Apples and Kabuki in Wisconsin

Editorial
For six years, I played the role of “Bill, the silly friend” in Old Gem Theater’s annual autumn production of The Legend of Johnny Appleseed or as I came to jokingly describe it to my friends, A Collection of Apple-Based Lies. The real Johnny Appleseed was a lanky entrepreneur who wandered the countryside doing two things: planting trees that grew inedible apples that could only be used to make alcoholic cider and preaching the odd theological doctrine of the Swedenborgian Church. Among the tenets was this: if you don’t get married on earth, you can have as many wives as you want in Heaven. To my continual disappointment, I’ve never been able to convince the owners of the theater to include these fun facts in a show that’s geared to preschool through 3rd grade audiences. Here’s what the show does have going for it: there’s a simple and engaging moral about being kind, thoughtful and attentive to the world and people around you. “Also,” adds Artistic Director Dr. Kathy Welch, “it has apples in it.” This is true, funny, and important. We’ll come back to it later. Kathy is a doctor in the sense that she earned a doctorate from the University of Hawaii, focusing on Asian theater. For years, Dr. Kathy ran a small non-profit theater company in the Twin Cities called Green T, producing multiple Kabuki-inspired shows. So how did a highly-educated artist shift from complex, detail-oriented Asian theater to musicals about apples for 2nd graders from Wisconsin at the Old Gem Theater in New Richmond, WI? To phrase it in the style of Kabuki dialogue: It was children’s theater or death!

An Old Gem

Like many artists running small theater companies, Kathy was looking for a space of her own, hoping to solve those little problems called Rent, Scheduling, Prop Storage, and of course, Total Artistic Control. In the summer of 2002, along with her business partner and husband Rick Coleman, she bought the Old Gem Theater located in New Richmond, Wisconsin – just an hour’s drive from the Twin Cities. The Old Gem is a lovely 200-seat, Art Deco theater which started life in 1913 as a silent movie house. It played movies well into the eighties. Vintage posters still hang in the lobby advertising Audrey Hepburn in Charade, Jerry Lewis in The Family Jewels, and featuring a little cartoon man proclaiming “Let’s Go To The Theater!” In the nineties, the building was converted to a playhouse focusing primarily on children’s theater. When the owner wanted to sell, Kathy and Rick jumped at the opportunity. Like Johnny Appleseed wandering the countryside, they thought this would be a fun new adventure. It has, of course, been an adventure. But has it been fun? “It’s not that different from running a small theater company in the Cities, except we have a building to maintain,” says Kathy. “We still do everything ourselves from promotion to hanging lights, from taxes to directing.” It’s enough work that Kathy doesn’t have time to hold a day job. “The theater makes enough to pay for itself to live, and Rick works a normal day job so we can live.”

What about the Total Artistic Control thing?

“We ran Green T as a non-profit with a board and a very specific mission. For the Old Gem, we decided to form a for-profit business. We wanted to take both the control and the responsibility. We didn’t want to be tied down to a specific mission.” So, no one was telling the Old Gem what to do—except the audience. It was clear the space already had a reputation for children’s theater; it was financially necessary for Kathy and Rick to continue that programming. The first production was indeed that toe-tapping crowd-pleaser, The Legend of Johnny Appleseed. Kathy re-worked the existing script and choreography and invited myself and several other Twin Cities actors to drive out and perform. “It pays well, “ said Kathy, “but you do know it’s at 10 in the morning for kids, right?” In all honesty, both Kathy and I weren’t sure about this theater-for-kids thing. We had both fallen into the trap of having a very specific idea of what an audience looked like. In my mind it looked something like this: a few friends, a few strangers, some drinking buddies, other theater people, a dour critic and possibly my mother. That’s an audience—but a bunch of seven year olds? What do they want? What do they expect? Will they appreciate all my nuanced acting choices?

Children are a great audience.

