I have fully adopted the mantle of theater nerd since I’ve been back in Richmond. I’ve always been one, but companies like Virginia Repertory Theatre and their satellite collaborations have really reignited a passion that started the first time I put on leggings and spoke in verse onstage—I was 12.
I take opportunities to talk to the artists who direct the glow of our regional stage experience with a certain fanboy-ness that I hope isn’t too eye-roll-inducing to the reader. But these are the people with my favorite jobs, and I love getting to know them. Getting a preview of their upcoming season, and more so, a peek into the decision-making process that emerges as a curated season of drama, laughs, thrills, and song is a joy that popular cynicism can’t kill.
The Virginia Repertory Theatre company pops up on a lot of local stages but lives in that huge, pillared building on Hermitage Road on your way past Arthur Ashe Boulevard approaching Lakeside. To be honest, I had no idea what the hell went on in that building until today. But as I’m sitting here around this table talking to some of the luckiest people in the city, I’m moved to know everything I can about it and the workshop they call an office.
This new season is curated in three-part harmony between Rick Hammerly, Todd D. Norris, and Desirée Roots. There is a second part to this very deep discussion that I have to postpone for another article, or this piece would go on forever. You’ll dig it, though. I get into a lot more with Ms. Roots. That conversation is a great one. For the time being, here’s the first half of my visit with VA Rep!
Christian Detres: Hello, everyone! We are here to celebrate all of the decisions that you guys have made in coming up with this next season of Richmond theater. What’s coming up? What are we looking forward to?
Rick Hammerly: So, we’re opening the season with Stephen King’s Misery, because there’s nothing like starting off with a real upper [laughs]. It is an adaptation of the film, not of the Stephen King novel, or else we would need an axe rather than a sledgehammer in the prop list. I leave that as a teaser. If you know, you know.
Basically, it’s the story of an artist who has been writing romance novels for years. He’s in a car accident. He is “saved” (I’m doing quotation marks for you) by a woman who calls herself his greatest fan. And when she reads his latest novel and discovers that the character she identifies with has been killed off, she goes a little psychotic. She traps him in her remote home and does some horrible stuff to him in order to get him to do what she wants. She wants him to write a new novel, bring her favorite character back to life. It becomes, of course, a cat and mouse situation. Will he get out? Will she win? Will there be a novel? I’m referring to it as a psychological thriller so that I don’t scare people off by saying it’s a horror production. It certainly has elements of horror, but it is a thriller.
CD: Stephen King’s name is at the top; if you’re coming at it thinking it’s going to be anything but a horror/thriller, you are the person label warnings and guardrails are made for. Misery is probably accessible to a lot of people. They’ve seen the movie, or if they avoided it, they’ve read the book. If you haven’t seen either one, someone’s made a joke about somebody hobbling somebody. It’s very much in the public consciousness.
RH: Yeah, and I can’t tell you how many twisted people in Richmond who have already reached out, thrilled we’re doing it!
CD: I’m thrilled you’re doing it. I loved the book. Loved the movie even more. That was Kathy Bates, right? Won Best Actress for that role, didn’t she?
RH: Here’s an interesting tidbit. Twenty, twenty-five years ago, they were going to adapt this for the stage. They wanted to do it on Broadway. They were pitching Julia Roberts, and Stephen King said, “I’m sorry, have you read the book? She is not gorgeous or glamorous. She’s frumpy and scary.” And so the Broadway producers killed the idea. When they finally brought it back, because it was a great idea, it was Laurie Metcalf who did it on Bravo.
The natural progression is, of course [laughs], to go to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after that.
CD: Now that we’ve traumatized the adults, we might as well traumatize the children, haha.
RH: So Todd and I are working together on this one. His family season and the adult season dovetail nicely for this one. It’ll be over at the November Theatre, but we chose a show that can ride the line that adults can enjoy, but also children. I mean, everyone knows that one too. There’s been a recent movie. I’m sorry, I still love the 1970s movie.
CD: That’s the good one. Nobody’s ever going to touch Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka.
