Marie Schulte
Jean (David Sapiro) and Miss Julie (Kelsey Yudice) kindle a scandalous affair while Christine (Cricket Gage) looks on.
In an ideal world, theater tickets would be free. But they rarely are.
Fermat’s Last Theater Company, however, is experimenting with a new crowdsourcing model that, if successful, would mean free admission to its next show. The group’s Kickstarter campaign is less than $1,000 from its goal.
The classical theater group’s upcoming production of Miss Julia, Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s controversial 1888 play about the fallout after an upper-class woman initiates sex with a servant, opens July 30 at the Fredric March Play Circle at the Memorial Union.
Founded by production manager David Simmons in 2013, Fermat’s Last Theater Company is a relative newcomer to Madison. Its first two productions were Shakespeare plays: The Merchant of Venice and a circus-themed, gender-bending Troilus and Cressida, in which Helen of Troy was a drag queen.
Simmons says Miss Julie is a fitting choice for a company that wants to do plays with social-justice connections. “Miss Julie is all about class and privilege,” he says.
When it came to the choice to offer tickets for free, Simmons says there are companies in other cities offering free shows on a regular basis, such as Oracle Productions in Chicago.
Simmons says he hopes the new model will succeed so the company can focus on creating quality productions instead of worrying about ticket sales.
“At some point the philosophical and the practical merged,” he says. “One of the missions of the theater is to build a new and younger and more diverse audience, and cost is an issue. I had this crazy idea: Why don’t we just do the show for free?”
