Plays don’t produce themselves. Someone has to put the nuts and bolts of a production together, and even before that, someone has to form a theater company. This takes a little time, lots of sweat, and – if you really want to offer something special – a vision. But even with a vision, a theater needs at least one more element to pull everything together: a place to set up shop.
When Geoffrey Kershner and Krista Franco first dreamed of forming a theatre company, they were in graduate school at Florida State University. While looking for a place to call home, they began using the facilities at Sweet Briar College during the summer to develop material. Kerhsner had grown up on campus, where his father taught, and it began to seem like a natural setting for the Endstation Theatre Company.
“We had space here, and we knew that in the summer Sweet Briar was available…,” Kershner told me, “…and it also coincided really well at the same time the administration here was really moving towards creating more activity here in the summer and utilizing the campus. So the timing worked really well for us.”
In the summer of 2007, Endstation developed the original The Mind of Poe, which the group performed at Sweet Briar, the Renaissance Theatre in Lynchburg, at Live Arts in Charlottesville, and the Capital Fringe Festival in DC. The following year, the Endstation Theatre began its residency at Sweet Briar College with the founding of Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival. They also began performing the original The Bluest Water: A Hurricane Camille Story, a play that will be reprised this summer. It will be the first of three productions for the Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival in 2009.
The Bluest Water is a fictional memory play centered on the devastation of Nelson County by Hurricane Camille in 1969. As Kershner notes, 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of this traumatic event.
In fact, two members of the cast are from Nelson County, and one of them, Wanda Bond, is a survivor of the storm. She lived in the hard-hit Massies Mill, and her family survived the flooding by climbing to the second floor of their home.
“A lot of the stories that are sort of the basis for inspiration for the show, which is a fictional story,” Kershner said, “those were all family friends of hers, and kids that she was growing up with, and knew them very well. It’s been very special having Wanda in the room with us. She keeps it honest, and it’s been a special experience just to have her tell us what it was and what happened.”
The Endstation Theatre Company also has a penchant for Shakespeare. Last year, the group performed Romeo and Juliet, setting the Capulets and Montagues at the turn of the century as carpetbaggers and Southern aristocracy. This year, Endstation will perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the campus lawn, allowing the players to make use of the beautiful Sweet Briar setting. Those attending the play are also invited to bring blankets and picnics.
“We’re really interested in embracing the live form,” Kershner told me, “we want to do theater that is best served by the theater arts.”
It’s a process that allows the Endstation Players to boldly breakdown the space between themselves and the audience.
“These characters are turning out to the audience, asking them questions, talking about what’s going on – it’s sort of this constant thing,” Kershner said. “Very much in our outdoor shows, that’s what’s going on. The actors are very much in the crowd, talking to the crowd.”
And the idea that anything can happen in live theater is doubly true for live theater outside.
“There’s always these uncontrolled variables,” Kershner said, “… it’s weather or a dog running through…But it also makes it exciting for the cast to have to deal with that.”
The third summer production is another original, My Brother’s Knife. The fictional play revolves around a Monacan Indian named Wayne during the 1980s and his attempt to trace his family’s tragic history. As with The Bluest Water, My Brother’s Knife is set locally.
“I have a real firm belief that theater should be localized,” Kershner told me. “I think that theater’s strength is its immediacy – it’s in the room with you. In an age of film and television and the Internet, theater is going to best serve itself if it’s really serving its audience in its locality.”
The commitment to local history and the legacy of that history has become an integral part of Endstation’s vision. Even members of the cast and crew who have come from faraway places have built a special connection with the surrounding landscape and the people who live there.
“If people are here from the outside, they’re walking away with this real love for the area,” Kershner said. “And for the people that are from the area it’s sort of a great way to embrace it too.”
It’s that commitment—to home, friends, and the broader community—that finally enriches each Endstation production.
“What’s been really exciting about this experience is that I’m coming home to do work,” Kershner said. “Creating work about where I grew up has been a really exciting personal experience to me.”
Find out more about the Endstation Theatre Company and the 2009 Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival at http://www.endstationtheatre.org/.
Image: A rehearsal for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, photo by Ronnie Lankford.