RH: I collected all of his books. I went up and I brought them back and I just reread it. It’s such a scary little book. But you know, it really will sit well in that slot. And in addition, it’s our holiday offering without being holiday-centric. Because as soon as you make a show, say White Christmas, trust me, we know that when Christmas is over, sales for that show just drop off no matter how good the show was.
A show like this, we’re offering it sort of as a family-friendly effort, but it can extend a little bit longer than December 25th. We’re hoping it appeals to a cross-section of people. Yeah. Plus, as the title demands, it gives us a chance to do a little theater artistry and a little theater magic, which is, you know, challenging for the creatives. Which is always good.
CD: Forgive me that I’m not familiar with the names of your set design people, but what a great track record you guys have. Every play I’ve seen that you guys put on—lighting, sound, and set design—has been absolutely wonderful. I’ve written as much, but yeah, it’s been incredible. So we have Charlie and the Chocolate Factory following a very ‘light and funny’ Misery…
RH: Then we’re headed to a co-production with Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk to do Fat Ham. A Pulitzer Prize-winner. James Ijames, the playwright, is out of Philadelphia. He’s actually become rather prolific right now. He’s stepping down soon, but he’s been an artistic director at the Wilma Theatre (in Philadelphia) for a while. They also have a multiple artistic director model, like we do here. I read the play and then went up to DC and saw it. It is sort of a twist on Hamlet.
It’s about a black family in North Carolina. It all takes place in a backyard over a barbecue. And what’s nice about it is it’s Hamlet-adjacent. It is not Hamlet. You’re not going to come here and hear any verse. Oh, actually, there’s a little but it’s sort o-
CD: We’ll let it pass.
RH: It’s a double-edged sword. You talk about Hamlet, you have some people that might arrive thinking, “We’re gonna see Hamlet.” You’re not. Conversely, I believe if you didn’t know Hamlet at all, you wouldn’t pick up any connection. You wouldn’t know it tied to him. It’s very funny. It’s very inclusive. The lead role is a young black queer kid. Kid? He’s probably in his 20s. For me, that’s a kid.
It’s one of the shows that I was worried we couldn’t do. I was worried we wouldn’t have the entire cast for it. But, partnering with another theater, and being able to cast from both Norfolk and Richmond, it seems doable. In terms of cost, it seems more doable too. Theaters are fighting to stay alive and open. These collaborations are always a good thing. Amy Ratchford, who was our interim artist and managing director, had connections at Virginia Stage Company. She brought it up. And I was like, I had passed on it. And this brought it back to life. It is the kind of work that a regional theater should be doing. It’s important for a number of reasons. So it’s really great that we have it. It’ll open three weeks there and then run four weeks at the November Theatre downtown.
CD: I want to stop for just a second. I know that you have more shows you want to tell me about here. But your comment, “the type of play a regional theater should be doing.” I want to know what that means coming from the perspective of people who actually do it. Whether it’s responsibility to the community, sensitivity to—whatever, the times? Whatever is the funniest? Whatever is the most poignant? Where do you feel the programming responsibility of a regional theater lies when it comes to choosing a slate of productions?
Todd D. Norris: I think it differs in different seasons. Our answers may have some things in common, but I know for me—with the family season—I’m really looking at bringing and trying to balance the whole financial side of it. Removing that just for a moment, although you can’t really, I really feel like I have an obligation to be presenting a variety in styles, and a variety in voices. It’s very easy to make the choice that we’re going to do shows that we know sell, and sell well. Shows that are easy, that don’t expect too much from the audience, seem like obvious economical choices. Particularly on a family series where we have so many school groups, part of our job is to educate. We help expose the students and their families to styles that they may not have been exposed to before, or even considered appreciating.
For me, the responsibility requires educating audiences through variety. I have to ask myself, “What am I doing this season that they haven’t seen before? Is this a valid experience for them to have and then take with themselves after the show?” I balance that with the popularity of the chosen piece, to get them in the door with an ‘accessible’ show. That establishes a hope that they will return for another curated experience—especially for these other shows that they may be less familiar with. If I choose correctly, and present strategically, I can spark something in them that inspires curiosity about the theater itself, and not just a familiar title. Engendering curiosity as well as actually fulfilling it.
CD: Absolutely.
