Charlotte theater companies unveil new seasons, plans to strengthen community connections

A year after Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte folded, other area companies are producing works they hope will inspire audiences and entice them to become regular consumers of locally created theater.

There’s plenty to be excited about with the 2023-24 season: regional premieres of new award-winning shows; familiar classics; affordable pricing; and a focus on opportunities for the community to connect.

But there are significant challenges too. The Charlotte Observer recently spoke to leaders at several local theater companies to see what they have planned for the new season and what obstacles they are confronting.

Three Bone Theatre

Three Bone Theatre’s 12th season looks at the theme of identity — how we see ourselves and how others define us, according to artistic and operations director Robin Tynes-Miller. The four new plays include two titles coming directly from Broadway and another two written by MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” recipients.

All will be making their Southeastern regional premiere at Three Bone.

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“It’s just a really exceptional crop of shows,” Tynes-Miller said. “We’re really thrilled to be bringing them to Charlotte.”

The season kicks off with “The Lehman Trilogy” (Nov. 3-18), which won Best Play at the 2022 Tonys and swept many other major theater awards last year. Three Bone will be just the second company in the country (after Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company) to produce it.

The story traces over 160 years of history of the Lehman brothers, from their arrival as German Jewish immigrants in America, to the founding of their dry goods business and eventual collapse as one of the country’s premiere investment firms during the 2008 financial crisis. The show features over 30 characters played by three actors.

The rest of Three Bone’s season explores diverse cultural perspectives, examining issues like racism, gender politics and immigration.

In “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” another recent Broadway title, the emotional journeys and inner lives of seven Black men with different life experiences are conveyed through spoken word, slam poetry and rhythm. The show runs next May 3-18.

And “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles” merges Mexican folklore with Euripides’ ancient tragedy to tell the story of an undocumented Mexican mother and her children as they journey across the Mexico-US border. It’ll run from Aug. 9-24, 2024.

“We really believe in trusting our audiences to handle tough material and we make sure that the pieces that we pick are fresh and exciting and just exceptionally written,” Tynes-Miller said.

The company prioritizes work that reflects the community, she said. That includes the shows as well as the actors and creative team members leading the productions.

The organization is also committed to keeping its prices low and being fiscally responsible. That’s challenging without a permanent home.

“Affordable performance space in Charlotte is a major concern, I think, for everybody who’s trying to produce here,” Tynes-Miller said.

The company produces shows at the Arts Factory at West End Studio, a black box theater that seats about 70 people. It’s less than half the size of the space the company previously called home in the Duke Energy Theater, (closed as part of the new main library construction project, as previously reported by the Observer.)

“We’re getting really close to being back to our pre-COVID audience members,” but it’s been hard, Tynes-Miller said. “We were hit by COVID and then we also moved spaces, so that’s a double whammy for trying to get audiences to follow you.”

Growth for a small professional theater company — one that Tynes-Miller said pays all of its artists and aspires to one day pay a living wage — depends on public support.

“For people who believe that theater is important to our community and our society, the best thing you can be doing right now is buying tickets for locally produced theater,” she said. “These are your friends and your neighbors who are on stage, and behind the scenes, and that money goes straight back into the local economy.”

Theatre Charlotte

Theatre Charlotte, which has been part of the local scene for nearly a century, knows “there’s no place like home.”

In December 2020, the nonprofit’s building was destroyed by an electrical fire. After costly repairs, the company has occupied its own space for the second consecutive year.

How apt for the season to begin with the musical “The Wizard of Oz” (Sept. 8-24). Despite its long history, this will be the first time Theatre Charlotte has produced it. Among this season’s seven shows, five are Theatre Charlotte premieres.

Other new works include “Baskerville” (Oct. 27-Nov. 13), a Sherlock Holmes mystery, as well as an intimate two-person play, “The Mountaintop,” a fictional account of Martin Luther King Jr.’s final night alive. The latter will take place in Theatre Charlotte’s lobby from Feb. 16-25, 2024.

“It’s going to give us an opportunity to really engage our patrons and audience members in conversation,” said artistic director and acting executive director Chris Timmons.

Another season highlight, Timmons said, is “The Thursday Night Bridge Circle,” a new work by Wilmington-based playwright Ray Kennedy. The story is inspired by Kennedy’s experience being raised by a Black nanny in La Grange in Lenoir County. It’s set in 1970 as schools begin to desegregate, and runs from March 8-24, 2024.

“It’s got a ‘Steel Magnolias’ kind of feel to it,” Timmons said. “That southern humor and great characters that you can relate to... And it covers some material that, again, we can engage people in conversation.”

Timmons hopes audience members and performers will each find something they relate to in the season. He said familiar titles remain attractive to some audience members while more challenging works could draw new audiences.

A varied season — including some shows with smaller casts or limited sets — also helps offset costs for this nonprofit that welcomes theater-makers of all levels as volunteers under the direction of paid local professionals.

