by Monica Chamness
Staff Writer
There’s a new performance space coming to Springfield.
Stephen Dare, the former executive director of Springfield Preservation and Restoration, plans to open Boom Town Theater at 1714 N. Main St., a similar version of The Loft, which is now closed.
The premiere of the theater’s first production, “Fifty/50” is scheduled for March 6.
Aspiring playwright Kevin Michael Renehan, a buddy of Dare’s from high school, will direct the play. Renehan is a graduate of Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and stars in the two-person show with his partner, Natacha Nelson. Both are theater students at Boston University.
“I wanted to make theater happen in Jacksonville,” said Renehan.
According to Renehan, the hour-long performance seeks to “explore the implications of our modern world’s compartmentalization of gender roles, new racial biases that have replaced the old, prejudice towards the normal and corruption of ‘political correctness’ into just another excuse.”
Written in an episodic fashion, the play follows the two characters through several lives in a jumble of scenes and dialogues. The work is Renehan’s own creation.
“It’s about the labels you put on people and how we expect them to be,” explained Renehan. “The story is about a boy and a girl; it’s comic and romantic. There are a number of different stereotypes that fit and don’t fit. It calls to mind contradictions between labels. There is not a distinct message outside of ‘labels don’t work’.”
Like Dare’s former downtown residence, The Loft, with lots of hardwood floor space, Boom Town Theater is actually a large room, not a conventional play house.
“I could never do this in a theater,” said Renehan. “There can’t be any separation between the actors and the audience. I would almost call it primitive theater. It’s just about the audience, the actors, the words and the actions.”
Unconventional performance art has struggled to make it above ground in Jacksonville with a handful of local artists such as Dare leading the way. As with The Loft, Subterranean Cinema and other efforts, participation has been thin.
Despite the challenges, Renehan is optimistic there is an audience for this type of art form.
“I feel younger people are going to like it because of it’s feel; it’s very rough,” he said. “There is a lot of addressing the audience. Middle-age people will like it if they’re open-minded. It’s not a show. It’s not like a lot of stuff you would see in Jacksonville.”
The show runs March 6-8 and organizers are hoping for 100 patrons each night.