Eugene weekly., August 31, 2017, Page 12, Image 12

I
VERY
LITTLE
THEATRE
t’s 10 in the morning on a Saturday last spring, and
Very Little Theatre has its doors wide open. Hopeful
actors sit inside the building, tapping their feet and
talking in quiet whispers. The theater itself is dark
like the interior of a ship’s wooden hull, but the stage
lights are shining on a set.
This is audition day at one of the oldest community
theaters in the country — and hearts are racing. The show
these hopefuls are auditioning for is British playwright Robin
Hawdon’s Perfect Wedding, the penultimate show in the the-
ater’s 2016-2017 season.
As Eugene’s theater scene grows and matures, the role of
community theater has become even more vital, both as a
training ground for actors and technicians and as a vehicle for
audience development. VLT may be Eugene's oldest theater,
but it’s just one of a tidal wave of performing groups in town.
Besides VLT, Oregon Contemporary Theatre leads a local
In business for nine decades,
VLT keeps training actors and
turning out shows
BY SA R A R O SA DAV I E S
scene that includes The Shedd Theatricals, Actors Cabaret of
Eugene, Radio Redux, Free Shakespeare in the Park, Rov-
ing Park Players, Not Ready for Retirement Players and No
Shame Theatre, as well as theater departments at the Univer-
sity of Oregon, Lane Community College and a handful of
private colleges here. Venture a short drive out of town and
you’ve got Cottage Theatre in Cottage Grove.
For a place that calls itself “very little,” VLT’s building,
a charmingly antique wooden Quonset hut at 23rd Avenue
and Hilyard Street, is bigger than it seems from outside. With
two performance spaces — the smaller studio Stage Left and
the 220-seat Mainstage — the VLT produces a range of plays
and musicals throughout the year.
The lobby is covered in posters from past shows such as
My Fair Lady and Death of a Salesman. It also features cos-
tumes and a glass case full of trinkets related to the theater’s
current show.
In a hall parallel to the two performance spaces, a framed
poster board features pictures of other “little theaters” in
small towns across the country. A card on the board reads,
“Community Theatre is Alive and Well!!”
The VLT was founded in 1929 by eight local theater lov-
ers as part of the Little Theatre Movement, which swept
North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In-
fluenced by European art houses, scores of small amateur
theaters popped up around the United States and Canada to
present experimental fare that couldn’t find a home in the
commercialism of Broadway
VLT’s website says of the theater company’s founding:
“One person said to the others, ‘There are hundreds of little
theatre groups up and down the country, but this is certainly
going to be a very little one!’”
This passionate sentiment is what drives those involved
with VLT’s shows, including Perfect Wedding director Kar-
THE CAST OF VLT'S
PERFECT WEDDING
SAMANTHA CROSS (LEFT), ALISON MEELER AND DIANA SOBCZYNSKI
12
A ugust 31, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
ALISON MEELER AND
PETER FEHRS IN
PERFECT WEDDING