 Hi, I'm Viviana Lopez. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us today. We're talking to Stephen Henderson, who is joining us from Indiana. Stephen's father created the Red Barn Summer Theatre, where Stephen is an artistic director and designer. Stephen is also an independent filmmaker. Stephen, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. What exactly is the Red Barn Theatre? Red Barn Theatre is a professional, non-equity summer stock theater in Indiana. It's a non-profit and we are in our 48th summer season Frankfurt, Indiana. And what inspired your father to create the Red Barn Theatre? He was the high school theater and drama teacher and being at the school for nine years or nine months, excuse me, out of the year and then having to be at the school for three months to have the theater, the summer theater there, meant that he was at the school all year long and so he decided to try and find a place where he could get away from the school and get out in the country, get away from the parking lots and asphalt and find a place that had a setting that was more conducive to summer theater. So the operation moved from the high school stage to the barn, 1972. What's your background in theater? Well, I was four years old when it started in 1968. I guess that dates me, but I was born and raised in it. I played all of the children's roles and I helped with building scenery and hanging lights and basically was born and raised in the theater. And then when I went to college, I studied theater and then Indiana University asked me to teach theater and so I've kind of been doing theater my entire life. And can you describe your process for selecting your actors? We go to Chicago. In fact, I leave this Friday. We go to the Illinois Theater Association auditions and we see about 300 people who are from all over the country and they're trying to get summer employment in the theater. They get 90 seconds to do an acting piece, do a music piece and get off the stage. It's what they call a cattle call. But it is an opportunity for them to be in front of about 30 producers and it's an opportunity for producers to see about 300 people. So once a year I go to Chicago and suffer and get out of the warm weather and into the cold and look at actors and then we try to set up deals after after that and hopefully pull a company together of about 12 to 14 people. So what's the process to select a show? A lot of reading, a lot of reading scripts and the difficulty is in trying to get four shows that work together in the sense that the same company can do all four shows but that are different enough that they're of interest to the audience. You don't want to go to a pitch and dinner and find it's all green beans. So that's one of the hardest processes of the summer is to try and put together four shows that will have diversity and are doable by the same cast because we use a resident company. That means a lot of reading and you have to figure that if each year and we've been doing this for 47 years you try to pick the four best shows that you can find you start eliminating shows. The pool of shows that you can pick from gets smaller and smaller and you just have to hope that the stream of new shows coming from authors and playwrights are sort of filling the void. You're eliminating the best of everything. We read a lot of scripts and say no way would that ever work at our theater. You read some that you say well I like that show but it's a little too much for our audience and so it's really a tremendous amount of work to try and find four shows and that's just a lot of thinking a lot of reading and a lot of hoping. So can you give us a walkthrough of how it is for say a summer in the red barn? Absolutely. The chosen company comes together and that evening we cast the first show and that evening we go into a read-through and rehearsal. 13 days from that day we will be opening the first show so the next day we have rehearsal all day long. Those who are not in the first show are in the scene shop immediately building scenery, gathering costumes, working on lighting, gathering props and within 13 days from coming together with strangers, people that you've never worked with before, people that you've never met, the first show opens. The next day we cast the second show of the season and while we're doing the first show at night and matinees on Sunday we are rehearsing the second show and pre-building the scenery for the second show and gathering the costumes and the props for the second show. That show opens and the next day you cast the third show, pre-build, rehearse while performing the second show and you are essentially going all day all night nothing but theater from the first day you hit the ground until you lock the door at the end of the summer and the final show is always a musical and musicals add dance steps, they add music, they add singing, a lot more costume changes, a lot more moving scenery so the summer begins at a run and just seems to go harder and harder faster and faster until the musicals open and at that point with no new show to rehearse you get a little bit of a break all you have to do is come in and do that show at night and maintain the grounds and so forth. So the push for me is once we've decided on four shows is getting to the day that the musical opens and then I have three weeks, the musical runs for three weeks, I have three weeks to coast a little bit, try to catch your breath, you lock the doors shut down the theater it's over and you hope that you get to do it again next summer. And how has the red barn grown over the years? Well it started out as just a barn and it was built in 1908 and we took it over it had cattle feeding facilities in it, it had grain bins in it, it was a barn full of hay, we took out all the hay, we took apart the hay loft, barns