NEWS: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
**Grassroots Theater Trial To Be Given “Feet” April 3 in Lexington Park**
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**Six Mid-Atlantic Sites To Follow**
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ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND. March 15, 2008. Back yard buildings go up in smoke and flames, ghosts bring messages back from the dead, butterflies fly out of cookies, girls kiss boys, and bullies do -- well -- what bullies always do well.
Never mind. Play sandlot ball. Go kick the can. Remember what it was like to be in small town America. Your ticket to this world of memories, with a clear eye to today, is through the opening curtain of Red Dog Dirt.
The Newtowne Players of Lexington Park plays it small town -- spinning those 1950s yarns live on the company's home stage at Three-Notch Theatre. It premiers Red Dog Dirt this April 17 through April 20, 2008 at the theatre's Southern-Maryland location.
Newtowne-on-Tour
But . . . wait . . . there is more to this announcement than ballyhooing just another stage play performance -- however good this one may be. The Lexington Park theatre premier of Red Dog Dirt launches an unprecedented experiment in live, original theater called Newtowne-on-Tour.
In preparing the April performance for the Three-Notch stage, the play's director, Wendy Heidreich, readies the performance for a six-location theater tour throughout the mid-Atlantic states.
The upcoming tour -- and Heidreich's careful packaging of the performance to give it “feet” -- is designed to discover new things about live, original theater in America. Specifically, the Newtowne-on-Tour experiment in theater seeks to detect clues about how new, original plays with broad, family appeal might fare in -- and benefit -- “out of the way” communities and, simultaneously, accomplish all these objectives in a sensible and economical format.
“It's a tall order,” observes Russ Barnes of Good Measure Productions in Rockville, Maryland. Barnes is in partnership with Newtowne Players to design, promote, and operate the Newtowne-on-Tour theater trial. “What we are attempting here is nothing less than to question some of the time-worn assumptions about how theater today, especially community theater, must be operated,” Barnes continues.
“One of most prevalent assumptions is that there is scarcity: a finite pool of theaters for presentation; a shrinking theater-going audience for all but the heaviest-promoted, well established hits; and especially a lack of funding to do anything fun, different, or meaningful beyond diversion. We suspect there's a bit of self-fulfilling prophesy affecting the results of those assumptions.”
The Newtowne-on-Tour theater trial seeks six presenting venues across the mid-Atlantic states. “We are looking for presenter test sites,” explains Barnes, “which are themselves looking for new ways fully to utilize their real estate assets and to try out alternative and creative means of raising funds for, and familiarizing people with, their non-profit activities.
Among the goals of the theater trial is to discover information about, and therefore ways to grow, several interrelated publics which can benefit from a new kind of performing arts distribution. These include theater-going opportunities for audiences -- especially new audiences --, grass-roots presenters in need of funding, local community economic development efforts wanting to attract visitor spending, and funding organizations who look for better use of their dollars invested in the performing arts.
“We hope the results of the Newtowne-on-Tour trial,” Barnes points out, “may provide clues as to how to enlarge opportunities within the various branches of the theater community across the board.”
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CONTACT: Russ Barnes, Good Measure Productions, for more information, to arrange interviews, or to obtain photography. In Rockville -- 301-637-7841 --russ@bonmeasure.org; Wendy Heidrich, Newtowne Players, may be reached in Lexington Park -- 301-475-8811 -- Heidrichwndy@aol.com. Return to Invitation.