The answer is yes. Children are a great audience. They have no pre-conceived notions about the nature of theatre. They react totally honestly. If they think something’s funny, they laugh. If they’re bored, they squirm audibly. During the pre-show curtain speech, we play a quiz with the kids to see how much they know about theater etiquette. We ask, “What do you do at the end of the performance to show the actors you appreciate their hard work?” A kid once answered with great sincerity, “We leave!” Another corrected, “No, we applaud, then we leave!” “What do you do when an actor on stage is talking?” we ask. “Wait your turn!” they often answer. Over the years, Kathy has developed a knack for updating classic tales like The Three Billy Goats Gruff and Peter Pan. She laces them with a few nice ironic twists, room for audience interaction, improvisation from the actors, and an educational moral that doesn’t beat anyone over the head. What started as a potentially annoying necessity has turned into a real hit—both artistically and financially--with children, teachers, parents, actors and Kathy herself. “I’ve been able to fuse my interest in Asian theater into the children’s shows,” says Kathy. And from my experience being directed by Kathy, it’s true. The shows focus on specific styles of movement and stories that are propelled not by their complex narratives but by their themes and the cultural resonance of the character archetypes.

Making it work

The Old Gem also features the always-unfortunately-phrased “Adult Theater.” Or “Theater for Adults.” Or, well, you know what I mean. Kathy and Rick have self-produced work—from experimenting with an original 1950s dinner theater musical holiday extravaganza to buying rights to A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol. These evening or “Prime Time Adult Shows” take up a prohibitive amount of their time but also give them a bigger cut of the box office. They have also had success with booking music groups, comedians, and holiday specials such as my own Adventures in Mating for Valentine’s Day. This is less of a time commitment, but they have to split the box with selfish jerks likes me. Pitching “Adult Content” to adults within easy driving distance of the theater can also be a challenge. Many potential audience members are more interested in seeing something labeled “comedy” than something labeled “a play.” Even then, the comedy-centric audience is divided—some want to see edgy, nightclub-esque comedy and some want squeaky-clean family-friendly fun. The locals who are more interested in traditional theater also have the option of heading into the Twin Cities. At only an hour’s drive, many residents commute to work and stay for some theater. So when it comes to “Entertainment for Adults,” the Old Gem still competes with the likes of the Guthrie and Park Square for their local audience. (Kathy finds it hard to blame them since she lives in New Richmond, but frequently drives to the Twin Cities for rehearsals, board meetings for various non-profit organizations she’s involved in, and yes, to see theater now and again.) Ultimately, the Old Gem appears to be well-regarded and valued in the community but, like theaters in the Twin Cities, is constantly battling to expand the base audience—particularly for prime time programming. In contrast, they have strong support for their children’s programming from schools all over Southern Minnesota and large swathes of Wisconsin. In the upcoming season, Kathy is bringing even more of her Asian theater expertise to the Old Gem. Green T and Theater Unbound plan to present a co-production of a Noh and Kabuki-infused Medea in both Minneapolis and Wisconsin. The Old Gem will also be offering an Asian theater spin on everybody’s favorite humanity-obsessed puppet, Pinocchio.

Coming Back to the Apples

And, of course, the theater is compelled by its core audience of ticket buying school teachers to produce Johnny Appleseed every year. “Yes, it has become a tradition,” says Kathy. “There are a lot of orchards nearby and I think the community still relates to the pioneer aesthetic of Johnny’s story. But most importantly, the local schools’ fall curriculum is all apples all the time. They learn colors, numbers, the alphabet, local history—all based on this apple theme. So, actually, I think everybody would be fine with any show that has apples in it.” I asked Kathy if she had any ideas for a new apple-based opus. “The only thing I can think of is Snow White. But that doesn’t seem like the message we want to promote: hey kids, apples are poisonous, enjoy your field trip to the orchard!” Just like our somewhat fictional Johnny Appleseed, Kathy is kind, thoughtful and attentive to the other people in her world. She and Rick have total artistic control of their theater, but they’re more than happy to share some of it with the audience.
Joseph Scrimshaw
Joseph Scrimshaw is the Creative Director of Joking Envelope LLC. As a writer and performer, his work has been seen in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Bulgaria, South Africa and various bars across the entire expanse of South Minneapolis.