Comment on this story What: Knoxville Area Theatre Coalition 2004 Awards Ceremony featuring dance, drink and music by Sara Schwabe & Her Yankee Jass Band When: Sunday, May 16, 5 p.m. Where: Oak Ridge Playhouse Cost: $5

The Knoxville Area Theatre Coalition exits stage left, but not before handing out some awards

by Paige M. Travis

Curtains have closed on the Knoxville Area Theatre Coalition. The 13-year-old organization comprised of representatives of many regional theater companies has disbanded. Its last hurrah will take the form of the group’s annual awards night on May 16 at the Oak Ridge Playhouse.

Like any arts organization with lofty goals and only humans to carry them out, KATC wasn’t perfect. Its mission was admirable: to connect theater companies of the area and work together to promote the dramatic arts to the community art large. But that cooperation also meant that theaters were charged with putting on their shows while also helping run this operation which, ultimately, played second fiddle.

“Over the course of time, other parts of KATC’s programming other than the awards had fallen by the wayside,” says Reggie Law, managing artistic director of Oak Ridge Playhouse, and co-chair of this year’s awards ceremony. “Things like the annual mass auditions, where all the member groups could see the same actors at once, and the Spotlight Festival, which featured the works of organizations in non-traditional venues, were being continually tabled with the awards being the only programming to get much focus.”

Tom Parkhill, Founding Artistic Director of Tennessee Stage Company served as co-chair of KATC for about 10 years.

“Sometimes things run their course,” he says. “The main thing any organization like the KATC—a loose affiliation of people with similar interests—is that leadership is the whole key. There weren’t people willing to step up to the plate and say, ‘I’ll drive this engine.’”

In addition to a strong support team, an organization needs a leader, someone who puts that organization first above all. That’s a serious request in the context of a theater community populated by non-profit or low-profit companies.

“Everybody wanted [KATC] to do well,” says Amy Hubbard, artistic director of the Actors Co-op and former co-chair of KATC. “But all of our primary commitments were to our own companies, and that’s as it should be.” Hubbard (who is married to Metro Pulse associate publisher John Wright) conceptualized and organized the Spotlight Festival the two years of its existence in 1999 and 2000. The event placed theater groups in Old City coffee shops and bars—unlikely venues that kept both the players and audiences intrigued. Although it was difficult to organize, the event ostensibly brought attention to Knoxville’s theater community, attracting potential audience members and generating an atmosphere of civic/artistic involvement.

When speaking to anyone involved with the theater community or KATC directly, it’s clear the coalition didn’t disband due to a lack of caring about theater. Parkhill, who moved back to Knoxville in 1989, speculates that KATC’s very existence is responsible for the theater scene’s current collaborative climate.

“I think you see a crossover in personnel that you didn’t see in 1989,” he says, describing the scene at that time as “very segregated,” with several small theater companies doing their own thing. “I think the Coalition has fostered a lot of cooperation that wasn’t going on before.”

Indeed, the 2004 ballot reflects a community that encourages and supports a variety of actors, directors and technical crew members working all over town.

Jon Chemay is a perfect example. Nominated for Best Lighting Design for the Oak Ridge Playhouse’s The Wizard of Oz, Chemay does double duty as Assistant Technical Director and resident Lighting Designer at the Bijou Theater and as Technical Director for the Actors Co-op, for which he garnered a nomination for On the Verge in 2002.

“My greatest challenge in designing for Wizard was being sick with the flu all through tech week,” he recollects. He regrets being unable to attend the awards ceremony, during which he’ll be preparing for the debut of Mame at the Bijou.

If Chemay wears the same hat at several organizations, Sara Schwabe has worn several hats with the Actors Co-op. This year she’s nominated for Best Director and Best Sound Design for La Ronde, a series of connected vignettes about love and sex set with 19th century costumes and period music. Her previous directorial efforts have been nominated by KATC, but La Ronde marks her first time solo directing a mainstage play for adults.

