But we're going to get back to life again.The Mauldin Cultural Center has always been a welcoming space for the performing arts. We're all going to be a little smarter, a little more cautious. “We're going to get people back in the seats. “Everybody has helped the arts to survive COVID.”Īllen is looking ahead. “People have been so supportive,” Suzanne says. For now, they are ready to reopen the doors. You don't get good results that way.”Īllen and Suzanne acknowledge that “a day will come” when they aren’t involved in theater. It's easy, as a director, to criticize actors. “You need a nurturing person,” Allen says. Quinlan spent two weeks with the theater last year. “This is our transition year,” Suzanne says. Allen will direct “A Flea in Her Ear” in the spring. Suzanne will direct “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in October. Quinlan will direct three plays this season and also pick the lineup and casts for the 2022-2023 season. Meanwhile, the board – with input from the McCallas – hired Max Quinlan as Producing Artistic Director. “It’s the most ambitious season the theater’s ever done,” says Allen, who selected and cast the plays. In October, the official 2021-2022 season will open with the first of six shows. Performances are scheduled to resume in late July – starting with the shows canceled last season, “The Dixie Swim Club” and “The Producers.” Ticket holders and subscribers will be admitted with tickets from 2020. “People ask me, ‘What's your favorite play?’ And I say, ‘The next one.’” “That’s the great thing about theater there’s something new every moment,” Allen says. “As a director, when the show opens, you've already started on your next job,” Suzanne says. While actors are performing one play, the rest of the staff – director, set designers, costume makers, and another cast of actors – start working on the next production in the rehearsal hall. Most everyone is on the move all of the time. Often, they must move the set off the stage so actors can rehearse or perform that night. Currently, the crew builds the sets on the stage. The proposal includes a workshop for building sets. The theater also hopes to raise funds for an addition to its 50-year-old building. ![]() Most schools pay for the performances, but the theater tries to waive their fee for economically challenged schools. Grants and sponsorships help with the cost of mainstage plays, as well as the schools program, called Greenville Theatre on Tour. They prepare a children’s play – with a set, costumes and props – stuff it all into a van, drive to the school, set up, perform for 300 to 500 children, strike the set, and rush back to the theater to help out. The theater also has a full-time, six-person acting troupe that travels to as many as 75 elementary schools a year throughout the Upstate. Expansive plays, like “Mary Poppins,” can cost $100,000 to produce. The theater, located in Heritage Green, has 600 seats. Back in the ’50s, it didn't confuse people. “There’s nothing little about the Greenville Theatre. New York City was “big theater,” he says. When regional and local theaters sprung up in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, he says, they were called “little” theaters to differentiate them from Broadway. ![]() “The theater hasn't been ‘little’ since the 40s,” Allen says. When the McCallas arrived, and until about two years ago, the theater was The Greenville Little Theatre. (Sam caught the acting bug, too, and works at the Barter Theatre in Virginia.) So, they set their sights on stable jobs and found them at the Greenville theater. They were working in Dallas when their theater troupe disbanded, and their 4-year-old son, Sam, was ready to start school. Greenville wasn’t necessarily part of the script. They celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary on May 1. A Greenville native, Allen was in the graduate program after earning his bachelor’s at Wofford College. Suzanne and Allen have been “on the bus” since they met at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. It's about time for me to get off the bus.” “A lot of theater people needed to get off the bus, and you don't get off the bus because you can’t,” Suzanne says. It was horrible.’ Then they realized, ‘Oh, I'm at home at night,’” Allen says. “We've had actor friends say, when everybody was laid off, ‘Oh my gosh, I cried. They are eager to work, but COVID has also changed their perspective. “This hiatus is the longest we've gone without working on a play in 40 years,” Allen says. Suzanne directed “A Christmas Carol” in 2019 Allen directed “The Game’s Afoot” that November the theater closed months later. “It’s how we've been able to accomplish so much with so few.” It's kind of like our home because no one ever leaves,” she explains, not entirely in jest. ![]() The whole staff pitches in, Suzanne says. Allen and Suzanne do act, but they also direct, book the season, hire actors, design sets and costumes, meet with the board, clean bathrooms – anything that needs doing.
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