A new outdoor theater series is in the works for Western New York, and it’s aimed at building on the success of Buffalo’s already popular Canalside location.
Among the grey stone walls of the Canalside’s ‘ruins’, children learned to act and do improvisation at a theater arts camp this past summer. It was run by one of the area’s youngest theater companies, the Buffalo Repertory Awards Theater – known in short as BRAT. Building on the success of the camp, and a performance series called One-Act Wednesdays at Canalside the year before, BRAT is hoping to reach a new and greater audience.
“We’re going to do a one-act play festival that’s different every single night of the summer and we’re going to do it a hundred and one nights in a row,” said BRAT founder and artistic director Ron Leonardi.
Leonardi said BRAT is putting together a lineup of performances from some of the best playwrights in the country – including in Buffalo. The feedback he gets from them is that there is not enough outdoor theater in Buffalo.
“Really the only outdoor theater we have is 500 year old Shakespeare plays. They’re great, and everyone loves Shakespeare in the Park, but most people just don’t understand it,” said Leonardi.
According to Leonardi, the goal is to reach an audience that otherwise couldn’t afford tickets to shows in Buffalo’s regular theaters.
“You can go to Shea’s – its $65 for a seat,” explained Leonardi. “I would love to see every show at Shea’s, I just don’t have that kind of money. The plays at the big theaters downtown are 40 to 45 bucks a show. So we wanted to bring that to the public free-of-charge so that anyone can come in with their families and experience live theater.”
Leonardi’s plan is to hold the performances in a theater-in-the-round style venue. He said Canalside’s ‘ruins’ are the planned site, but may not be the final location due to constantly changing designs for the area. Wine and beer would be sold before the performances and during intermission, which Leonardi said tends to bring in more patrons.
101 consecutive nights of live theater sounds like a daunting task, but Leonardi has a plan for it.
“It’s going to be two separate casts, two separate directors, so that they’re all doing the same twelve plays and we’re doing six a night,” said Leonardi.
The twelve plays will be performed on a rotating basis so that every night comes with a different feel.
The plan is still in a proposal phase, but Leonardi is hoping to hear an answer from Canalside by November so he can begin casting actors for the summer.
More information on the Buffalo Repertory Awards Theater can be found on their website.