RH: We’re really looking at diversity, really focusing on historically-muted voices. I want good stories from good storytellers. It’s a great way to approach things. It breaks down barriers of gender, nationality, and ethnicity. I think it’s important that we are telling stories from different groups. If you’re just telling the same group of people stories about themselves and not representing other perspectives, you limit the emotional reach of your stage. The playwright of Chicken and Biscuits (presented during the last VA Rep season), Douglas Lyons, was here for a while during its run here. He told me, “Rick, it was so important to me to create a show like Chicken and Biscuits, that was about a black family that was happy, celebratory even. It wasn’t a tragedy. We tend to have these stories about the black experience that are, I mean, just, they’re oppressive. They’re heavy.
CD: Choosing to represent black voices doesn’t automatically mean there’s a question of fear or institutional intimidation at play. Sometimes it’s just family in the backyard grilling together. That certainly doesn’t ignore the need to remember our struggles, but equating struggle to every black story is to ignore the culture of joy and expression they’ve built in spite of humanity’s sins against them. Those stories, I think we’d all agree, are important. They’ve been important in their time, but I think our time requires an evolution that depicts the triumph (or at least advancements) past those stories.
RH: The flip side of that is, you see something like Fat Ham, and yeah, there’s some tragedy in it. I mean, it’s a riff on Hamlet. But it’s being done in a comedic way. You’re going to come out of there having been entertained. I think that’s important. Representation is important. The variety of stories within that representation are also important. Trying to make all of that work in a season with financial constraints, is all part of that puzzle. I’m super thrilled that we’re doing it.
CD: Excellent. We have another one here on your list before we move on to other showcases. You’ve got Waitress?
RH: Yeah, what do you know about that one?
CD: What do I know about it? Let me see.
RH: Don’t read it off the thing.
CD: [laughs] No, no, no, I had to read it. I’m trying to see if it’s the same thing I’m thinking about because I’m—Oh, wait, I saw the movie with Keri Russell.
RH: Yeah, it was a film directed by Adrienne Shelly and based on a book by Jessie Nelson. It ran on Broadway as a musical with lyrics and music by Sara Bareilles. It’s been a big hit, especially with younger audiences. The cool thing about this one is the license isn’t even technically available. If you go to the website to get the rights to perform it, it says unavailable. I spoke with another artistic director up in DC and they’re like, “we’re doing it.” I’m like, “How are you doing it?” I was told to contact them because they’re giving it to some people. Sure enough, we got the rights! We’d already had another show plugged in there. We easily pushed that one out of the way so we could do this one. I can’t tell you how many people have already reached out to me about it, wanting to be a part of it. Can I do this? Can I do that?
It is in the consciousness right now. There’s a filmed production of it. It was in NYC theaters for two weeks and got extended to a month at the beginning of this year. And you know what? The music is fantastic. People have really connected with it.
It is very important for us in Richmond, especially right outside of one of the major theater centers in the United States (DC), that we’ve gotten our toe in the pool of “oh my god, we got a scoop!” Those things are important to keep us in the national theater conversation. To show that we’re doing our due diligence of bringing things to this community first. Waitress is a big ‘get’ for us.
CD: Well, that’s excellent. I’m really happy to hear that. I think Richmond needs that energy and hopefully this article brings appreciation to the efforts in that direction. The idea of getting something first is not difficult for a theater in DC, or more so New York. Everyone’s dying for their work to debut in either of those places. The efforts that you guys put into giving your audience something to feel special about are precious. There are notable institutions in Richmond that are turning the page on us being a cultural backwater. Maybe that’s harsh, but we’ve always been the East Coast’s middle child of sorts. [laughs] We’ve been the Jan Brady of the arts in general. Not because the talent doesn’t exist here, not because people don’t know what’s up, know what’s out there, but because there’s a lot of big-shouldered competition to get first dibs. So, thank you for representing as hard as you do for us.
