Black painted walls, a homemade set and the hot, close atmosphere that can only be created by stage lights evoke the grittiness of raw theater. The space is only big enough to hold 42 seats, an odd mixture of mismatched office chairs and a silk, green brocade couch. From this conglomeration emerges Space 55 and this season’s newest addition: the Saturday late night series.
The series – at 10:30 p.m. every Saturday – is Space 55’s latest community outreach effort. Shawna Franks, founder and artistic director, noticed there wasn't much for Phoenix residents to do after hours, and she wanted to make sure the non-profit organization was known as a late-night destination for theater.
“A lot of cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City have a lot of late-night shows, and that’s something that we don’t have here,” Franks says.
The hour-long shows of the late night series are humorous and irreverent, and oftentimes improvisational.
“It’s the gritty side of Valley performance art,” says Richard Briggs, an ensemble actor at Space 55. “It’s something to do when everyone else goes to bed.”
Each Saturday of the month hosts its own particular running show, says associate artistic director, Michelle Kable. The first Saturday of the month features Hollis’s Traveling Tree House and Dance Party, an adult show about the adventures of a kid trying to finish his homework or risk expulsion. The second show of the month is Aracana Collective, featuring multimedia and various artists. The third is WTF Variety Hour, a “Peewee’s Playhouse meets Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood for adults” comedy show, and the fourth is Grab Bag, which could be anything.
Leslie Barton, host of the WTF Variety Hour, describes the late night series as the “theater of the absurd.”
And absurd it is.
Regular characters in Hollis’s Traveling Tree House and Dance Party are Peyote Pete, a drug-dealing hedgehog; Miss Patty, Hollis’s neighbor and an adult film actress; the Bananarchist, a right-wing, Marxist banana puppet; and of course Hollis’s talking tree house.
A departure from traditional theater, the late night series is interactive and in-your-face with the actors running up and down the aisles, Hollis demanding birthday presents from audience members and the Snack Fairy throwing hard candy and cupcakes at everyone.
It’s a loose and unexpected type of theater, but that doesn’t mean the members involved throw their hands up and wing it. Despite the laid-back atmosphere of the Late Night Series, the local actors and writers work hard to give the audience what they want. From month-to-month the writers have three weeks to write a script and make it stage-ready.
“A lot of work goes into absurdity,” Barton says. “Look at Lucille Ball or the other greats, they didn’t learn to tap dance overnight.”
The shorter, looser shows of the late night series also attract a different audience than those who like to have a nice dinner and go out to a Broadway show, Briggs says. The younger, late-night crowd in search of alternative theater can find it at Space 55.
Jose Medina, an ASU alum from the College of Liberal Arts, has been to two Space 55 productions, and loves what they’re doing. “It’s definitely unpretentious and laid back,” he says. “There’s audience interaction and a community feeling.”
Known as a venue for new and never-before-seen works, Space 55 has gone one step further in supporting the talents of local actors and playwrights. The late night series is somewhere for the adventurous patron of the arts to experience inventive theater.
“I guarantee you’ll see something that you’ve never seen before,” Franks says.
Contact the reporter at klhwang@asu.edu
