HOW TO GO:
WHAT: “The Hobbit,” a production of the Zoot Theatre Company
WHEN: Opens Friday, Sept. 28 and runs through Sunday, Oct. 14. Show times are 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays.
WHERE: Dayton Art Institute’s NCR Renaissance Auditorium, 456 Belmonte Park North, Dayton
TICKETS: $18 for adults, $15 for seniors and students with a valid ID, $12 for kids 12 and younger. Both single performance tickets and subscriptions are available. Purchase online at www.zoottheatrecompany.org and over the phone by calling (937) 223-5277. Groups of 10 or more can receive a special discount by calling (937) 512-0140.
When the Zoot Theatre Company kicks off its inaugural season at the Dayton Art Institute this week, it will be in a unique and enviable position.
“We have not yet found any other resident puppet company with this sort of relationship with an art museum,” executive director Michael Sticka said.
The unusual collaboration establishes Zoot as a resident company at the historic museum, with the DAI providing everything from a 490-seat auditorium and office space to dressing rooms, a green room and help with ticket sales. Its premiere production, “The Hobbit,” is the troupe’s most ambitious show to date. It opens Friday, Sept. 28, and runs through Sunday, Oct. 14.
“It’s a big, complex, exciting show, and we’ve wanted to do it for years,” said D. Tristan Cupp, the company’s co-founder and artistic director. He has designed the 28 life-size puppets featured in J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic tale.
The hobbit, dwarfs, goblins, wizard and dragon — constructed at Zoot’s 7,000-square-foot Washington Street studio — moved into the art museum early this week.
“Welcome to our new home!” Sticka said as he gathered the cast for a pre-rehearsal talk. Monday was the first time the group had been on the Renaissance Auditorium stage.
“You can tell they are really excited!” commented co-director Gary Thompson, as his actors moved through their yoga-inspired warm-up exercises.
New location, new opportunities
It’s a dream come true for a little company founded in 2006 by Sticka and Cupp that also made local history by becoming the first resident company at the Mathile Theatre in the Schuster Center.
“The folks at the Victoria were just wonderful to us, but our residency there achieved its purpose,” Sticka explained. “The idea of the Impact program was to take in theaters that were growing and expanding and assist in their process until they outgrew the space, and that’s exactly what happened.”
At the Mathile, he says, only 90 audience members could be accommodated and shows played for just one weekend.
“So by the time we would set up the stage, it was time to take it down,” Cupp said.
The new location will allow the group to expand and host a full season of shows that each run for three weekends. In addition to “The Hobbit,” Zoot will produce “A Christmas Carol” in December and “And a Child Shall Lead Them” in April. The Michael Slade play is the story of children coming of age in Terezin, the Jewish city established by the Nazis. The drama incorporates actual poems and stories of hope written by children in the concentration camp.
Both the Zoot and museum folks describe their new relationship as an ideal fit.
“Our focus is the puppets, and this is bridging the gap between theater and fine arts,” Cupp said. ” We consider ourselves a visual arts company that uses the stage as our gallery.”
The DAI’s Executive Director Michael Roediger said the museum also is excited about the collaboration.
“I’ve seen their work and they really are a visual art medium,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for a visual art medium to literally come to life. The other reason is that we continue to try and have people look at the DAI as a destination. It will draw new audiences to discover the museum.”
Preparing for the show
Thompson, co-director of “The Hobbitt” and a resident artist with Zoot, says the show has been six months in production. After obtaining rights to the script from the Tolkien family, it was a matter of adapting that script for puppets.
Zoot typically works with area artists, sculptors and costumers to design and build puppets, masks, sets, scenery and costumes. Ten artists and volunteers worked on the upcoming show.
Cupp said the trick is to design a puppet that will provide the movement or mechanism that each character will require.
“The 12 dwarfs, for example, have to stand up on their own and walk,” he said. “In the puppet world that would generally require a two-person puppet, but we decided to create it for one person — and that was a challenge.”
A giant red dragon puppet requires six puppeteers.
At the same time the puppets were being designed and built, auditions were being held. Those who appear in Zoot productions must be able to move well so they can be trained to work as puppeteers. All actors — who come from community and professional theater as well as area schools and universities and — are paid.
“It’s like a dance,” Thompson explained. “One puppet might have one lead puppeteer but three or four others that lend a hand. It’s very, very choreographed.”
Darren Brown is playing the role of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit who is dragged into adventures that include goblin dodging, battles and dragon slaying. The actor has been seen in a number of area productions and portrayed the dancer Rudolf Nureyev in this summer’s Dayton Playhouse FutureFest winner “Nureyev’s Eyes.”
“I grew up on the 1977 animated ‘Hobbit’ film. My grandma and I would rent the movie at the library, and it was my favorite movie as a kid,” he said. “I read the books and I was a big fan.”
So the idea of doing “The Hobbit” with puppets, he said, offered a grand opportunity to relive his childhood. Brown said, in his opinion, “The Hobbit” is one of the greatest adventure novels ever written and the predecessor for most modern fantasy.
But becoming a puppeteer, Brown said, has been quite a challenge.
“It’s like learning a whole new craft,” he explained. “As an actor, we have certain intuitions we follow — we use facial expressions. But when you’re controlling a puppet, you can’t do that. We have to find ways to communicate through the puppet what we would normally communicate through our faces or gestures.”
He describes the ensemble’s 30-hour-a-week rehearsal schedule as both “very draining” and “terrific.”
“It’s a challenge to capture all the things you want to do and communicate them through the puppet,” said Brown, who — with the other actors — wears black clothing on stage to conceal himself and whose face will not be seen.
A show for everyone
Zoot’s target audience, Sticka said, is “everyone.”
“Puppets aren’t just for kids,” he said. “We pick show titles that an adult audience will enjoy, but the children love it too even if they don’t understand some of the storylines. Seeing the puppets come to life is enough for them.”
Zoot has become known for its local collaborations and those will continue. In addition to its MainStage DAI season, it continues to produce shows for the Discovery Series at the Victoria Theatre, and also stages Zoot Tales workshops targeted at kids in kindergarten through eighth grade. Zoot regularly joins forces with Central State University for its annual musical and has worked with the this year with Dayton Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra. The company worked with the Lovewell Summer Stock Teen Program this summer and will be working with The Human Race Theatre this season to create characters for “Avenue Q.”
The dreaming isn’t over.
“Our next goal,” Sticka said, “is to take a show on tour.”
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