Once upon a time (a long time ago), the powers that be (or were) at Germantown Community Theatre worried that the company’s name (frequently nicked to GCT), sent the wrong message to patrons, would-be patrons, and the donor community at large. Strange as it sounds in our heavily networked day and age, the offending word was “community.” Even now, the expression “community theater” smacks of the pejorative, as if it were necessarily synonymous with words like provincial, naive, or amateur and all the other stuff Christopher Guest made fun of in his terrific community-theater satire, Waiting for Guffman. Patrons would almost certainly take “Germantown Theatre” more seriously, wouldn’t they?
Though the words “Germantown Theatre” actually were immortalized in the form of a frosted-glass office door panel, the identity crisis was short-lived. The C found its way back between the G and the T before most folks noticed it was MIA, and the quaint, quietly ambitious 112-seat venue on Forest Hill-Irene continued to attract top talent, collect shelves-full of awards, and build enviable education and children’s programming initiatives, all while struggling to leverage its role as the namesake playhouse in one of the South’s more affluent suburbs.
In March, 2017, after many seasons of ups and downs, GCT’s board made a bracing public announcement: The theater wasn’t just broke, it was potentially broken. Considerable debt had been accrued and regardless of the quality of work on stage, audiences were choosing to be just about anywhere else. Things only got worse from there. Funds raised as part of a months-old capital campaign had been misapplied to cover the theater’s day-to-day operating costs, and the then-executive director added his name to an increasingly long list of short-lived theatre leaders.
Trust in the tiny suburban institution was evidently compromised, so the GCT board took a leap of faith. Following an example set by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in 2014, when that grand old organization announced its impending financial collapse and put out a general call for rescuers, GCT took their troubles directly to the Germantown community, not knowing for sure who — if anybody — might be there to catch them. It’s the 45-year-old playhouse’s latest dance with the slippery c-word, as a new crop of leaders and board members work to figure out not only where GCT fits, but also, what it means.
Today Germantown Community Theatre’s identity is largely tied to its longtime home in a converted early-twentieth-century county schoolhouse on Forest Hill-Irene, although the quaint city-owned property is technically the company’s third location. Midwifed by the Germantown Women’s Club, GCT came kicking and screaming into the world in 1972 with a production of You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water Is Running, a collection of comedy sketches by Tea and Sympathy playwright Robert Anderson, staged in the Germantown Community Center.
In its earliest incarnation the theater was run by Terry Holcomb, a Nashville transplant then still enrolled in graduate school at Memphis State University. After its trial show, the newly minted producing body moved into its first permanent home in a tiny, 60-seat chapel behind Germantown Presbyterian Church, on a stretch of Germantown Road that no longer exists.
Comic actor turned director Ann Marie Hall describes the original chapel space as a place where the regional acting community could, “do some plays outside of Midtown Memphis,” where opportunities for actors were fairly limited. “We all just wanted to be on stage, and we were willing to drive to Germantown to do it,” she says.
Actually, Memphis’ now-vibrant and diverse theater culture was considerably smaller in 1972, when GCT sputtered to life. There were fewer local companies and they received a lot more attention from the city’s two daily newspapers and other media. Front Street Theatre, the professional house where stars like Dixie Carter and Polly Holliday got their start, was freshly dead. Theatre Memphis was still the Memphis Little Theatre, housed in the poolhouse at the Pink Palace, and subscription sales were strong enough that walk-up tickets were sometimes hard to come by.
Jackie Nichols, whose thriving family of theaters helped Overton Square remain viable during the Midtown drinking and dining district’s leanest times, had just moved his Circuit Playhouse into a converted movie house at the corner of Poplar and Evergreen. Playhouse on the Square, Nichols’ flagship professional company, wouldn’t launch until 1975, the same year Theatre Memphis celebrated its 55th anniversary by moving into its expanded facilities on Perkins Extended, then near the heart of Memphis’ booming eastward migration.
John Rone, a Yugart Eurian Ostrander Award honoree for lifetime service to theater in Memphis, describes the original GCT location as an absurd little place with no wing space, no fly-space, no stage-right exit, and a bizarre, egress-blocking portion of the stage that could be raised like a drawbridge to allow patrons into the auditorium, then lowered to complete the playing space.
“That would probably be a code violation today,” Rone muses. The ex-chapel was a place where tiny budgets required big imaginations, and where he, and so many of Memphis’ name-brand actors, designers, and directors learned their craft, squeezing baroque mysteries, Neil Simon farces, and enormous musicals like Anything Goes and Damn Yankees onto a space the size of a postage stamp.
