Perseverance Theatre facts for kids
Perseverance Theatre is a professional theater company located on Douglas Island in Juneau, Alaska. It is the only professional theater in Alaska. The theater loves to work with Alaskan artists and create plays that celebrate Alaska's culture, history, and unique stories.
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The Story of Perseverance Theatre
Perseverance Theatre was started in 1979 by a person named Molly Smith. She built it into an important non-profit theater that worked with many talented artists. Over the years, the theater has shown more than 50 brand new plays by writers from Alaska and across the country. A famous play called How I Learned To Drive by Paula Vogel was developed here. This play even won a big award called the Pulitzer Prize in 1998!
Molly Smith was the artistic director, which is like the main creative leader, until 1998. After her, Peter DuBois took over until 2003. He later became an artistic director at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. In 2004, PJ Paparelli became the artistic director. He left in 2007 to lead another theater company.
Art Rotch, who had worked with Perseverance Theatre before, became the Executive Artistic Director in 2008 and stayed until 2019. He was joined by Managing Director Joshua Midget in 2018.
Today, the Artistic Director is Leslie Ishii, and the Managing Director is Frank Delaney.
What Perseverance Theatre Does
Perseverance Theatre puts on a full season of plays from September to May. Their main stage has 138 seats. They also use a smaller space called the Phoenix for readings and shows from their education programs. Since 2012, Perseverance Theatre has also performed its full season in Anchorage. In the summer of 2014, they created a special summer series in downtown Juneau called Summerfest.
In 2001, Perseverance Theatre teamed up with the University of Alaska Southeast. This meant the theater took charge of all the drama classes at the university, allowing students to get a minor in theater. In 2002, the theater received a big grant of $500,000 from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. They successfully met the challenge to receive the full amount in 2005. The theater also raised $1.1 million to make their building better and bigger.
Perseverance Theatre is part of a special program called the National Playwright Residency Program. This program helps new play writers. In 2016, Vera Starbard became a Playwright in Residence for three years, and her grant was renewed in 2019. Her play, "Devilfish," was written and performed during her first time in the program.
Plays You Might See
Perseverance Theatre puts on many different kinds of plays. Here are some examples of shows they performed on their Mainstage during the 2006-07 season:
- Hamlet, by William Shakespeare.
- Noises Off, by Michael Frayn.
- The first-ever performance of Raven Odyssey, which told Alaska Native stories about the mythical figure of Raven.
- Macbeth, by Shakespeare, translated into the Tlingit language. This show had an all-Alaska Native cast and was mostly performed in Tlingit.
- "The Who's Tommy," a musical by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff.
- Equus, by Peter Shaffer.
From the 2007-08 Season:
- Yeast Nation, a musical by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis.
Second Stage Productions
The theater's Second Stage is for smaller, more personal shows. It's also where new actors, directors, and designers get to practice their skills. The 2006-07 Second Stage season included:
- Red Light Winter, by Adam Rapp.
- Speech And Debate, by Stephen Karam.
- A Question Of Mercy, by David Rabe.
- Translation: A 31-Year-Old Woman's Strange Journey Toward Herself, by Sarah Brooks.
- Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, by Bert V. Royal. This play was performed at the University of Alaska Southeast and featured students.
- The Typographer's Dream, by Adam Bock.
- The Last Five Years, by Jason Robert Brown.
Perseverance Theatre also has a "Young Company" that performs on the Second Stage. One of their shows was:
- A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
