Broadway at the Barn
By Stefanie Scarlett
The Journal Gazette
NAPPANEE – When actress Jessica Costa got her first glimpse of the Round Barn Theatre’s production of The Secret Garden, she was overwhelmed.
She wasn’t part of that particular cast, so she sat in the audience to watch the classic story of an orphaned girl who discovers the healing powers of nature. When the curtain opened, to reveal a young woman sitting in a round flower swing with fog swirling around her feet and tiny stars glittering in the night sky, Costa’s eyes welled with tears.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m working here,’” she says.
It’s her first season at the Round Barn – and she, too, has fallen under the spell of the place, which works its rustic charm on theatergoers, cast and crew every year.
The Round Barn makes its home at the historic interpretive farmstead of Amish Acres, west of downtown Nappanee. Its idyllic country setting also boasts quaint shops, hearty home-style food and a lake.
“It’s like a little wonderland,” actress J. Courtney Taylor says.
About 250,000 visitors stop each year to take tours, walk the grounds, shop, eat or see a show. Tourist buses unload in the parking lot nearly every day and many people stay overnight in the two inns.
The theatre, which bills itself as the state’s only resident musical repertory theatre company, has more than 2,500 season ticket-holders from five states. A typical audience includes a nearly equal mix of subscribers, bus tourists and walk-ins.
The private, for-profit theatre features professional actors and has its own set and costume shop.
Ticket prices of $25 – among the most expensive in the region – reflect both the royalty fees the Round Barn has to pay for the privilege of staging Broadway musicals and the competitive salaries it pays its actors.
Walking into the theatre truly means walking into a round barn. It opened in 1992, after being dismantled at its former home in Bremen, moved and reconstructed with a $1 million renovation. The second floor was removed, except for a balcony section. The stage area once was a straw shed.
In keeping with the theme of simplicity, it has hardwood floors, exposed wooden walls and roof and plastic molded chairs (some season ticket-holders bring their own cushions).
The actors, who take tickets and hand out programs before performances, have high praise for the theatre, which has “amazing acoustics.”
And with only 400 seats, there’s not a bad spot in the house.
“This is a very special theatre…it’s a small theatre, you feel like you’re touching everybody,” Taylor, of New York City, says.
“It’s the nicest barn theatre I’ve ever worked in,” actor Derek Martin says, completely serious. He calls it “a diamond in the rough,” because it’s well-kept and the production value of the shows is high.
Martin, 26, plays greaser Kenickie in Grease, which opens Wednesday. Taylor, 25, will portray bad girl Rizzo, and Costa, 23, is the naïve Sandy.
Costa auditioned for the Round Barn’s core company in New York City, where she lives. She knew she wanted the job “as soon as I walked in the door” and met some Round Barn staff, including artistic director Scott Saegesser.
He casts the company, between nine and eleven actors, each season. He says he, too, feels a connection with certain actors right away and can tell whether they’ll be successful at the theatre.
“Eighty percent is personality. Then, it’s talent and versatility,” Saegesser says.
Each actor has to be good enough to play a lead, but strong enough to do a lot of supporting roles, as well.
The season runs from April through December. Most of the company members have long-term contracts, up to nine months, but a few come in just to do one of the shows.
Unlike summer stock theatre, which has short production runs, the Round Barn stages each of its shows for about six weeks and gives the cast a chance to really get a feel for the characters, Saegesser says. The days are filled with rehearsals and performances, and the company lives together in three sites on the property. Everyone is close. But just in case familiarity starts to breed contempt, there’s time to get away.
And there’s time for a “showmance” or two. After all, actors will create drama, onstage or off, Taylor jokes.
But mostly, it’s about the work.
The core company does a grueling nine performances a week, including two on matinee days – and often they are tow different shows.
“It’s not a program for timid actors. They have to be willing to work,” executive producer Richard Pletcher says.
He and his father, LaVern Pletcher, founded Amish Acres in 1968 as a historical interpretive center. It is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
They started staging Plain and Fancy by Joseph Stein in 1986. The musical, a humorous look at culture clash between a Pennsylvania Amish family and two visiting New Yorkers, made its Broadway debut in 1955.
The Round Barn Theatre opened in 1992 and became a repertory theatre in 1996, rotating two shows by the same cast on the same stage during the same period.
The theatre is now the national home for Plain and Fancy and the stage is named for Stein, who also wrote Fiddler on the Roof. It was his idea to make the Round Barn a repertory theatre after his visit to Amish Acres in 1995.
So far, more than 35 Broadway shows have been stage here, with the only repeats so far being Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and, of course, Plain and Fancy.
That flagship show has run for 17 seasons, with more than 3,000 performances. Each season, it is the longest-running show, with performances from April through early November.
“If you work here long enough, you’ll memorize the whole script,” Taylor jokes. She’s in her second season at the Round Barn and has played two roles in Plain and Fancy.
Actors often encounter their real-life counterparts – the Amish families who live in and around Nappanee – shopping in grocery stores or driving their buggies along roads.
“We get to see it and we get to play it,” Costa says.
Those interactions help them in their roles onstage, which in turn helps audiences understand the culture of the Amish.
“It’s a teaching theatre,” Martin, of Massachusetts, says.
In his three seasons, he has perfected his craft on the stage. But he’s also been able to try his hand at choreography and directing, which he wouldn’t have been able to do at another theatre, he says.
“It’s a family atmosphere. You feel like your contribution means a lot,” he says. “There’s an opportunity for growth.”
On the other hand, acting is always a risk, no matter how much experience you have.
“When you step on that stage, it’s a stress,” actress Susan Yoder of Goshen says.
She’s been with the Round Barn for about seven years, acting, building sets and making costumes. One daughter, Kristyn Yoder, is in her third season. Another, Jennie Grunseth, is a former company member who returned this year for The Secret Garden, in which all three have roles.
“I told both my girls how lucky we are to have nine or ten months of theatre where you get paid. I just feel really blessed this is here,” Susan Yoder says.
“It’s home to me,” Kristyn Yoder says. “It’s really cool to see how it progresses each year.”
Artistic director Saegesser has been with the Round Barn for nine years and still acts in some productions: “It’s an exciting time to be here. It’s really taking off and starting to get well-known.”
Not everyone appreciates what the theatre has to offer. A few years ago, Pletcher says, the show 1776 drew letters of complaint from some patrons about its profanity – the use of the word “damn.”
But a few year later, on September 11, 2001, the theatre was a source of civic pride. The round Barn didn’t close that day as most theatres around the country did. Buses of tourists from Canada and Wales were already on the grounds, so Pletcher and others decided the show must go on.
They opened Damn Yankees that day as planned and had the audience sing the National Anthem before the show, as if they were at a real baseball game.
For the most part, productions reflect popular family-friendly fare, which is what most theatergoers want to see.
“We’re not in the business of trying to push the envelope very far,” Pletcher says.
But he worries that “the American public has almost lost the art of watching live theatre,” in that theatergoers are too passive. They want to be spoon-fed the action on stage as if it were television, he says.
“You shouldn’t have every word blasted into your ear. You should have to listen, to stretch for it…” he says.
So, in the spirit of taking risks and giving patrons a taste of something different, the company will do a staged reading of Joseph Stein’s Take Me Along, a musical version of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!
As for Plain and Fancy, it will keep playing, even though some performances might draw only 20 patrons.
That’s fine with Pletcher.
The show, along with the whole Amish Acres experience, has a message that never gets old: “Tolerance is what’s most important. That’s what theatre is all about.”
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