful is offer either free rent or drastically reduced rent to underrepresented theatre companies. So if you have an Asian American company, for example, and our space funding is successful, you can expect that you’re going to pay next to nothing or nothing at all for putting your show in here.
You’re going to fulfill your mission right there. Say right now you’re in the middle of your Kickstarter campaign.
Lisa: Right now we’re in the middle of our Kickstarter campaign, which is strictly to fund our physical space and to defray some of our production costs. What we hope and expect to make in our Kickstarter campaign is just to get it all up and running. This initial campaign is specifically to fund our physical space. It’s not for our production arm. When we get it all in place, we want to be a resource for the entire theatre community.
Patti: The campaign is going well. We made a lot in our first week and it is going round and round in the community.
Lisa: We’re also hoping that someone who is an angel of the arts will come forward and realize that named marketing is also an option. I think it would be great to have the Dr. Dave Robinson box office, or dressing room or green room. These are clearly bigger ticket items we can only sell once in our existence. They would be for someone who likes to see their name on things or would like to donate in the name of their favorite charity or something else like that.
What about Ground Floor Theatre Company production development? Are you going to get back into directing and acting?
Lisa: Yes. Absolutely. Here’s our plan:
So our first step was this space. That’s what we’ve been concentrating on. And as I said, we’re going to be doing new works by underrepresented theatre companies.
Starting January 1st, 2015, we’re going to begin developing and taking submissions for us to produce ourselves. We will do one-off things, workshops, scene study, and things like that.
But don’t forget, the first year is development. We plan to reach out to Austin Symphony and Texas School for the Deaf. We would like to put on concert versions of musicals with the ASL component added to them. Very similar to what they’re doing at Encores in New York. These are all things that will be happening that first year.
Step two is in the second year, 2016. We plan to shift slightly and start taking scripts and doing our own productions ourselves—in addition to renting the space to others.
But to answer your question directly, Patti and I will both be producing, directing, and perhaps performing in our own productions.
Do you have a mental list of playwrights and composers that you are thinking about? Because I’m putting this on a website dedicated to theatre as the interpretation of a narrative script.
Patti: We don’t have anything specific in mind. One thing we want to do is to keep it open.
Lisa: Austin has a wealth of talented playwrights. You know all about the Out of Ink Festival and other talent-rich programs. I will be looking to have and already have been having one-on-one conversations with playwrights in Austin.
Patti and I feel very strongly that our company will be an incubator for a lot of artists in this town.
We will be working with artists who would like to have their work through social consciousness. There are a lot of artists out there who are producing good work, but what we find important is social consciousness and shining a light on those communities that don’t ordinarily bask in that light.
(a shorter version of this text appeared at examiner.com on November 6)