Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill addresses Chautauquans during a celebration of the planned Roe Green Theater Center Thursday near the planned site of the facility, near the existing Brawdy Theater Studios.
A leap forward
Late Thursday afternoon, in the parking lot next to Brawdy Theater Studios near Route 394, Chautauqua Institution leadership, past and present Chautauqua Theater Company artistic directors, donors and community members gathered together in celebration and anticipation of the new Roe Green Theater Center, an innovative “creative hub” that will replace the Brawdy complex.
When completed, the facility will consist of administrative offices, a blackbox performance space, a prop shop and rehearsal spaces, and will serve as the new center for artists to rehearse and train, creatives to develop new work and for Chautauquans to witness theater at different stages of the production process. The hope is that it will be constructed and open by the 2025 season.
On June 25, the Institution announced the Roe Green Foundation’s $4.5 million commitment toward the completion of the Roe Green Theater Center, a gift that is a $3 million outright contribution and a $1.5 million matching challenge gift.
Green, a longtime Chautauquan, has a deep history of fueling theater at Chautauqua, including providing support for many years through a grant for the New Play Workshop series.
As CEO of the Roe Green Foundation, which she founded after her mother’s passing in 2003, Green has made advancements in the arts in cities such as Cleveland and Kent, Ohio, and Jupiter, Florida, and she created programs like the Roe Green Visiting Directing Series for the School of Theater and Dance at Kent State and the University of Colorado.
“During Chautauqua’s sesquicentennial year, we talk a lot about what feels like birthday presents, and this may be our favorite birthday present that we get on our 150th anniversary,” Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill said Thursday.
Hill thanked Green for her support of CTC’s growth through the years and for her commitment to the project. He also thanked donors whose contributions have already met $8 million of the anticipated construction cost of $9 million.
Jade King Carroll, now in her second season as CTC’s producing artistic director, has been at the forefront of developing the new center, Hill said, and has ignited enthusiasm for CTC’s future legacy.
The Roe Green Theater Center will allow the theater company to “level up,” as Carroll put it, and produce multiple shows at once, including the possibility of having a mainstage performance and New Play Workshop in Bratton Theater, concurrent with two smaller readings or workshops in the new facility.
“Imagine a week at Chautauqua where you could experience a fully-produced play and three other plays in different stages of their development — a healthy coral reef of American theater ecology,” Carroll said.
The Brawdy complex, which used to house CTC administrative offices, rehearsal spaces and production shops — even extending to the bays of the bus barn next door — has not been suitable to use since 2019. Since then, rehearsals and production prep have been held in dispersed locations on- and off-grounds, extending to Mayville and even Fredonia in some cases. This all changes with the new center, which will allow young artists, emerging playwrights and creatives to train and rehearse under one roof and bolster new play development.
Carroll thanked Green, supporters and funders, the Chautauqua audiences and the past CTC artistic directors for each playing essential roles in building the company’s legacy.
Breeding creativity, the center’s blackbox theater will offer a transformational space that can be configured to suit a variety of plays and workshops. The facility will also house a whitebox theater, an open rehearsal space with windows that can allow Chautauquans to immerse themselves in viewing CTC’s process.
“It’s all accessible,” Carroll said. “The blackbox, the rehearsal studio, the new state-of-the-art prop shop, office spaces, two green rooms, a beautiful lobby, a bar and even a separate coaching room. This fully weatherized building will allow us to host residencies and workshops all year long.”
Building the Roe Green Theater Center will lay the foundation for the next 150 years at Chautauqua, Carroll said, and she is grateful to the community for taking this leap into the future with her.
“To build this new creative space and creative home is truly essential,” Carroll said. “We will tear down Brawdy, but we will build on everything else.”
Former Chautauqua Theater Company Artistic Directors, from left, Andrew Borba, Rebecca Guy and Vivienne Benesch and 2024 Conservatory Actor Kamal Sehrawy, receive a standing ovation following a special one-night-only reading of Harold Pinter’s Old Times to benefit the new Roe Green Theater Center Thursday in Bratton Theater.
A celebration of ‘Old Times’
With excited eyes toward the future, later Thursday evening the community lifted up the talent, vision and legacy of former CTC artistic directors Vivienne Benesch, Andrew Borba and Rebecca Guy, who took the Bratton stage for a reading of Harold Pinter’s classic Old Times, directed by former CTC Artistic Associate Katherine McGerr. “Chautauqua Theater Company Celebrates 150” was staged in honor of the Institution’s sesquicentennial, and as a benefit reading for the Roe Green Theater Center, with contributions going toward the Roe Green Foundation’s $1.5 million matching challenge.
