Encore Studio’s Acts To Grind IV explores life, love, and pizza-flavored corn chips
Welcome to Cheap Seats, where every Thursday we’ll talk to folks behind the scenes of the stage events opening around town in order to give you a flavor of the productions that won’t be found in any of the promo materials.
Acts To Grind IV, Mary Dupont Wahlers Theatre, Sept. 23-Oct. 8
Promo pull quote: “This season’s Acts To Grind will make you talk, laugh, and think as we explore many different aspects of life, love, physical and mental health, and just what is in a bag of “Pizza Flavored Corn Chips.””
What it’s really about: Encore Studio’s Acts To Grind IV is the latest edition of the theater company’s one-act series, where the company compiles short plays about a variety of topics. This year’s edition features a total of nine plays. “We write all these original shorts, and they’re a mixed bag of subject matter, where our actors can not necessarily play people with disabilities, but other characters, and stretch out a bit,” says executive director and writer KelsyAnne Schoenhaar. “Because so much of our work is so poignant, and really focused on disability in culture, and this gives actors an opportunity to really have some fun. It also allows the audience to see how broad our actors can be, instead of just doing pieces about disability.”
Fun fact: Despite any preconceived ideas about a “professional theatre company for those with disabilities,” as Encore bills itself, know this: Encore is truly a professional theater company. “People sort of expect, I don’t want to disparage, but, the Special Olympics, where everyone can do it, and it doesn’t have any substance. That’s been our mission: to say that this is professional theater with people with disabilities,” Schoenhaar says. The company has in-house writers—in fact, the writers often create parts around actors’ strengths (like an actor who obsessively “daps” people in real life being cast as a superhero named DapMan)—and the audition process is as tough that of any other professional theater company. “Just like in every other professional theater company, not everyone is accepted. People have to have the talents and the innate ability to do what we do onstage,” Schoenhaar says. “We probably accept about 30 percent of people who want to act. It’s not ‘everyone can,’ because that’s not real life.”
Why you should try it: “Because we give voice to individuals in theater who don’t have that. Within the history of theater, there is so little that pertains to people with disability. And when it does, the characters are often played by those without a disability,” Schoenhaar says. “Theater is meant to hold up a mirror to the world, and that’s been a highly neglected demographic. We put a very important voice out there.”
