BERLIN — The Brown Box Theater Project will return to the Globe on the heels of it’s very successful performance of Belly Full of Stones in September for a limited engagement of Lee Blessing’s politically charged, two-act drama “Two Rooms.” The success of their first performance — Septembers production of Kimberly Barrante’s absurdist “Belly Full of Stones” — and the relatively quick booking for their newest show bodes well for Berlin as the town’s status as an art center begins to add the final piece of performance to it’s repertoire of art outings.
Kyler Taustin, the play’s director and an Ocean City native, said the space at the Globe is perfect for the plays the company produces. “Belly Full of Stones” opened to acclaim in The Director’s Studio in N.Y. before being booked at the Globe. This time the reverse is true, the production will open in Berlin before soliciting bookings for New York.
“We’re excited to do it,” Taustin said of the multi-day performance. “As professional actors we’re working toward an eight-day performance week. We are an ensemble ready to perform.”
For his part, Taustin, who will direct as well as star in this latest production, sees the company as the perfect antidote to the homogeny of big budget only plays that tend to dominate the touring scene. Small intense plays have been feeding an untapped local desire for more upscale, raw theater as evidenced by their September sold out performance.
Taustin After O.C.
A graduate of Amherst, Taustin said he chose Boston as an alternative to New York so he could make better use of the small production opportunities it offered.
“I wasn’t ready to make the New York leap,” he said. Eventually he did and has been a working actor ever since graduation.
The Brown Box Theater Project was established as an open company with the mission of being a kind of testing ground for new talent in every aspect of theater production. They’ve performed one act plays written by up-and-coming playwrights, as well as more established plays employing actors doing their best to make a living at their art.
“We’re working with people who are passionate,” Taustin said. The Brown Box Theater Project gives artists the opportunity to take the kind of chances they might be unable to take as new actors in bigger companies. It gives everyone a chance to see what kind of things work for them and what kind don’t. The vision is to make it the kind of production company that always has something worthwhile in the works.
“I’ve looked for work that was meaty, that forces the audience to think the moment they leave,” Taustin said.
Political but Balanced
Two Rooms was written as an examination of the mutual dehumanization that can take place between ideologies. The story revolves around the protagonists Michael Wells, who is being held hostage by terrorists, and his wife Lanie who occupies Michael’s home office in Washington waiting for news.
While the play is a fiction vision of a mid-80s hostage taking in the Middle East, its themes are just as relevant today as the country struggles with it’s own political biases on the left and the right.
The Brown Box Theater Projects’s production of Two Rooms by Lee Blessing has been extended for a two day run with 7:30 p.m. shows Monday Dec. 6 and Tuesday Dec. 7 at The Globe. Tickets in $35 or $50 including a Globe-provided prix fixe 3 course meal. Dinner seating is 5-6 p.m.