Rone’s first show at GCT was American Primitive, a historical verse drama about the revolutionary lives of John and Abigail Adams. It starred a young but still mostly unknown Jim Ostrander just prior to the celebrated voice and stage actor’s debut at Theatre Memphis. The versatile and indefatigable Ostrander worked on every stage in town, becoming synonymous with the best of what the city’s theatrical community had to offer. In 2001, a year before he succumbed to cancer of the jaw, the Memphis magazine and ArtsMemphis-sponsored Memphis Theatre Awards (founded in 198x) were christened The Ostranders in his honor.
Former executive director Brent Davis describes GCT as a “theater of firsts,” because — like the great Ostrander — so many people got their start there. Bill Short, associate director of the Barret Library at Rhodes College and a Eugart Yerian honoree himself, takes the concept further. Short, who also got his start in Germantown, compares the experience of working there to a big commercial show’s pre-Broadway run in New Haven, Connecticut. “Only it wasn’t a test site,” Short says. “It was a proving ground.”
Before returning to Memphis and taking a position with MIFA, Jim Seacat spent 20 years working as the marketing and communications director at the Actor’s Theatre in Louisville, home to the Humana Festival of New American Plays. He got his start at GCT where, with a little help from President Richard Nixon, he became the company’s second paid employee. He would eventually succeed Holcomb as executive director.
“They had something called a CETA grant,” Seacat says, describing the WPA-inspired Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, an experiment in turning federal money over to states for the purpose of creating jobs. “To qualify you had to have a bachelor’s degree and you had to have been unemployed for a year,” says Seacat, who’d attended Memphis State with Holcomb, and had spent the requisite time jobless.
“I was able to get The Commercial Appeal’s theater writer, Bob Jennings, to finally pay attention to us,” Seacat says of his tenure at GCT. “That opened us up to more people.” The additional exposure resulted in added performances, and rough shades were cut from particle board to cover the old chapel’s stained-glass windows, making Sunday matinee performances of popular hits like The Amorous Flea and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie possible at last. With non-existent budgets and lighting provided by floodlamps wrapped in old paint cans, GCT relied on creative solutions to mount challenging plays and popular musicals.
While Theatre Memphis may have struggled for a time in the 1990s, following the retirement of its longtime executive director Sherwood Lohrey, and Playhouse on the Square has gone through changes and navigated its own share of hard times, both companies have enjoyed relative stability when compared to GCT, where executive directors seldom have lasted more than three years.
John Rone compares executive succession in Germantown to the study of ancient Roman history. “There are all these Caesars that come in, and some of them don’t stay very long,” he says, naming as many past executives as he can remember off the top of his head: Bonnie Robinson, Joanne Malin, Kyle Hatley, Deborah Harrison, Bo List, Cori Stevenson, Leigh Walden, Brent Davis, Keith Salter, and the list goes on from there.
The company moved to its current location in 1981, under the leadership of Carrie Morrow, a tireless theater warrior described by Bill Short as “having the strength of purpose to work day and night, on both sides of the hall, raising the money and putting on the shows.”
Under Morrow’s direction, a new stage was constructed on top of the older stage in a room that had once doubled as the old school’s cafeteria and auditorium. Wing space remained minimal, and lighting could be tricky in the low-ceilinged theater but, somehow, sprawling Shakespearean epics like Romeo and Juliet and musical extravaganzas like Guys & Dolls and Fiddler on the Roof were made to fit. “It’s always had a chamber theater quality,” says Short, who acted, directed, designed for, and served on the board of GCT until he scaled back his participation in 2009. “Every scene’s a close-up.”
The intimacy that makes GCT such a unique experience for patrons can also make it a tougher sell for sponsors, since the little room has to sell out its entire weekend to do the kind of numbers that Memphis’ larger playhouses turn out in a night.
Board member Justin Entzminger is clear-eyed about the size issue. “We’re never going to be able to say we attract in a night or even in a weekend the audience that Theatre Memphis or Playhouse has,” he explained when GCT took its bad situation public this past spring. “But we have a strong relationship with audiences in East Memphis, Collierville, and Cordova. So we can’t speak to quantity, but we can speak to community and loyalty.”
Entzminger says GCT is serious about growing audiences, mending tattered relationships, and showing a commitment to responsible arts programming and management. “We used a cost-reduction strategy for next season,” he says. One slot has been cut from the season entirely, and instead of staging lavish musicals, the company is looking for quality low-royalty and royalty-free material. To hedge against future crises, a new committee was formed to respond to the specific needs of whistleblower situations. To grow its audience and its appeal to sponsors, Entzminger hopes GCT can reimagine its identity and its relationship with Germantown, Memphis, and Shelby County.
The aim, Entzminger explains, is to use all of GCT — inside and out — and develop it, not just as a place where residents may choose to see a show or two a year, but as a cultural hub where people gather regularly for art openings, food, and music events. “We have to find opportunities for programming that aren’t going to get in the way of what we already do with theater,” he says. “We’ve got to figure out how to engage more people.”
