Homegrown Theater: Vertigo unifies Rochester's arts community

Spring 2013 was a time for planting more than just crops in the Rochester area. A local theatre company that has been around the area for 14 years, Vertigo Theatre Factory, teamed up with the Rochester Downtown Alliance, Spectrum Pro Audio sound company, the Rochester Civic Theatre, Studio Z, Dahl Dance Studios, and the local arts group C4, to produce a rather different and unusual theatre/live music production called The Garden. The first seeds were sown for the "The Garden when I couldn't get my friend and fellow Studio Z recording artist Andy Rein's song "The Garden" out of my head. I liked having it there so much that I approached Andy and wondered if we could put an entire show together based around the idea of putting a live band on stage creating original music, while adding dance, live art, sound production, light production, video, acting, and any other artistic mode we could come up with, just to see what would happen. As time went on, the production fell into place. All the organizations mentioned above got involved and three venues were created. The Garden was produced at the C4 venue, which was at that time, April 30, located at the CO Brown Building in downtown Rochester, slated for demolition not long after the night of the production. Then, with the blessing of The Rochester Civic Theatre Executive Director Gregory Stavrou, the show was done in the Civic lobby for two nights, May 10 and 11. There was a very enthusiastic audience response to the show, with good attendance at all productions. All involved seemed very pleased and excited with the results. For The Garden, Andy Rein and his songwriting partner Ellen Thomes performed the song live while dancers from the Dahl studio performed and actors produced a scene they wrote themselves based on the theme of the song. For American Mermaid by John Sievers, a full band performed the mini-opera about an English Lord who abandons his wife to explore the new world, while puppets took on the role of acting the piece out for the audience. This was a highly unusual and entertaining piece, indeed. For my own Ivy Dionysus,, a full band performed an extended version of the song, while the Dahl dancers performed in an orgiastic frenzy. Added to this piece was a re-translated scene from The Bacchae by Euripedes. Finally, David Van Eijl performed his piece Winter as a solo spoken word poetry performance against a video and audio backdrop of his own composition. Again, this was a highly creative, unusual and very well received piece. All the participants in The Garden bonded together with great spirituality and love of art, and more projects like it are planned for the future. The amount of collaboration that took place for this project, between local arts groups and businesses that cater to the arts, speaks of the cultural richness that has grown so dramatically in the Rochester area in the past three to five years. The arts have a bright future in the Rochester area.