The lingering effects of COVID and inflation continue to affect the company, Timmons said. Materials and labor costs have skyrocketed but unlike other industries, they have not passed those expenses on to the consumer.

Accessibility is key to their mission, he said, so they have focused on being more strategic with spending and marketing.

There’s also been a shift in entertainment spending habits, Timmons said. People choose to stay home more. When they do purchase theater tickets, that happens much later than before the pandemic.

During his 20 years in Charlotte, Timmons said he’s seen “ebbs and flows” in the number of arts experiences being produced. He believes more collaboration is needed to support a healthy environment for local theaters. In particular, uncertainty about funding sources for the arts continue to be a worry.

“That’s something that, I think, has put a lot of us on edge again,” Timmons said.

Children’s Theatre of Charlotte

A staple of the city and a tradition for many families since its founding in 1948, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte has 11 shows this season, including “Narnia the Musical” from Sept. 22 to Oct. 22.

Adam Burke, the theater’s artistic director, cited several other shows he’s particularly looking forward to.

He called “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me” an exciting show, and one that the theater commissioned and developed alongside three other theaters: Children’s Theater of Madison, Wisconsin; Dallas Children’s Theater in Texas; and The Rose Theater in Nebraska. Playwright Paige Hernandez conducted workshops with children in each of these communities and used that material to shape the play based on Maya Angelou’s poetry.

The show runs from Nov. 4-19.

“Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl’s Baseball Dream” is a new musical developed under The Kindness Project. It’s about the formative years of Toni Stone, the first professional female baseball player. That runs from March 9-24, 2024. And Burke said the upcoming “Pinocchio,” an unconventional take on the classic fairy tale, features a clowning performance style that “will be fun for all audiences.” It’s set for Feb. 3-24, 2024.

There’s also an added emphasis on its youngest patrons. Coming out of the pandemic, Burke said, “we are trying to better understand our young community members in a variety of new ways focusing primarily on mental health.”

The company created a new position, Artistic and Community Relations Fellow, whose job is to forge fresh ties with groups serving young people in the community in order to leverage and share resources.

CTC created a show called “Show of Hands,” following workshops in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools classes, and developed it in collaboration with third graders. It deals with actual issues students face, and will tour every third grade class in CMS, with support from Mecklenburg County’s Health and Human Services.

And it’s expanding the reach of sensory-friendly performances through an exclusive partnership with Autism Strong Foundation.

Like other arts groups, Children’s Theatre is facing multiple challenges.

Among the ones Burke cited were: a reduced pool of available talent, higher industry-wide wage standards, limitations on ticket price increases, reduced contributions and fewer opportunities for theater artists in the community.

Also, fewer people are purchasing subscriptions. “They are waiting until much later to make purchases, which makes revenue projections challenging,” Burke said. And the bus driver shortage, which is impacting CMS and districts across the state, is causing schools to either arrive late to shows or prevents them from attending at all.

Charlotte Conservatory Theatre

A new player in the theater ecosystem is Charlotte Conservatory Theatre.

The company started in August 2022 and is focused on bringing high-quality, professional theater to Charlotte. That vision encompasses the audience’s experience “from the moment they park their car to the moment they leave the theater,” said theater co-founder Stephen Kaliski.

In its first year, its productions played at Booth Playhouse, the Mint Museum Uptown and the Cain Center for the Arts in Cornelius. The organization has targeted arts spaces with a built-in level of prestige, Kaliski said, because theater is competing with other entertainment options.

For consumers, “it needs to be affordable but the experience itself should not feel cheap,” he said.

Because space is expensive, the theater company is taking more of a pop-up approach to its art, said Kaliski, who also recently took over as executive director at Davidson Community Players.

Rather than risk failure by overreaching with a full season announcement or getting trapped in what he describes as the “institutionalism” of an organization, Kaliski said his group is focused on identifying the right space and show to be successful.

CCT plans to produce a show in late November to December at the Cain Center. Details are still being worked out, but one idea is to program an encore series that would remount a play the company produced last season in Charlotte alongside another local theater company’s work.

Kaliski is a former Davidson College visiting assistant professor with a background as a playwright and director in New York. For him, the sweet spot for productions is top-tier contemporary plays making the rounds in New York’s off-Broadway theaters.

He believes CCT’s ultimate challenge is convincing Charlotteans that they need a regional professional theater because they have gone so long without one.

While Actors Theatre partly filled the void by bringing contemporary theater to local audiences, he said Charlotte has been without a true professional regional theater company since Charlotte Repertory Theatre closed in 2005.

How do you take “a world-class city like Charlotte, with a growing population and new business and new energy and young people moving to it all the time,” Kaliski said, “and how do you make a case that theater is still a necessary component of that world-class profile?

“...We have to convince our audiences that this is something that they will enjoy and that will enrich them as people.”

Arts editor Adam Bell contributed to this report

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