Taylor-made flexibility: Theatre Conspiracy's new space

Theatre Conspiracy's new space is eclectic and cozy.

Bill Taylor loves his new space.

It's edgy, flexible, a little rough around the edges - just like his theater company, Theatre Conspiracy. The floor's concrete, the walls cinderblock, painted black. If you look up, you can see the air conditioning ductwork on the ceiling and walls, like fat silver worms.

The seating is…well…eclectic. A white corner sectional sofa bumps up against a red, green and cream love seat. There are pink upholstered chairs, easy chairs in various shades of olive green and mint, a few bar stools. It's as if someone drove through a neighborhood and randomly collected chairs and sofas from various homes.

Theatre Conspiracy sits between two storefront churches in a row of office units on Park Windsor Drive. Located off of Evans, (north of the Southwest Florida Regional Hospital and just behind Sasse's, a favorite local Italian restaurant), it's fairly nondescript from the outside.

But inside is where the magic happens.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTOS Bill Taylor has found a home for his Theatre Conspiracy.

"It's very flexible," Taylor says. "Being a black box theater, we can set it up in any arrangement we want."

So the current show, "The Bible: the Complete Word of God (Abridged)," (running through May 10) is set up differently than the previous play, "Maternal Spirits," the theater's inaugural offering in its new space.

"And the next show will be a different set up…" Taylor says.

For the current show, part of the audience is elevated, with the stage set up on the floor in the middle of the room. For the previous show, the stage was elevated in the corner, in an L-shape.

"The next one, who knows?" Taylor says.

"Even though the space is very flexible, it also has its limitations. We don't have dressing rooms. It's not a big space. We can't do big shows. We have to be careful in what we choose, so we don't overextend ourselves.

"It'd be nice to put a nice big set in there, but then I could only seat two people. It does have its limitations."

COURTESY PHOTO Three actors perform the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments in less than two hours at Theatre Conspiracy's new home in Fort Myers. From Eve to Exodus through the epistles, the apostles and the gospels via fig leaves, the paly runs all the way through final judgment.

When Taylor left Theatre Conspiracy's previous home at the Foulds Theatre at the Alliance for the Arts, he jumped before looking. Then he discovered just how difficult it is to find a decent theater space in Fort Myers.

Will Prather of the Broadway Palm Dinner Theater let Taylor's company use the Off-Broadway Palm, a small, intimate theater. But Taylor obviously wanted a home for his baby.

It took him about eight months to find the current space.

"You have a certain check list of things that are absolute necessities," he says, and ticks them off: "Bathrooms. Air conditioning. A big enough room. Ceiling height. We couldn't have eight-foot ceilings. Where would we hang the lights? I did want to have some higher ceilings. Parking. There were several places that were possibilities, but where were we going to put people? Where are they going to park? This place for the most part fit all the parameters."

Theatre Conspiracy's seating is a rag-tag, eclectic group of upholstered sofas and chairs, with a few kitchen stools and office chairs thrown in.

So Taylor signed a two-year lease.

The seating is a rag-tag, eclectic group of upholstered sofas and chairs, with a few kitchen stools and office chairs thrown in.

"The chairs come from all over the place," Taylor says. "I drove around from store to store to store. Patrons brought in the green folding chairs and said, 'Here.'"

If they were cars, these sofas and armchairs would be called "pre-owned." They're already broken in, well-used and comfortable.

"It's probably the most comfortable theater you can go to. That was a major gripe about the other place," Taylor says, referring to the Foulds Theatre. "It wasn't comfortable. So I thought, when I do this, I don't want anybody to be able to say that about here."

When Fort Myers marketing consultant and actor Bonnie Grossman first saw the new theater, she felt very much at home.

"It's a wonderful space," Grossman says. "It has a feeling about it, a feeling of the bare bones passion of theater. It's like going back into the little theaters that I performed and took lessons in off-off Broadway and in SoHo. When I walked into [Theatre Conspiracy's new space], it was so welcoming."