Desirée Roots: It’s funny you said that because I literally just had this conversation with my 18-year-old. Everything was “New York, New York, New York,” and lately she’s been on this European kick. Then she saw a write-up on a national level talking about great cities or states to live in. This piece featured Richmond as being a foodie town. She noted that the theater scene was represented as one of our best qualities, along with the music scene. She’s a huge TikTok watcher too. There was a guy on there with a video he shot at the 17th Street Market in Shockoe Bottom. And he’s talking about how he just found the cutest town in the world. She was so excited that people were talking about Richmond and she goes, “Richmond isn’t so bad.” And I was like, “well, thank you.”
RH: We have more…
TN: We’re opening the family season this year with a show called Grace for President that could not be more timely. It’s about this third-grade girl, Grace, who’s learning about the Presidents and the election process in class. Her teacher unfurls a poster with all the previous POTUSs and she asks, “Where are all the women presidents?” That starts a conversation that bleeds into her class’s elections for third-grade class president. It’s a musical, and really cute too. Through that conversation, the kids in the audience get a great introduction to the American electoral process. How we run elections, how the Electoral College functions, all that good stuff.
CD: So, it’s a tragedy.
TN: [laughs] I don’t think this will be too controversial, but there’s a lot of really mediocre stuff that’s written for kids and played as theater for young audiences. I really try to find stuff that I think rises above that in one way or another. What really drew me to this was that it was a very intelligent, age-appropriate, entertaining way to lay out some pretty dense concepts to kids—third graders—and their parents. The timing could not be better because this show will close on November 3, right at the height of the 2024 elections. This is really a great way to give students, schools, and families a great introduction to a timely civics lesson. I think you’ll always learn more when you’re entertained while you’re learning it. So hopefully, this will be a way for kids to get an understanding of what their grown-ups are complaining and fighting about right now.
Next winter we’re doing a show—a one-person show. It’s not a musical. So taking a little bit of a risk there. But I think it’ll play out well. It’s called Love that Dog. It’s in a way a mirror to Grace for President because we have a little boy who’s learning about poetry in class. The teacher is making them all write poetry for class credit. He says poetry is for girls. Boys don’t do poetry.
CD: Oof. Clearly, he has not hit puberty. I think every thirteen-year-old becomes a poet in spite of themselves.
TN: He discovers through the teacher’s gentle pressure to keep his mind open. He discovers that not only does poetry have a point, and that he can learn from poetry, but he also discovers that he has a voice himself. He’s able to process some difficult issues that he’s had in his young life through finding a poet’s voice inside himself.
It’s beautiful. Descriptions for family shows always get me teary. Just apply that sentiment to nine out of ten kids having those feelings right now. This show was written and produced right before the pandemic in New York City. I don’t, I’m not ready to say this definitively, but I think we are one of the first—if not the first—to produce it outside of New York, post-pandemic. It’s got a different style and a different voice. But it’s something that school kids really can benefit from. I think it’s going to be great.
When there are 600 kids in the audience in the theater upstairs from where we are right now, before the show? The sound level is thunderous. When the show happens and they’re actually enjoying the show, it’s pretty amazing to be there because they get into it. You can hear a pin drop.
It’s special to me, to hear that with the common conversation we olds have about “the kids these days”. The digital revolution logline is “everyone’s on their phone all the time”. It’s a passé joke. If you’ve got any gray in your beard, that’s the first thing you’ve got to say about kids. But here you are providing a space where hundreds of thousands of years of tradition (live storytelling) meets hundreds of restless attention spans and wins. Theater is their human legacy as well. It’s beautiful to see them just as enraptured in it as our evolutionary ancestors were around their campfires.
TN: Well, there’s a reason that children’s theater generally has a 50-minute-or-so runtime. Theater for kids is a 20th-century phenomenon. Prior to the 20th century, and I would go so far as to say even up to the 1940s or 50s, you’re not seeing shows for kids.
CD: Like, puppet shows maybe. Live-action, short-form cartoons.
TN: Shows, yes. But not full-on stage productions. Theater for children is really a modern concept. So, the 20th-century minds that were putting this all together in the ’40s and ’50s were really thinking through these kinds of things and trying to figure out, okay, how long should it be? What kind of content is really appropriate? And so it kind of evolved relatively recently.
