Making theater accessible

Theatre Battery – a local production company that aims to make theater accessible to everyone – returns to Kent with a new production.

“We are Pussy Riot or Everything is P.R.” opens Saturday, Aug. 5, at a Kent Station storefront transformed to a theater space.

All shows are free through a concept coined radical hospitality.

The play, written by Barbara Hammond, is a documentary musical that follows the feminist art collective, Pussy Riot, who in 2012 performed their punk prayer “Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away!” on the altar of Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, where women are forbidden to stand. Three of the members were summarily sought out, arrested and prosecuted on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.

The play is based on trial transcripts and interviews Hammond conducted and mashes the hymns of Rachmaninoff with the punk of Pussy Riot to build a bridge across the hemispheres.

Logan Ellis, the play’s director and founder of Theatre Battery, said he was drawn to the play’s themes of international politics and activism.

“We want people to see this experience and walk out understanding that what we experience in our daily lives is actually related to things that are going on the other side of the world,” said Ellis, a Kent-Meridian High School graduate. “Even though it can be easy to fall into a place of security that what we see on the news about what is happening in other countries is really removed from us and we are not implicated and culpable to what is going on there, I think a piece like this can bring that conversation directly to you and really help everybody to think about and question the size of the world and how related we all are.”

Although Hammond work-shopped the play at Emerson College in Boston, Theatre Battery’s production will be the premiere of the final product.

The play addresses the issue of power and the internet’s influence on it, Hammond said.

“The world of ideas has made us a smaller more connected world community,” she said. “Who our leaders are and who we look up to has changed and we can make those choices. Is going to be the Kardashians or is going to be Pussy Riot? Is it going to be the president or is going to be somebody who we start to hear about, kind of anonymous people, who get a million hits about some just beautiful story about how they conducted themselves?”

The play is designed make the audience think, Hammond said.

“I think one of the things that Pussy Riot wanted to do is make people think about themselves, and I would echo that,” she said. “It is hard to even know if you are thinking for yourself sometimes. I think by the end of this play it would be hard not to. You have to make some strong choices as an audience member as you watch this play. You are being offered choices, which is not the standard thing that happens when you see a play.”

Hammond said he wanted the play to be accessible to anyone, regardless of their knowledge of theater.

“Which again is why this is why this was such a great match for us with radical hospitality, where we want to be able to access a whole new audience and give people permission to come to the theater who may have never felt like they were welcome there,” Ellis said. “The idea is that we really want to think of this almost like a church or a public library where people understand that it is a valuable cultural resource, something that is done by professionals, but also something that is totally accessible to everybody, that everybody can appreciate and try out and contribute to. I think that in someways there is somewhat a misconception about theater in this country especially, that it is in held exclusive to people that are going to understand in someway or people that have the money to go see it. We are really trying to dismantle that expectation.”

This year, Theatre Battery created an internship program for local high school and college students. Five interns worked as assistants to the design team, stage management and Ellis.

“It has been a really remarkable addition to the energy that is here to have high school and college students that are being able to have a hands-on profession experience working at Theatre Battery,” Ellis said.

Ellis will attend Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Conn., this fall but plans to keep Theatre Battery going in the summer.

“I feel like the mission is really applicable and something that I hope can start a conversation about the accessibility of theater on a lager scale than just in this region, and particularly that idea that there are extremely worthy and interested and phenomenal audiences that are everywhere and especially at the places in the country that are traditionally unserved by art, which in general flocks to these urban centers.”

Organizations like Theatre Battery are the future of theater, Hammond said.

“There is a sea change coming in the American theater toward ground-level-up theater making in the way that so many things have changed, liked people brewing their own beer,” she said. “There is a whole new understanding of the value the small farmer, and I think theater is the same thing – people who make theater as a opposed to people who have institutional theater. The best work is often being done at the grass-roots level and this theater is an example of that.”

Show time

• Production: “We are Pussy Riot or Everything is P.R.,” a documentary musical by playwright Barbara Hammond. Directed by Logan Ellis.

• Performances: 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Aug. 3-19. (previews Aug. 3-4). Matinees at 2 p.m. Sundays, Aug. 13 and 20.

• Stage: Kent Station, 438 Ramsay Way, Suite 103

• Tickets: No charge for tickets. For each performance, 40 tickets can be reserved online through theatrebattery.strangertickets.com. The remaining 30 tickets will be released at the door to walk-ups starting one hour before each performance.

• More information: theatrebattery.com or theatrebattery@gmail.com

Logan Ellis, Theatre Battery founder and director, left, and playwright Barbara Hammond at a recent rehearsal. COURTESY PHOTO, Annabel Clark Photography