She describes it as a no-frills theater, "a small space with no fancy accoutrements." Such a space, she says, allows for the "pure, two-way communication you can only get in the live theater, between the audience and the actors."

Grossman, and the group she founded, Write to Act, a troupe of communicators, educators and actors writing drama, will perform original monologues and readings for two nights at the theater, on April 24 and 25. It's part of Taylor's policy of opening his new space to the community.

Write to Act decided to turn the money earned from their two performances to Theatre Conspiracy.

"They turned it into a benefit for Theatre Conspiracy, which wasn't the intention [in letting them use the space]," Taylor says. "But we're glad they're wanting to support us."

Annette Percival, a local actor, will put on a production of "The Bald Soprano" in June. And Taylor's reading plays and planning his summer season.

If you go to Theatre Conspiracy now, you'll catch "The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged)."

It's so successful, Taylor's extended the run to May 10. Local actor Dick Westlake directed the show. (His name is on a sign in the lobby that calls the theater the Nancy Antonio, Karen Goldberg, Richard Westlake Theater. "For every production, I'm going to rename the theater for people who volunteer or donate," Taylor explains.)

Westlake taught drama to Taylor at Edison College years ago. When Taylor resurrected Theatre Conspiracy in its third home, the Foulds Theatre, Westlake performed in "Lonely Planet."

Like Grossman, he loves the theater's new space.

"It reminds me of the off-Broadway spaces that I went to when I was in New York for a year in the early '60s," he says. "A little place. People would open up little places, a lot of them down in the Village. I saw some marvelous things. I guess Bill is now the off-off Broadway of Fort Myers.

"He can do anything he wants, create totally different arrangements for seating and staging. He can do things in the round, he can do them thrust stage (with people on three sides), or he can do them like the first one, proscenium. It's a very unique space.

"He's getting a crowd in there, [but] he needs the publicity and word of mouth. That's good in this town. People will say, 'I saw something. I liked it. You should go see it.' It's very difficult getting people

to see new, original plays...It's hard to get them in, unless there's a lot of positive publicity. It was a big, daring step for Bill to start doing original shows. Now he's getting scripts from all over the country. He has a reputation among playwrights. I think he can really pull it off, if he keeps doing things that are good and different. He's not the type that really wants to do fluff.""Not every show is going to be a new show," Taylor says. "I don't think a theater company can survive doing that. You have to offer some more marketable shows. But our emphasis as a company is to find those interesting new works and produce them, though that might not be every show."

His annual New Play Contest recently celebrated its 10th year. The contest, which has entrants from all over the country, is unusual because it accepts plays that have already had up to three productions.

"As I've met playwrights and become friends with them, I understood that shows don't get second, third, fourth productions, because everybody wants the world premiere," Taylor says.

He used to think that way too, but then expanded the scope of the contest.

"I don't think playwrights get enough opportunity for their works to be produced," he says. "To my knowledge, we're the only new play contest in the U.S. that opens up for works that have had up to three productions."

So Theatre Conspiracy will put on regional or state premieres of a show. Last season, he even produced Craig Pospisil's "The Dunes," which has previously played in Sarasota.

"That didn't stop us, because it was the best show," Taylor says.

The New Play Contest also features talkbacks with the playwright, usually after the first two performances of the show. Audiences have the opportunity to ask questions of the playwright, director and cast, or comment on what they've just seen.

Taylor seems newly energized by his theater's latest space.

"You're not going to have the ideal space unless you convert an existing building or build a new theater," he says. "I think this is the first new performance space in Fort Myers since I guess the Foulds was built in 1990, 1991.

"I feel good here. It gives me a nice feeling and everybody that comes here a good feeling. I'm very happy with it."

If you go

>>What: "The Bible: the Complete Word of God (Abridged)"

>>When: 8 p.m. April 16-19, April 26, May 2, 3, 9 and 10

>>Where: Theatre Conspiracy, 2711 Park Windsor Drive #302 (north of Southwest Florida Regional Hospital off of Evans Ave.)

>>Cost: $20 ($10 for students with valid ID) >>Information: Call 936-3239.