 The stage is heating up at Lumen Repertory Theater. Their 2024 season starts next Friday at San Marco Church with playwright Adam Bach's drama, A Small Fire. Here with the behind the scenes look is Lumen's artistic director, Brian Nice, and actress Brooks Ann Hayes. Welcome both. Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks Ann. Yeah, we're glad to have you. So Lumen's theme for the 2024 season is bold. Why is that? And what can audiences expect from your lineup this year? Well, there's going to be bold content, fresher content like this play, A Small Fire, by the OB winner, Adam Bach. It's bold because it's not just a kitchen drama. It's a kitchen sink drama. You know, there are things that you don't expect happening. And it's bold in the way we're approaching it because we're treating it like a film, but it's a film that you're viewing in a theater setting. And so tech, light, and sound will be very film-like, cinema-esque. And then the rest of our content we're bringing back later this year, we're bringing back our Shakespeare productions, which is improvise Shakespeare in Brewery's, which was a huge hit last year. And we're retooling it with a new cast and doing some cool stuff. This is the Shakespeare. This is Shakespeare, yeah, yeah. And if you think you don't like theater, you think you don't like beer, come and you'll end up liking both. Brooks Ann Hayes, without giving away too much, and this is a really interesting plot, and as you were saying earlier, a very challenging role. Talk a little bit about your involvement in this, your decision to participate, and what kind of challenges it's presented. Well, Brian asked me a while ago to do this, and I was all in for it. And then time went by and I read the script several times. I was like, you gotta be kidding me. There is no way I can do this because it is challenging and it's bold. And after I spoke with Brian, after I dropped out, I realized, the reasons why I'm not doing this are the reasons why I should do this because it is a challenge. She is not through the entire play, but she becomes deaf and blind and can still speak. And so she can never look at anyone. She has to, she can't hear anyone, so their communication with her is just through hand squeezing. You know, and so it is a challenge to just have to do the physicality of that. Has it been rewarding? Extremely, extremely rewarding. Sometimes you gotta push yourself in directions that you don't really think you should or you would be right for in parts and that's what I'm doing. Brian, is this a play that you had seen performed or is it just one that you read and liked a lot? It's one I read and didn't like a lot, the first read, and then I read it slower. Well, because it's so quick, it's basically, it is a film. I mean, it's written to be filmed even though it's a play and it won some awards as a play. It's just over an hour long. Yeah, you read it and if you're thinking traditionally about theater, you'll miss it. And I think that's what I was doing. And so when I read it again, I was like, oh, this is why this is bold. This is why this is unique and this is exactly why it's the kind of thing Lumen Rep Theater should be doing. And so tell us a little bit about the idea of Lumen and what foundationally it stands for, what it aims to do and when it was founded. So it was founded the very end of 2022 and last year we just completed our inaugural season. But it was founded because until Lumen Rep came around, Northeast Florida did not have a fully professional repertory theater company. In an area this big in Greater Jacksonville, we have a great film community, great visual arts, ballet, symphony, all on a professional level. We didn't have a professional theater company that was a repertory company. So we wanted to change that. We wanted to give a place where artists, craftspeople, technicians are paid for their work and they have a safe working environment and so forth. So that's the idea behind it. But also to do pieces that as this season says are bold, can be subversive, can be challenging. But also the quality will always be exceptional. You'll know that even if you may not like the content and be challenged by it, you're gonna be like, but they did a really good job. Wow. I was reading about a review of this in the New York Times because this was an off-Broadway play. And it sounded like there was at least one scene that's maybe really difficult to watch. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, if it's the scene I think you're talking about toward the end of the play, we've taken a very tasteful, made for TV movie type approach, which will still be a little uncomfortable, but we don't want to deter from the fact that this play is actually about those bridges that just don't burn between human relationships, between people who are trying to reconnect with each other. And so we don't wanna distract from the inner life of these characters by putting something from their outer life right in front of your face. And honestly, we're both older actors, ain't nobody wanting to come see us doing anything. You know, that would make them, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but this is a character exploration of a woman who's very closed off in some ways and then is sort of forced to rediscover and reconnect when she's losing her senses. Right. She loses her senses, but she gains so much more. Well, Brian Neese and Brooks Ann Hayes, thank you so much for being here. I know that this is gonna be a great performance and we really appreciate what you're doing in the community. Glad to be here. Be sure to come out February 16th at Historic San Marco Church. Thank you so much, Ann. Thank you for being here.