make very good theaters because it takes a tremendous amount of strength to hold the weight of the hay in the haymow. Well we took the hay out and we hung a tremendous amount of weight in lighting equipment and barns tend to have huge expanses inside of them that allow for movement of tractors and animals and so forth which gives you the kind of span that you need to have an audience that doesn't have to look at a bunch of posts. Then we added each year something new to the facility, we added a lobby and then restrooms and a box office and a rehearsal space and a dressing room and costume storage and costume construction and scene shop and so we continue to add as much as we can each summer with the budget that we have and the facility over 47 years has become pretty well equipped to do what it is that we need to do. So how has it grown? Little by little and steadily and it has gone from just a barn and you're trying to get made up in a little shed to a facility that has everything you need to produce theater. And how did you get into filmmaking? Well I got my undergraduate degree at Indiana University and I wanted to get a master's in motion picture and I saw that there was a program that was coming to Sarasota, Florida which was part of Florida State University's program it was their graduate school of motion picture television and recording arts I have found that theater is temporary and film is permanent and so I wanted to study filmmaking and see what that aspect of creation held for me. So I applied for the founding class and was accepted and went to film school here in Sarasota and have been a filmmaker ever since. So how has the red barn interest your career in film? Well theater is it's an interesting art form in that it's temporary you have to be there to see it and never when I go to the movie theater do I see as much laughter as you have in the live theater never do I see the emotion coming from the audience at a movie theater that I see in the live theater. So there's something special about live theater it is more magical in my opinion than film but when the run is over you tear it down and it's never to be seen again. With film what you're trying to create is the product and it is intended to be around forever to allow you to watch it whenever wherever you want. So I found that I was creating all these wonderful productions and essentially throwing them in the trash when I was done and so I was looking for an outlet where I could create something that would be permanent and I could see it again in the future. Having done both I think theater is really more satisfying but if somebody wasn't there you're basically telling them how much you enjoyed that production whereas with film you can say watch and see for yourself. So it's basically the same thing if you think about it film is nothing more than photographing live theater they kind of go hand in hand. What's the most fulfilling thing that you've gotten out of the red barn? Well it's long hours and we work 77 days straight without a day off and we work from about 8 30 in the morning until about 11 11 30 at night and then some evenings when you have changeover you're working till 2 3 in the morning it is very very difficult. So what's the payoff? Do you get rich from doing live theater? Not in today's world. The payoff for me is when I hear the audience as a whole laughing. When I look across the audience and I see ladies pulling the handkerchiefs out of their purse and they're crying. When somebody breaks through a door and the whole audience is startled at the same time and they scream you're taking them on a roller coaster ride and it's the effect that you have on them that is the payoff. I suppose if I was a roller coaster designer it would be the screams and the laughter and the fun so I guess we're not unique in that respect but it is the effect that we have on people that is the payoff for me. And can you tell us what the future holds for the red barn? Well in this bowl of fruit I have a crystal ball. With the arts today not being supported as well as they have been in the past you really never know the future of a non-profit organization like this. If the audience supports us we get to do theater for another year. If they don't support us no more theater. You cannot survive on ticket sales alone so it takes contributions from people in the public who value the arts to keep an operation sustained. We're non-profit but we're professional we do pay the actors because everybody has bills everybody has to eat everybody has to live but we can't pay them a ton of money so we hope that the show will go on through the generosity of people who are contributing to the arts that's pretty much the way it is around the country and with arts budgets shrinking there are less and less operations like ours continuing to do theater. It's sad but it's true we are one of three theaters in Indiana that is still doing theater in the summer in this nature. Some of the larger theaters like the Indiana Repertory Theater they get millions of dollars of support from the public the smaller theaters suffer and the only way that we can survive is if the audience continues to support us. If they don't support us then they have one less venue where they can go to laugh to cry to be startled to think and the reason that we strive to create the best productions we can is because you're only as good as the last production that you did if you can do your best then hopefully they will support you and you can continue for another season we've managed to do it for 47 years now we are on target for our 48th season will there be 49 or 50 I have no idea and unfortunately there is no crystal ball in that bowl of fruit so I'm an artist so I have optimism I'm hopeful and we'll see well thank you Stephen thank you for joining us today on the show