“Throughout CTC’s history, these visionaries have trained and inspired generations of theater artists, graced our stage and presented unforgettable productions, shaping CTC and contributing to Chautauqua Institution’s 150-year legacy of excellence with a combined 41 years of leadership,” Carroll told the audience before the reading began.
Pinter’s Old Times, a play dedicated to Peter Hall — a titan of British theater — to celebrate his 40th birthday, was first performed under Hall’s direction by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London in 1971.
In the reading, Benesch and Borba played Kate and Deeley, a married couple who live in the English countryside by the sea. When they are visited by Kate’s lifelong friend and roommate Anna, played by Guy, tensions rise as Deeley and Anna recount their memories of Kate, revealing a subtle battle for her affection — while often telling conflicting stories from their past.
Those in the audience experienced a performance that honored the past four decades of theater leadership and CTC’s role in serving as a pillar of the American theater circle.
Chautauqua has a rich history of theater, long before founding artistic director Michael Kahn built the foundation for a resident company, first named The Theater School at Chautauqua, in 1983. When he left after joining the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C. in 1986, Rebecca Guy was named as the acting director and officially began leading the newly-named Chautauqua Conservatory Theater Company as artistic director in 1988.
Throughout Guy’s 18 years of leadership, she developed the theater conservatory and molded it together with professional productions to form a joint company. In her early years, she spearheaded productions featuring guest AEA actors that were performed in Norton Hall and later in Normal Hall, and other smaller shows by the conservatory. During her years at the helm, the makeup of the conservatory also changed, fueled by scholarships and fellowships. In 1994, Friends of the Theater, now Friends of Chautauqua Theater, was formed. Guided by Guy’s direction, Normal Hall underwent renovations in 2000 and became what is now the theater’s central performance space, Bratton Theater.
As she passed the torch on to Vivienne Benesch and Ethan McSweeny, who had both directed productions at Chautauqua before, her tenure built the groundwork for CTC’s foundation for a lasting professional theater company.
Benesch and McSweeny served as co-artistic directors from 2005 to 2011, with Benesch continuing as artistic director until 2016. Benesch’s history with Chautauqua started long before she took on the leadership roles with McSweeny.
After graduating from Brown University in 1989, she was encouraged — by Guy herself — to join the conservatory that year, pursuing professional acting and starring as Rachel in Craig Lucas’ Reckless. As a graduate student at New York University, she came back to Chautauqua for the next couple of summers, directing the Studio II program for high schoolers and continued to return for several years after as a guest artist and director. For 13 summers, she spent time acting, teaching and directing in the Institution’s conservatory.
Benesch introduced McSweeny to Chautauqua when he visited to see her perform in the 1997 production of John Murrell’s Waiting for the Parade. A year after he directed his first production at the Institution — Lee Blessing’s drama Cobb in 2003 — Guy encouraged the pair to apply to be artistic directors. They assumed leadership of CTC in 2005.
Benesch and McSweeny brought their vision of developing new plays to fruition, welcoming playwrights to the grounds to build their plays through Signature Staged Readings — a tradition that continues with the current New Play Workshops. Another integral decision they made was changing the conservatory to consist solely of graduate students, raising the bar for professional theater programs across the country.
When Borba stepped into Benesch’s shoes, he was already deeply involved at Chautauqua; in 2005, he was first introduced to the Institution, teaching Shakespeare to graduate students, and throughout nearly his full six years as artistic director, he was the text coach for most of CTC’s Shakespeare productions.
For 18 years, his involvement with CTC ranged from serving as an actor, director and coach, and for eight years he was Benesch’s associate artistic director. Throughout his term, he shared his love and passion for Shakespeare while coaching young actors, established gender equality when hiring company leadership, and achieved a majority-BIPOC representation in casts.
As Borba led CTC from 2017 to 2022, he remained committed to furthering New Play Workshops, including Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles, this season’s first mainstage production that began as a 2017 NPW, traveled to Broadway and has been produced around the world.
Benesch, Borba and Guy shaped CTC’s devotion to aspiring young artists in their creative journeys and bringing professional theater to life that will continue sparking conversations among Chautauquans for years to come.
