So your dad's got a barn and you want to put on a show. Luckily, all your friends have talent, the cops let you slide on the permits, and everyone you know brings a friend.
Making theater of any kind, especially professional theater, isn't that easy. So the methodical growth of the upstart Capital Stage company has encouraged adventurous Sacramento theatergoers.
Even in its Old Sacramento location, Capital Stage has a New Sacramento vibe. The company has made a name for itself staging riskier, noncommercial works that aren't always "audience-friendly," but audiences come anyway. Capital Stage has mostly cast well, and performance levels have been extremely high, emphasizing the modest intimacy of its working space.
Capital Stage subscriptions are up more than 77 percent this season. The 3-year-old company has 645 subscriptions, compared with 363 last year, and projects growth next year to 1,100. That's far fewer than the 7,311 subscribers for the B Street Theatre's main stage, but it does give the venerable Sacramento Theatre Company's current season total of 2,147 some added competition.
The company started by Jonathan Williams, Peter Mohrmann and Stephanie Gularte produces at the Delta King Theatre, on a riverboat moored on the Sacramento River. The trio knew there were many interesting, controversial or difficult plays being staged elsewhere that weren't getting done professionally, if at all, in Sacramento. And they wanted to do them.
"The beginning of Capital Stage was about discarding traditions concerning what we should do and really looking at dynamic work that wasn't being done in our region," says Gularte, who serves as the producing artistic director.
They opened this season with John Patrick Shanley's "Dirty Story," a blunt satire on Middle East politics, and have made Neil Labute's abusive gender intrigues a staple with productions of "The Shape of Things" and "Fat Pig." This week, they open Sam Shepard's moody, modern-West romance "Fool for Love," starring Gularte and Williams (who happen to be married).
As a startup, the company received plenty of advice about putting on plays with commercial appeal and occasionally slipping in something with more edge.
The first season was anchored by Joe DiPietro's ubiquitous "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change." Though moderately successful, the genteel, button-downed relationship comedy didn't really fit the partners' mission for Capital Stage. They have since decided to take the road less traveled with productions that have more grit and ambiguity.
"We went into it saying we have so little to lose – why do it if we're not doing work we really believe in?" Gularte says. They also wanted an identity distinct from Sacramento's other professional theater companies, the B Street Theatre, Sacramento Theatre Company and California Musical Theatre.
The next year, they produced Rebecca Gilman's cautionary stalker drama "Boy Gets Girl."
"The idea was to produce what we were calling at the time 'edgier' types of plays without really identifying specifically what we meant or thought we meant by that," Gularte says with a laugh.
It has been a relatively loose focus, including solidly mainstream work such as David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Proof," Charlotte Jones' comic "Hamlet" riff "Humble Boy" and the recently closed domestic drama "Dinner With Friends," another Pulitzer Prize winner.
Those titles may not be avant-garde theater, but it is Capital Stage that is bringing them to Sacramento.
"We want to do plays and playwrights that are current," says managing director Mohrmann.
Not that all the work needs to be particularly political or controversial, but the partners want to push boundaries and take risks.
Peggy Shannon, artistic director of Sacramento Theatre Company, applauds Gularte and what the new company has accomplished so far.
"She's looking at the market saying, 'I think we can contribute in this way' and she's doing it," Shannon says.
Shannon also appreciates how Capital Stage gets the word out. "They've been very savvy about how they've marketed their shows, and they've used their e-newsletter really effectively. Stephanie has enormous vision, integrity and tenacity."
Call Bee theater critic Marcus Crowder, (916) 321-1120. Read his blog postings at www.sacbee.com/21q.
