Advanced Maternal Rage | Fun Mom Band | Rubies on Five Points, Durham | Sep. 15, 9 p.m.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest | LGB Productions Levin Jewish Community Center, Durham | Sep. 15-18
Julius Caesar | Scrap Paper Shakespeare | Back to One Studios, Raleigh | Sep. 30–Oct. 2
Fuddy Meers | Switchyard Theatre Company | Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh | Oct. 20-28
A Doll’s House, Part 2 | RedBird Theater Company | Durham Bottling Company, Durham | Nov. 11-19
Why do people start theater groups? For Beth Brody, it was the largely ignored fact that institutional mental health care has worsened significantly in the United States since the 1960s. For David Berberian, it was noticing that independent theater had no steady home in Durham in recent years, and Naomi Kraut just needed something—anything—to help her cope with being a mom homeschooling her kids in a pandemic.
These and other artists are all part of a groundswell in regional theater, dance, and live arts communities this fall, as five new groups join Switchyard Theatre Company in mounting productions running through November.
“I think the mental health crisis in America is hugely overlooked,” Brody says about her current revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for LGB Productions. She cites statistics showing the number of psychiatric hospital beds in the United States has plummeted by 97 percent since the 1960s, with half of the remaining ones reserved for the criminal justice system. “Sixty years later, we’re still flying over the cuckoo’s nest,” she says.
The Durham theater scene has been scattered since Manbites Dog Theater’s 2018 transition from a company that produced and hosted artists at its space on Foster Street to a grants organization devoted to funding new works.
“Everybody’s sort of been jumping around from space to space, whatever they can find,” Berberian says. RedBird Theater, the company he cofounded with Derrick Ivey and Jeri Lynn Schulke, plants its flag with a September 29 launch party and subsequent first season of works at the Durham Bottling Company. The move is intended to help “bring back that sense of community that Manbites embodied. Part of that means having your own space, where people know you’re going to be.”
After a decade-long sojourn at a small-town theater in Texas, Wake Forest native Cora Hemphill returned determined to start a company in her hometown where actors are paid to do professional-level work. Firebox Theatre, which she started with director Tim Artz, bows this week with two one-acts that take audiences from a cold Iowa farmhouse in 1910 to a small Texas jail cell, several decades later. “I have seen how a theater can enrich a community, and I want so much for this town to experience that richness,” Hemphill says.
During the pandemic, then student director Emma Szuba stumbled upon a realization when necessity forced her to stage The Two Gentlemen of Verona with six actors in 60 minutes, with minimal props and costumes.
“We found a way to keep it small and scrappy, and safe and effective,” Szuba recalls. “And audiences really responded to it!”
Thus was born the idea of Scrap Paper Shakespeare, an ongoing experiment we’ll see in a late September production of Julius Caesar. “It’s going to be small and simple. The beauty of Shakespeare is in the words.”
Before the pandemic, Kraut was an education professor at Duke. Then COVID-19 hit and—boom—she was homeschooling kids. She recalls the shocking headlines, during the lockdown, about how hard the pandemic was hitting mothers.
“But that’s always been a part of America, all the time,” Kraut says. “Just as a way to survive, I started writing down things that they were saying and I was thinking at the time.”
Then Kraut started making songs with her bass guitar. Then she started recording them.
The puppets came next: characters who perform the songs. After that, the music videos, like “Covid Test” and “Zoom School Is the Worst,” on YouTube. Almost before she knew it, Kraut had made a puppet musical: The Very Worst Puppet Musical, to be exact. A live performance is in the works.
Her latest addition to the musical, releasing this week, deals with aging. “When you’re a new mom, society showers you, and you have the glow. Then, you just turn into the annoying butt of all jokes,” Kraut wryly notes. “It’s always open season, and it’s just getting worse.”
The 10-minute video is called Advanced Maternal Rage. Its premiere drops during a Thursday night Bull City Summit party at Rubies on Five Points.
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