“The greatest challenges with La Ronde were to make the show fit into the Black Box [Theatre] and to bring out the sexiness and sauciness without creating one big dirty joke,” she says. Set designers Brad White and Sean Gettelfinger created a set that would fit inside the theater and, in Schwabe’s words, “represent the cyclical nature of the relationships in the story.” Their ingenious endeavors (which involved a 15-foot rotating stage) earned a nomination in the Best Scenic Design category.

Although directors rarely serve as the sound designers in their own shows, Schwabe had a particular vision for La Ronde. The classically trained singer has a special fondness for Johannes Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes.

“They’re all written about love and longing and heartbreak. Some of them are a little naughty, too,” she says. “The lyrics fit the theme of the play, and Brahms was popular at the time it was set, so it seemed a perfect match.”

As with any awards program, KATC’s has had its share of controversy. Each year, viewers recruited by KATC member organizations were responsible for seeing the plays produced in the Knoxville area, which stretches from Oak Ridge to Sevier County. Although panel members saw plays for free, imagine the challenge of seeing every play by every company. The system was fair in theory, but flawed in execution.

Surprise additions or glaring omissions from nominations, plus instances of ballot-stuffing, have called into question the merit of the awards process. There have also been concerns about comparing productions by a well-funded professional company like the Clarence Brown Theatre with smaller, slighter-funded part-time companies like Theatre Knoxville or West Productions (all three of whom are represented in this year’s nominations). CBT productions frequently upstage other shows in technical categories like Best Scenic Design and Best Lighting Design, where their access to expensive and varied equipment gives them a leg up on other productions.

But all these apples and oranges, complaints and considerations, are part of the theater world and will exist whether or not KATC ever reforms. KATC was patterned on the Atlanta Coalition of the Performing Arts, an organization that began as the Atlanta Theater Coalition and has since expanded to include dance, music and film. Tom Parkhill would like to see a future coalition go toward supporting and promoting a broader mix of the performing arts.

“In my view, Knoxville has an arts community that far exceeds what you might expect in a population of this size,” he says, pointing to the relative popularity of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and Knoxville Opera. In comparison, theater groups have received a smaller percentage of attention and financial support from the community, he says, but a coalition that promoted the performing arts as a whole might boost visibility and support for live arts across the board.

When she was informed of the KATC’s disbanding, Liza Zenni, executive director of the Arts & Cultural Alliance, responded via email to the KATC mailing list, expressing her regrets and support.

“I told them that the Arts and Cultural Alliance would do anything we could to see that it continued and offer whatever resources we could,” she says. Zenni, who has worked with the large theater communities in New York City and San Francisco, believes an event like the awards ceremony “was a way to shine a positive spotlight on the work of our performing arts community once a year. I hated to see that go away.” She proposes that controversy goes hand-in-hand with all such programs, but that the benefit of positive publicity outweighs the yearly episodes of complaint.

Another coalition rekindled from the cinders of KATC can learn from the past 13 years of ups and downs, and new organizers won’t suffer from a lack of opinions from the vocal theater community. Perhaps this hypothetical group of fresh faces would best serve the theater scene’s needs if they come from outside the boundaries, if they aren’t responsible for their own companies first and foremost.

Even in times of flux, the theater community celebrates with gusto. This year’s awards ceremony, hosted at the Oak Ridge Playhouse, will feature a lively awards ceremony hosted by Zack Allen and Kara Kemp of the Actors Co-op followed by a performance by Sara Schwabe and Her Yankee Jass Band. By all accounts, the yearly shindig is a good time—sometimes the only time—for theater people to get to meet ‘n’ mingle outside their jobs as actors, directors and crew.

“Theater people never get to see theater, because we’re always in our own productions,” says Schwabe, who is co-chair with Reggie Law of this year’s awards ceremony. “Hopefully, this year’s ceremony will encourage a feeling of community amongst the artists in Knoxville.”

May 13, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 20 © 2004 Metro Pulse