Actor and board member Brian Everson agrees. “We had great success with the Johnny Cash musical Ring of Fire,” he says, seeing a possible relationship between the kinds of live music GCT might host and the kinds of musicals GCT might stage in the future.
“We know there’s work to do to repair some relationships,” Entzminger says. “But we’re serious about getting the work done. We want to be thought of as a place that’s trusted and as a place where, when you’re with us, you’re supported.”
Dr. Bo Adams, the GCT board president, thinks support and gratitude should extend beyond the creative and consumer communities to the philanthropic community as well. “We’ve done a terrible job of thanking prior donors but we’re addressing this, and making sure they’re recognized,” he says.
Adams is also a realist who worries that the small company can do well, sell out every show, and still not always cover daily expenses. Deeper cuts to both manpower and salaries are being considered, he says. But more than the money, Adams is focused upon connecting the city of Germantown to its theater and re-connecting the theater to the people who’ve nourished and sustained it over the years.
Recently, Adams was a special guest at a meeting of the Germantown Women’s Club, when leadership announced a new $2,000 challenge grant benefitting the theater — a challenge that was quickly met by supporters. “I’d say we had drifted apart,” Adams speculates, unable to explain how the theater grew estranged from its volunteer base and the women’s organization that birthed it.
Between debt forgiveness, emergency giving, and austerity measures GCT managed to keep its doors open. In the 2016-2017 season (is this correct?), top-drawer productions of shows like Haint, an original Southern gothic mystery by GCT’s artistic director Justin Asher, and Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie marked a solid return to artistic excellence. Box office revenue stabilized and showed gains for the comedy The Game’s Afoot. An events committee was established and charged with finding reasons for people to visit the grounds and sample the GCT as a regional amenity.
“We’re looking for events to alert and attract the community,” Adams says. “Local music on the stage, an art gallery with local artists. Events where they can discuss their work. Food truck nights and things like that.” Adams hopes to re-create the kind of energy and family atmosphere former GCT board member and occasional director Madalyn McKnight Stanford describes when she talks about the time when the theater borrowed an idea from sports fans and launched a monthly tailgate party before the Sunday matinee.
“People would come for the food and they would stay for the show,” Stanford says. That’s the community spirit former GCT executive director Brent Davis tried to capture when the company adopted the motto “GCT: Come Play.”
It’s the sense of mutual purpose another former executive director, Bo List, gets at when talking about the need to bring volunteers through the doors. “At any given time, there were large numbers of retirees, students and adults needing to complete community service hours [in the building]. That, more than anything else we did in my time there, put the “community” in “community theater.”
Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo buys his adult daughter theatre subscriptions for her birthday. He awakened to the value of community theater many years ago, watching the same daughter watch The Best Christmas Pageant Ever at GCT. “You could wave your hand in front of her face and she wouldn’t notice,” he remembers. As a freshman alderman, Palazzolo participated in “sundowning” the Morgan Woods Children’s Theatre, an arts program run through Germantown Parks & Recreation. He says he appreciates the subsequent partnership that the city has cultivated with GCT to create children’s programming and family entertainment.
"Family theater” is an expression usually employed to describe safe spaces where nobody’s challenged by “adult content.” To GCT’s credit (but probably not its philanthropic benefit), the company has always tried to address the whole family, including children, teens, and grownups who sometimes enjoy a heady drama by Tennessee Williams or a ribald Steve Martin farce. Memphis actor Greg Boller is a GCT “first” whose story of father/daughter bonding mirrors Palazzolo’s, and illuminates another facet of “family” theater.
Today, Boller is one of Memphis theater’s most recognizable faces, having performed all over town in epics like Lord of the Flies at Playhouse on the Square and in smaller, edgier work like Tracy Letts’ terrifying, nudity-laden Bug at TheatreWorks. But the Ostrander-nominated performer might not have gotten on stage as an adult at all if his daughter Rae hadn’t come home from Christmas Pageant rehearsals worried because the actor playing “Dad” had to drop out of the show.
Boller filled in, and after his first taste of the spotlight, he never stopped auditioning and doing shows. “Lots of parents got to share the stage with their children at GCT,” Boller says of his Christmas Pageant experience. “To me, that’s a very special meaning of ‘family theatre.’”
Ask a dozen people to describe what community theater means and you’ll get a dozen wildly different answers. GCT is all things to all people. It’s a theater of firsts, a family theater, and a teaching theater devoted to classics but not afraid of new work.
Taking stock of the theater’s history and service, Bo Adams says he’s confident in the brand but anxious to see what happens next. “We’ve got a lot of things we’d like to see happen, but until we have an executive director we don’t always have somebody to make sure it happens,” he says. Auditions for that starring role are ongoing, should you wish to be part of something very special.