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New theater goes out on a (naked) limb
Party features full nudity, but it's a play about relationships, not sex. And the new Central Stage Theatre Company's founder is counting on the gay community to make the show a success.
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 8, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- Brett Lassiter takes a seat one morning in the theater he is starting in St. Petersburg, the Central Stage Theatre Company, and looks around with obvious satisfaction. Just over a month ago, the building was a warehouse; now it has an elevated stage, 90 seats on risers and a blackout curtain surrounding the intimate space.
"I always wanted to do this," he says. "I always wanted to have a place that I could call my own, where I wasn't working for somebody else."
Lassiter, 37, was artistic director at Bradenton's community theater, the Manatee Players, from 1997 until recently. But while he staged edgy productions of Cabaret and Kiss of the Spider Woman, Bradenton preferred The Sound of Music and South Pacific, so he set out to follow his dream. "I wanted an outlet where I could do experimental things."
This weekend, Lassiter opens his theater with Party, a popular gay-themed play that features its author, David Dillon, in the seven-man cast. Nic Arnzen, who was in the play when it premiered in Chicago in 1992, is the director.
Party owes a debt to The Boys in the Band, Mart Crowley's landmark 1968 play. But Dillon's play is more lighthearted and liberated, with a group of friends getting together to talk about what's going on in their lives. They reveal themselves in more ways than one, with a truth-or-dare-style party game that winds up with everyone nude.
"The nudity is treated tastefully and happens gradually," according to a synopsis of the play. "It begins with a character having to moon the other players, another having to play the rest of the game in his underwear and similar mild dares until the revelation of their bodies becomes commonplace and thus void of any real shock value."
Lassiter acknowledges that the promise of nudity will surely get some people into the theater, but he thinks they will leave talking about the relationships in the play. The characters include a priest (played by Dillon), a director, a college student and the owner of a travel agency.
"The dialogue is pretty honest," Lassiter says. "If you convey it that way, show that this is a group of guys getting together to have a good time, I think people in our community will relate. After you get by the initial naked body, it's just another artistic element, part of the story. There are no sex acts at all."
Among other plays Lassiter mentions he would like to see at Central Stage are Six Degrees of Separation, Equus and Jeffrey. Though he is interested in plays that are not strictly gay-themed, he is plainly counting on the gay community to get his theater off the ground. He began talking to Dillon about Party a year ago.
"This one will be driven by the gay community," he says. "I think I can count on word of mouth to happen within the gay community. Clubs and organizations are finding this to be a great outlet for their social functions. I think they'll embrace it and come. I think it's going to be a huge hit. It shows the gay community in a good light."
Lassiter, who has a degree in acting from Northwest Missouri State University and worked as a company manager for touring shows before moving to Florida, is launching Central Stage mostly on his own. "I'm up to 18 grand right now," he said of his investment in the theater. "I'm getting some help from a friend in St. Louis who believes in the theater and believes in me, and from my father in Kansas."
After living in Bradenton and Sarasota, he moved to St. Petersburg and was captivated by the signs of a revival in the Central Avenue business district. He figured it was the right place for a theater.
"Driving up and down Central, I kept seeing all the development, the new cafes, the antique shops, the galleries," he says. "I just thought this is a place that is going to be up-and-coming. I like the feel. It's close enough to Tampa that people can get over here in 25 minutes. It's close enough to Sarasota-Bradenton."
Though Central Stage is not an Equity theater, Lassiter is paying actors. "I like the artists around here," he says. "There's some great talent with the Asolo, American Stage. If I need to go to the unions to work out deals so I can get actors to come in here to show off their craft, I'll do it in a minute."
But for all of Lassiter's dreams to materialize, his first production must find an audience. "Party has to work. People have to believe in me," he says.
And if Party flops? "Then I pack up my sofa and my rug and say I gave it a shot and continue on with life."
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PREVIEW: Party by David Dillon is the first production of Central Stage Theatre Company, 2235 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. It opens Friday and runs through Sept. 2. Shows are at 8 p.m. Friday, 7 and 10 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $18. (727) 327-7529. The play includes nudity.
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