Arc Stages Takes a Look Back at a Decade of Community Theater Shows
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It can be fun to take a look at the past, in part to see how far one’s traveled and the accomplishments achieved over a period of time.
For Pleasantville’s Arc Stages, the weekend of Mar. 15-17 will be filled with nostalgia as the local theater company will celebrate a decade of Community Stage shows with four performances of a special presentation. Audiences will be treated to “The Last 10 Years: A Community Stage Retrospective,” that will feature snippets of each of the 24 shows presented on the Community Stage since its launch in late 2013.
“It’s sort of remembering, remembering what we did and, yes, it’s making it a little bit new as well,” said Stephanie Kovacs Cohen, one of the four directors for the ambitious production, along with Adam Cohen, Ann-Ngaire Martin and Whitney Aronson. “So it’s a nod to the past and a look to the future.”
The retrospective will be presented in chronological order starting with “Urinetown,” the debut production just over 10 years ago, Martin said. It was, in fact, the first production at the facility even before she and Adam and Stephanie Cohen launched the professional productions through the company’s Next Stage.
While all the shows have a place in Martin’s heart, it was the success of that first production that established the foundation for what has followed at Arc Stages and has continued to evolve.
“It was just so exciting to do ‘Urinetown’ because it was our first show,” Martin said. “It’s like your first kid. Do you like your second or your third less?”
They contacted dozens of local actors who were part of the casts. There will be 26 of them on hand for the retrospective, many of them reprising a portion of their roles, but some also taking on some new responsibilities. The entire ensemble will open and close the performances.
Most of the shows were musicals, so that resulted in Arc Stages bringing in Marcus Baker as the musical director and Adam Spiegel, both veterans of multiple shows with the theater group, along with a bassist and drummer. The musicals can flow relatively easily, but there was also the challenge of deciding how much of each production to recreate and how to transition from a musical to a drama or vice versa, Adam Cohen said.
“It needs to flow from one thing to the next, and it needs to be built well, but the actual structure of the show, it’s dictated by the order in which the shows were originally produced,” he said.
But without members of the community coming out to audition, rehearse and perform for the productions, there would be no Community Stage. Martin said one of the proudest aspects of Arc Stages is that many of the Community Stage actors, who have other careers and obligations, continually show up.
“I do think it says something about the company that people return over and over again, and stick with us and want to be in a show,” Martin said. “They may take a year or two off from us. They have a baby, or their work is overwhelming or whatever, but they come back again at some point when they can. So we built up a community of actors and tech people.”
Adam Cohen said the Community Stage is a major component of what makes Arc Stages special.
“We’re all there in that room doing it for the love of it, completely, and I’m not saying people in the Next Stage or any theater aren’t doing it for the love, but there’s just something (there), the people,” he said.
There will be performances of “The Last 10 Years: A Community Retrospective” pm Friday, Mar. 15 at 8 p.m., two shows on Saturday, Mar. 16 at 2 and 8 p.m. and a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, Mar. 17. Tickets are $22 and $28. For tickets and more information, call 914-747-6206 or visit www.arcstages.org.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
