Amy Kucharik
Doug Reed, in front of the experimental black-box theater on Willy Street.
In its 48-year history, Broom Street Theater has had only four artistic directors. The latest, Doug Reed, began his duties July 1.
“My overweening ambition — owing to my Machiavellian overlord tendencies — has been to someday take over a small, dilapidated black box theater,” he claims, laughing.
Broom Street is far more than that, of course, as are Reed’s goals. He foresees new emphasis on the company’s founding ethos.
“Given the position we’re in,” he says, “where we have the luxury of absolute artistic freedom — we’ve got no advertisers, no sponsors, no white-haired major donors — it almost feels like we’re derelict in our duty if we’re not getting out front and pushing some buttons, given the times we live in.”
Broom Street Theater is both cutting edge and venerable. Founded in 1969, it was briefly led by several founding hands until Joel Gersmann became artistic director in 1970. He served until his death, in 2005. Subsequent artistic directors were, in turn, Callen Harty and Heather Renken.
But Gersmann continues to cast a long shadow. Legendarily talented, and legendarily misanthropic, he regularly won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, building a rollicking, highly visual storytelling style for Broom Street. When the NEA stopped the grants, Gersmann began passing the baskets to keep the small theater afloat. Gersmann also oversaw creation of the company’s permanent home, at 1119 Williamson St. (The theater’s name comes from an early rehearsal space.)
“He left us a legacy,” says Reed, a veteran writer-director with the troupe, who works as a programmer at UW-Madison. “But at the same time we can’t be a Joel Gersmann museum. The world that we are working in is a much different world than the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, when Joel was most active.”
But being radical, satirical and hyper-current was always Gersmann’s style. It’s likely he
Dan Myers
would delight in Broom Street aggressively reflecting new themes in new times. (Gersmann was also an Isthmus correspondent.)
The company remains one of the very few black-box theaters nationwide dedicated to producing original work. “It’s extremely unusual to have a theater like this in any city,” observes Reed. “There’s another one in New York, but we’re a very rare bird.”
The new artistic director is a native of the Richmond, Virginia, area. He received a bachelor’s degree in theater from Goshen College in Indiana and moved to the Madison area in 1996, After a brief time in Chicago, he returned in January 2016 and has worked with Madison’s StageQ and Mercury Players Theatre as an actor and dramatist. He is also a member of the Monkey Business Institute improv troupe.
His 2013 novel, Half, published by New Jersey-based ENC Press, is about “a vampire who is working second shift as a computer programmer and hates his job,” says Reed. “It may be slightly autobiographical.”
Over the years, Reed has written six full-length plays for Broom Street, some of which he also directed. “I had wanted to get involved with Broom Street when Joel Gersmann was still alive, but my kids were little and I didn’t have the time,” Reed recalls.
The artist’s best-known Broom Street work is perhaps The Lamentable Tragedie of Scott Walker, a Shakespearean-style verse play, which he wrote during the Act 10 protests early in the governor’s first term.
Reed joined the Broom Street board of directors in 2014 and served as its vice president until he was tapped to become artistic director. His vision for the theater changed almost immediately.
“It’s funny that my interview with the board happened right after the [presidential] election,” he says. “What I thought I wanted to do, going in, was changed drastically by the election results.” There will still be a place for conventional works, but “I want to see us get back to more of a confrontational style, a controversial style.”
The theater’s artistic freedom derives in great part from owning its space. “As we keep our costs manageable, we can run in perpetuity,” says Reed, “and that allows us to take a lot of risks that, really, I don’t think any other company in town can take. We can afford a flop or three every year.”
Reed hopes to pare back the number of shows at Broom Street; the theater usually produces 10 annually, which Reed calls a “perpetual treadmill.” And he also wants to increase the pool of writing and directing talent. Although the theater has a long history of producing LGBTQ-focused works, audiences and artists tend to be white. “If that changes in my tenure,” says Reed, “I will have called it a success.”
Reed’s desire for diversity extends to a pet project. “If I ever got a play that was at all reasonably written by a right-winger, I would put it on,” he says. “Just to kind of shake up our complacent little bubble.”
Broom Street Theater will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2019. Reed says, “I’m hoping to leave it in such a condition that someday there’s a 100th anniversary.”
The 2017-18 season is still being assembled. For more information, visit bstonline.org.
