There are numerous opportunities to experience intimate theater in the Bay Area, including the Aurora Theater Company
Sometimes, you just want to see their faces.
The experience of seeing theatrical spectacle, on stage at the former Geary Theater (now the American Conservatory Theater) or at a Broadway-size house such as the Curran or Orpheum theaters, is thrilling. There’s simply no way to replicate the shiver brought on by a marching chorus from Les Miserables or the crash of the chandelier in The Phantom of the Opera.
On the flip side, theater can provide a uniquely intimate experience when it’s just you, the actors and maybe 100 others sitting together in the dark.
The Bay Area boasts several outstanding professional theater companies that specialize in the intimate theater experience.
Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company, known for its literate plays and great actors, started life at the Julia Morgan–designed Berkeley City Club in a room that seated 67 audience members on three sides of the stage. In 2001, the Aurora moved into its very own theater—larger, with 150 seats, but in the same three-sided configuration.
Tom Ross, the Aurora’s artistic director, says the reason to see intimate theater is the acting.
“In larger theaters, I tend to feel lost, like I’m in an airplane hangar,” Ross says. “On an intimate stage, you get a nuanced acting style that actually lets you watch the actors think on stage. Also, something special happens in a small space. You’re in the same room the play takes place in. You’re a voyeur, a fly on the wall. That’s a visceral experience you wouldn’t get in a larger space.”
Another great small theater is the SF Playhouse near Union Square. Though only of a 99-seat capacity, the second-floor space has been home to full-scale musicals, such as last season’s Cabaret, as well as dramas, and, more recently, a bone-chilling ghost story.
The Playhouse’s artistic director, Bill English, says small theater affords the audience an opportunity to empathize with characters on stage.
“In an intimate theater, you’re that much closer to the feelings,” English says. “The actor is not over there or up there or back there. The actor is right here. That magnifies the empathic potential.”
In addition, because the budgets are smaller, these companies are more likely to take risks, be bold, and engage in experimentation. Work by smaller companies is often edgy and fun in ways the big companies normally can’t pursue.
For example, there’s Intersection for the Arts, a buzzing arts center in the Mission and the home of resident theater company Campo Santo. With a reputation for creating new works with high-profile writers—Dave Eggers, Denis Johnson, Junot Diaz— Campo Santo makes the most of Intersection’s bunker-like 80-seat theater by turning up the emotion and scaling down the spectacle.
Another intrepid group with its own space is Thick Description, which operates the 85-seat Thick House on Potrero Hill. That stage has seen everything from experimental operas to award-winning comedies to intense dramas. The same is true of The Marsh on bustling Valencia Street. That 110-seat theater has seen the birth of dozens of remarkable solo shows including Brian Copeland’s long-running hit Not a Genuine Black Man, which has been optioned as an HBO series.
For the younger and/or slightly more adventurous crowd, the best intimate bet is La Val’s Subterranean Theatre in the basement of a Berkeley pizza parlor and home to Impact Theatre. Audience members, the majority of whom are in their 20s and 30s, with pizza slices and beer in hand, flock to bawdy comedies and issue-oriented dramas in this cozy 50-seat space.
Because smaller theater companies don’t often have the resources to own their own space, you find itinerant groups such as Crowed Fire Theatre Company, Encore Theatre Company and The Cutting Ball utilizing whatever spaces they can. Sometimes they’ll rent such venues as the Thick House, or you might find them occupying one of the four downtown stages run by EXIT Theatre.
Drop by the EXIT just about any night and you’re likely to see reinvented Shakespeare, in-your-face comedy, a musical with puppets, straight-ahead drama or performance that defies labels, all in theaters that hold no more than 80.
Audiences are the primary beneficiary of the intimate experience, but actors love it, too. Gabriel Marin, one of the Bay Area’s emerging stars, was recently on the Aurora stage in George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, and will return next spring in a new play called Jack Goes Boating.
Marin says he prefers a small space because it connects him directly with the audience.
“There’s no place to hide,” Marin says. “For me, in a way, an intimate space can strengthen the commitment to what you’re doing on stage. The only choice is to bring your best game.”
This style of theater isn’t for everybody. Some audience members prefer to get lost in the crowd at a big, splashy show. But the San Francisco Bay Area, like any good theater region, offers an array of compelling theatrical alternatives for audience members who crave connection and are tempted by the particular pleasures that only intimacy can offer.