One example that I can give you where children’s theater seemed potent in my career was earlier this year when we put on Chasing George Washington. I chose it because I thought it’d be a cute show that coincides with what they’re learning in school. It turned out to be a really touching exploration of what it means to belong in today’s society. The point of the show is, you have one Polish immigrant, one African American girl from the rich suburbs of Atlanta, and a working-class Latino boy from LA. They’re on a field trip to the White House, and they start off saying, “We don’t belong here. Look around. There’s nothing here that’s for us.”
And through a series of fun events, George Washington falls out of a painting—
CD: Happens every time when I’m at the White House. Always falling out of the damn painting. So clumsy.
TN: Haha. But I’ll tell you, and I’m gonna get choked up here. Toward the end of the show, they encounter Abraham Lincoln.
CD: Oh, he fell out too?
TN: He’s wrestling with “should I sign the Emancipation Proclamation” and this girl from Atlanta, through a nice song, makes sure that he understands he really does need to do that. At that moment, that was definitely a ‘you could hear a pin drop’ moment. The kids had been laughing at the funny stuff, and the chase scenes, and the ridiculous moments. And then you just get maybe three-fourths of the way through the show, and there’s this very serious, very intense scene.
CD: I think you have probably one of the best jobs, though. You have an audience that is absolutely, inherently, searching for meaning. Searching for a place where their existence makes sense. More so than a lot of us. We tend to give up. Few of us ever find it. Or we find it and well, we lose sight of the journey there. The opportunity to provide that pin-drop moment for children is affecting. It’s not weird to get a little choked up when you see a moment like that. Lucky you!
TN: Yeah, lucky me. After all that serious message stuff, we’re going to end with just something that’s just fun. Just fun. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.
CD: Bad idea in general.
TN: It is very good advice. Especially once you meet the pigeon. Mo Willems is a very popular children’s author. One of the things I find fascinating about him is that he’s such a savvy business person because he’s kept control of all of his stuff. So he’s the one that’s writing the adaptations of his shows, which isn’t always the case. He’s teamed up with a writer who writes most of his music, Deborah Wicks La Puma. We’ve been doing his shows for the last few years. Years before I got here, VA Rep did Knuffle Bunny, also by Mo Willems. Last year we did Elephant and Piggy, and we have Naked Mole Rats on stage now. A bit of a rock opera experience.
His characters have a little snark to them, which is probably what appeals to me. But not all of them. They really focus on things like genuine friendship, what it really means to be a good friend. How to deal with the issues you’re facing in life, but in very fun, very entertaining ways. Some of the shows are more message-driven. Some of them are just more entertainment-driven. And we try to have that blend.
CD: Cool.
RH: We operate kind of vertically with the different spaces we produce for. So over at the Hanover stage, we’re showcasing a mystery theme, with unique and different takes on the genre. The first one is Moriarty. It’s the unofficial sequel to Baskerville, which we produced last year. Ken Ludwig is a prolific playwright. He did Lend Me a Tenor. You’d recognize a lot of the stuff he writes. It’s farce, it’s funny. The majority of his productions, like with Baskerville, have two actors—one plays Sherlock Holmes, one plays Watson—and then three or four more actors play every other role. So it’s literally someone has a scene where they’re running to change costumes to come back as somebody else. With Ken Ludwig, bouncing off the fourth wall is part of the humor.
We follow that up with a reimagining of Dial M for Murder. What they’ve wisely done, because now everyone knows that movie, keeping the mystery alive involves refocusing the lens on the action. So the things you know from a nearly 80-year-old movie are not the main points to figure out from your seats. So what they do with this, although we don’t need to say it in anything, is we find out in the first half hour that he’s [REDACTED]. So then the mainstay of the play becomes will [REDACTED] get away with it [REDACTED] because they think [REDACTED]. It’s the same story. It just emphasizes not “oh my God, who [REDACTED]?
CD: No, that’s smart.
RH: Even though it’s still taking place in the same time period, they’ve modernized it with a few little things. Gives it a more contemporary sort of feel, which is great. Two classic mysteries with very different takes on them. Very cool.
PART 2 NEXT WEEK
Main image: The Virginia Repertory Theatre production of POTUS 2023
Find out more about Virginia Repertory Theatre HERE
