Arizona Opera, Childsplay to become resident companies at Herberger Theater Center
Kerry Lengel
Arizona Opera this week is unveiling a daring new programming model that puts the company’s focus squarely on modern works.
Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, the Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix is announcing that it will welcome three new resident companies for the 2018-19 season, doubling the current number.
In addition to Arizona Opera, a new sign outside the downtown venue will have to make room for Childsplay, the Valley’s award-winning professional theater for youngnew audiences, which currently performs at the Tempe Center for the Arts, and Arizona Broadway Theatre, which will be exporting three productions a year from its Peoria dinner theater.
“We’re working on designs and orders of names. We’re not sure what that’s going to look like,” said Mark Mettes, president and CEO of the Herberger. (The performing-arts center is owned by the city of Phoenix but operated by an independent nonprofit.)
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“One of the main considerations, since we have to stay within the footprint of the existing sign, is how can they fit together and be readable and each of them stand out in their own way?”
The opera, which currently performs at Symphony Hall in Phoenix and the Tucson Music Hall, will continue to present three operas in those large, 2,300-seat auditoriums in the winter and spring. But in the fall — when audiences are smaller due to the lack of snowbirds — it will serve up a two-title miniseason at the Herberger and at Tucson’s Temple of Music and Art.
On the marquee for fall 2018 will be “María de Buenos Aires,” the 1968 tango operetta by Astor Piazzolla, and “Charlie Parker's Yardbird,” a jazz opera that premiered in 2015.
“By going into these more intimate venues, we’re able to present gutsy, theatrical, unexpected works, which is where a lot of the creativity in opera is happening today,” said general director Joseph Specter, who took over the reins at Arizona Opera last year.”
In its main-stage series in the spring, the opera will produce a pair of Top 10 favorites, “La Traviata” and “The Marriage of Figaro,” but also 2011’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American opera “Silent Night,” about the Christmas truce on the Western Front during World War I.
If you’re doing the math, that’s three out of five operas composed in the past 50 years, and two in this century. That’s a big change for company that until recently was known for sticking mostly to the tried and true.
Specter acknowledges that his predecessor, Ryan Taylor, paved the way with his Arizona Bold campaign, which brought contemporary works including the mariachi opera “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna” to the stage and culminated in “Riders of the Purple Sage,” the first world premiere in the company’s nearly half-century history, earlier this year.
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“There’s such a rich library of work that’s being created right now for these more intimate spaces, and we just want to be able to take advantage of that and share it with Arizona,” Specter said. “And the success of ‘Riders,’ the success of ‘Cruzar,’ the way that has lit up the community has given us the courage to do that.”
For the Herberger, making room for Arizona Opera for two weekends next year is the smallest change.
Opened in 1989 as part of downtown’s long-term rejuvenation strategy, the venue has three theaters of various sizes, and it has been underutilized in recent years, especially after the 2013 departure (and subsequent closing) of Actors Theatre of Phoenix.
Arizona Theatre Company and Center Dance Ensemble remain resident companies, and iTheatre Collaborative, the small troupe that performs in the black box, was recently promoted to that status.
The addition of three resident companies will expand the center’s programming to more than 800 events per year, Mettes said, an increase of up to 36 percent.
Arizona Broadway Theatre, the big west-side dinner theater, has brought two of its productions to the Herberger in recent years, “A Christmas Carol” and Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” With its new agreement, it will expand its offerings in Phoenix to three shows per season.
But Childsplay will immediately become the Herberger’s most active tenant, with 25 weeks per year on its stages.
The company, a national leader in theater for young audiences, has been in residence at the Tempe Center for the Arts since that venue opened in 2007. But the city has adopted a long-term arts plan that calls for more diverse programming, and more original productions, at its flagship facility. Officials wanted Childsplay to reduce its performances there, perhaps splitting its season among multiple venues.
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“That’s what we did for the first 30 years of our existence, and it’s a bad business model,” said Childsplay artistic director Dwayne Hartford. “It’s really hard on our patrons. They were confused about which space they were supposed to be in. We talked to other theater companies that continue to do it now, and they all say, ‘We hate it.’”
Ralph Remington, the Tempe Center’s artistic director, said the decision was best for both sides.
“We didn’t want them to leave,” he said. “We wanted them to be a part of the venue as we grow and change. But they had broader ambitions, and far be it for us to stand in their way.”
And Hartford noted that Childsplay’s longtime partnership with Tempe isn’t over, as it will continue to be headquartered at its Sybil B. Harrington Campus for Imagination and Wonder, where it rehearses and offers classes for young actors.
“We will continue to be a Tempe institution,” he said.
Reach the reporter at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Follow him at facebook.com/LengelOnTheater and twitter.com/KerryLengel.
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