Kimberly Meadowlark
The 225 Theatre Collective team is made up of ambitious young creatives from diverse backgrounds, hoping to bring new stories and new faces to the stage. From left to right : Education Coordinator/Director Taylor Meng, Director of Diversity and Inclusion Simone Jackson, Co-founder and Costume Designer Victoria Brown, Co-founder and Artistic Director Stephanie Bartage, and Technical Director Ashley Schmid.
In the four hundred years since he shuffled off this mortal coil, William Shakespeare has led some scholars to ask, “What was that guy smoking?” Musings have been followed through with graveyard excavations (pipe fragments!) and sonnet scourings (ooh, he means cannabis…). Myriad aspects of the Bard’s life have been explored to this depth, thus the aspiring writer can also learn his habits, the foods he ate, and how he might have romanced Gwyneth Paltrow.
But theatre is the province of the living and could do with less clutter from the dead. For playwrights asking the same questions you ask yourself, and actors surmounting outmoded barriers to entry, your ticket to an entertaining, conscience-raising evening will come from 225 Theatre Collective.
When this magazine hits stands, the Baton Rouge-based production company will have just completed the run of its first stage play, Frank Winters’ Student Body, at the LSU Studio Theatre. (Their first official performance was a table read of The Great Gatsby in January 2022.) Student Body puts ten young actors on a stage and turns on the pressure: an undergrad was (or maybe wasn’t) assaulted at a party among friends. How should her fellow students respond?
Founder and artistic director Stephanie Bartage decided to start her own theatre company in late 2021. A Delgado theatre graduate recently relocated to Baton Rouge, she’s left more than one audition feeling she’d lost the part not because of how she uttered a line or embodied a character but because her appearance, as a Latina actress, did not match what the casting director had in mind.
With her theatre non-profit, she hopes to create better opportunities for herself and others. “It’s become so much bigger than me,” said Bartage.
“I think the pandemic had us in this mindset of ‘What else do we have to lose?’” said co-founder Victoria Brown. She responded “about a minute after” Bartage made a post in a local moms' Facebook group, gauging interest in joining her new theatre company. “The one thing the pandemic taught me is if I want to do something, I only have so much time to do it. I just spent how many years locked in my house? I might as well go out and do what I want, shoot for the stars.”
A Buffalo, New York native and graduate of the Savannah College of Art & Design, Brown’s area of expertise is costume design. Ashley Schmid soon came on board as technical director. In recent months, the group has added Taylor Meng as education coordinator—a role she also holds at Southeastern Louisiana University’s Columbia Theatre—and Simone Jackson, a sophomore at LSU, as director of diversity and inclusion.
Jackson and Schmid attended high school together, in Virginia; there, theatre coach Lisa Cover-Tucci staged weighty plays including The Laramie Project, a drawn-from-life story of the community response to the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was tortured to death by two peers. Schmid recalled threats from Westboro Baptist Church to shut down the production.
“But I want to make people care and be angry,” said Schmid. “When I’m looking for potential shows, I think, ‘What will impact the community the most?’”
Plays like Laramie and Student Body meet the definition of good theatre that Meng learned from a friend: “It should be like a ghost, and haunt you when you leave the building.”
The collective’s emphasis on accessibility has already led them to new talents. When they hosted a night of monologues last March at Bee Nice park in Mid City, Bartage was particularly wowed by an Alyssa Haddox, who performed an excerpt from the Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie. “When I talked to her after, she said, “Oh, yeah, I’ve never done this before.’ ‘So you’re coming to the next audition right?’ ‘If you want me to…’ ‘Yes!’” Maddox later landed a part in the production of Student Body.
Even those with the utmost stage fright can find something fun in the workshops and performances 225 Theatre Collective has slated for this fall. This month, for example, Brown will lead weekly hand-sewing classes at the LSU Women’s Center. Past workshops have included acting for film with local thespian Frank Wilson, and making superhero costumes for kids.
A night of improv and music is planned at Mid City Artisans, on September 23, and on October 13, five actors will tell short scary stories at The Guru.
Audience members will derive plenty of entertainment from 225 Theatre Collective, but you may find you’re an actor, a lighting technician, or even a playwright. The group is eager to elevate voices that may have been muted before, and to tell untraditional stories. “We aim to get to know everyone, treat them with kindness, learn what they love about theatre, and see what they can bring to the company so that we can best accommodate them,” said Jackson. “Everybody may not be coming from the same place or have the same things to offer, but everybody has something they can bring to the theatre.”
Visit 225theatrecollective.com for an up-to-date schedule of performances, classes, and auditions.
