Transient Theater to Enliven L.A.

by Elizabeth Haggard
Los Angeles Ambassador

I think Los Angeles is an amazing city in many ways. It has incredible museums, beautiful beaches, vibrant nightlife, historic concert venues, top notch restaurants and striking architecture, among many other qualities. It also has numerous beautiful theatres, talented actors, capable crews and creative writers. All of those resources, however, somehow do not lead to enough consistently successful theatre to support a city of this magnitude.

Don’t get me wrong, though. We have a plethora of spaces and theatre companies. On the larger scale we have The Pantages, The Center Theatre Group and The Geffen. We also have quite a few mid-sized theatres like Anteaus, A Noise Within, The Odyssey and Pasadena Playhouse. Dozens of smaller guerilla-style theatres scatter the city and offer theatre aficionados the opportunity to stretch their muscles in-between film gigs. Just because all of these exist, however, does not mean they have found a successful business model. The one thing all of these theatres have in common is they struggle. Struggle to get audience members in seats, find financial backers, keep budgets balanced and cast shows around top talent’s never ending film conflicts. The current model isn’t working for our city and it’s becoming increasingly clear we need an atypical model in order for theatre to flourish.

My hope with Transient Theater is we can explore and potentially discover a new model for producing theatre. It may not work perfectly this time and I’m sure there will be plenty of bumps along the road, but if we can find the backing to test this out, we may very well discover something new and exciting that can eventually be fine-tuned into something sustainable. Transient Theater has the promise to revitalize a corner of Los Angeles theatre and inspire local professionals to take their own projects on the road. In the very least, perhaps this model will work within LA, a city so spread out that an East-side dweller like myself may never make it to Santa Monica to see a show and someone from Sherman Oaks avoids regular ventures downtown. By choosing scripts that require little production value and rely on small casts of strong actors, moving from Santa Monica to The Valley to Downtown to Silverlake all within one run may be the perfect way to reach local audiences within our city. Hopefully if we can make this work on a national level we can consider reformatting it to revitalize theatre within Los Angeles. After all, wouldn’t it be great to see a show ten minutes from your home?

Welcome to Transient Theater

by Candice Benge

Producer

I am extremely excited to tell you about Transient Theater, a brand new traveling theater cooperative.  We’ll be producing our first show this year and taking it on tour across the country. We’ve been a bit quiet for the last few months as we hammered out the details, but now that we have a beautiful new website, we’re ready to tell the world!

We’ve got big plans at Transient Theater and we want you to be a part of making them a reality. With this and future productions we hope to increase understanding and empathy in our culture.  We’ll encourage our audiences to let go of judgment and practice seeing the various sides of stories (on and off the stage.) At our most successful, we’ll plant the seeds for a revolution of empathy to replace our culture of separateness. At the very least, we’ll have fun trying. (That’s the short version, go here for the long version.)

How are we going to accomplish this, and how can you be involved?

Transient Theater is going to be a very underground, off-the-grid sort of organization.  We’ll do fundraisers like every other theater, but we won’t just raise money. We’ll also request in-kind donations. We’ll rely on our communities to give us the raw materials we need to create an incredible theatrical experience. And if we can’t rally broad community support, we’ll reevaluate the relevance of our current project.  We believe that if we can produce theater that really connects and moves people, then we’ll be able to achieve success through many small donations (as opposed to a few enormous ones.)

In order to reach a larger audience and make the company more viable, we’ll take our productions on the road.  We’ll raise money across the country, and we’ll know which cities to visit by looking at which ones have given us the most financial and in-kind support.  And the greatest part is that the show will continue to grow and transform as we travel.  It will be different in each city, each venue, with each audience, because it will always be a fresh experience for the production team.

Our inaugural production will be one of my plays, The Egg Play.  But I don’t want to give you the impression that Transient Theater is code for “Candice Benge Theater.” The mission of Transient Theater is much larger than my fledgling career.  We’re trying to make theater more accessible and viable, for everyone.

And speaking of being larger than just me, I’d like to introduce you to all the great people who have signed on as Ambassadors. An Ambassador is a co-producer of Transient Theater that works to bring the production to their city. You can go here to see if your city already has an Ambassador. (If you’re city doesn’t have an Ambassador, maybe you should become one.)

Finally, here’s what we’re asking of you.  We need help getting the word out. There are a number of different ways you could do this.  You could:
- like us on facebook
- subscribe to this blog
- tell your friends about us
- join our email list

Please stay tuned for weekly postings from the various people involved.

Welcome to Transient Theater

Friends and Family,

I am extremely excited to tell you about Transient Theater, a brand new traveling theater cooperative.  We’ll be producing our first show this year and taking it on tour across the country. We’ve been a bit quiet for the last few months as we hammered out the details, but now that we have a beautiful new website, we’re ready to tell the world!

We’ve got big plans at Transient Theater and we want you to be a part of making them a reality. With this and future productions we hope to increase understanding and empathy in our culture.  We’ll encourage our audiences to let go of judgment and practice seeing the various sides of stories (on and off the stage.) At our most successful, we’ll plant the seeds for a revolution of empathy to replace our culture of separateness. At the very least, we’ll have fun trying. (That’s the short version, go here for the long version.)

How are we going to accomplish this, and how can you be involved?Transient Theater is going to be a very underground, off-the-grid sort of organization.  We’ll do fundraisers like every other theater, but we won’t just raise money. We’ll also request in-kind donations. We’ll rely on our communities to give us the raw materials we need to create an incredible theatrical experience. And if we can’t rally broad community support, we’ll reevaluate the relevance of our current project.  We believe that if we can produce theater that really connects and moves people, then we’ll be able to achieve success through many small donations (as opposed to a few enormous ones.)In order to reach a larger audience and make the company more viable, we’ll take our productions on the road.  We’ll raise money across the country, and we’ll know which cities to visit by looking at which ones have given us the most financial and in-kind support.  And the greatest part is that the show will continue to grow and transform as we travel.  It will be different in each city, each venue, with each audience, because it will always be a fresh experience for the production team.

Our inaugural production will be one of my plays, The Egg Play.  But I don’t want to give you the impression that Transient Theater is code for “Candice Benge Theater.” The mission of Transient Theater is much larger than my fledgling career.  We’re trying to make theater more accessible and viable, for everyone.

And speaking of being larger than just me, I’d like to introduce you to all the great people who have signed on as Ambassadors. An Ambassador is a co-producer of Transient Theater that works to bring the production to their city. You can go here to see if your city already has an Ambassador. (If you’re city doesn’t have an Ambassador, maybe you should become one.)

Finally, here’s what we’re asking of you.  We need help getting the word out. There are a number of different ways you could do this.  You could:
- like us on facebook
- subscribe to this blog
- tell your friend about us

- join our email listPlease stay tuned for the beginning of our Kickstarter campaign. We’ll send another email in about a month announcing our campaign to raise the money and in-kind donations we’ll need to launch Transient Theater.  This will be your opportunity to make sure your city is on our map!