INTERVIEW: Barrow Group has become incubator for new theatrical talent
The Barrow Group Theatre Company is one of the co-producers of the new production of Torben Betts’ Muswell Hill, currently playing in New York City through Saturday, Dec. 16. The other co-producer, the Pond Theatre Company, speaks to Barrow’s influence in the New York City marketplace. The Pond actually evolved from Barrow, and now both companies are enjoying a rich collaboration.
Muswell Hill, starring Colleen Clinton, Sarah Street and Lily Dorment, tells the story of a dinner party in north London that turns tense and comical, while an earthquake devastates a faraway country. The play is the latest project of Barrow and Pond coming together for some joint creativity.
The Barrow Group is headed by co-artistic directors, and husband and wife, Lee Brock and Seth Barrish.
“I think Seth and I producing plays for the last 31 years, we try to find material that is going to touch people spiritually, politically, socially, so when they leave the theater, they’re going to think about their lives differently,” Brock said in a recent phone interview. “And when we embarked on this co-production with the Pond, I also feel it’s very important to nurture artists and help empower them to create their own work.”
Barrish added that their collaboration with the Pond goes back to last year and a successful revival of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party. “The Pond came out of actually our company in the sense that Colleen and Sarah and Lily have been actors in the Barrow community and students in our school as well,” Barrish said. “Our school is geared toward all sorts of folks, including professional actors, and they were in our advanced class, which is just for professional actors really.”
Clinton, Street and Dorment – all of whom star in Muswell Hill — were doing scene work during their time with Barrow. They chose Abigail’s Party, and Barrish and Brock were quite impressed with what they were seeing.
“Then that led to them doing an in-house reading of the whole play, which was also extraordinary, and they were also bringing in sometimes some actors who were Brits on Wednesday nights,” Barrish said. “And we decided that it just made sense for Lee to direct.”
With the success of Abigail’s Party as a reading, the actors began to branch out and put together a concept for a theater company focused on new productions of British and Irish playwrights. That led to Pond’s founding and Abigail’s Party becoming a full-blown production.
“It seemed like a natural thing,” Barrish said of Pond’s evolution. “It’s like, well, why don’t we do [Abigail’s Party] as a joint production of these two companies, and that’s how that started. And we just had an incredible experience. The process was incredible and conflict-less and fun and creative, and the end result was just as good as we could put it. So when it came time to put together this season, we were sort of looking, is there another joint production we could do, and that’s when Lily and Colleen and Sarah said, you know, we’ve been looking at this play, Muswell Hill. Can we do a reading for you of that? Let’s look at that, so they did. That’s how we decided to do it.”
Brock added: “Actually the Barrow Group has kind of helped start about five different theater companies, helping people to produce their own stuff, so I think it is getting harder to do that. I think there’s strength in numbers, so this co-production with the Pond was wonderful. It’s like we’re helping each other get the product out there.”
When considering putting their time, energy and finances into a new production, the Barrow Group co-artistic directors consider the substantive and transformative nature of the piece of art.
“It’s not that we think a single play is going to change everybody’s life, but we think that the function of the art is to sort of encourage transformation in an audience,” Barrish said. “That’s beneficial, whether it enlightens them or inspires them or some combination of the two, and, of course, we’re looking for it to be entertaining.”
On the financial front, the Barrow Group leadership team knows the limits of theater in New York City and tries to respect them.
“We’re keeping in mind financial things because there are sometimes plays that we want to do that are just beyond our scope financially,” Barrish said. “It’s just too expensive to do. The casts are too large perhaps or the scope of the set, or it’s a musical that’s going to be pretty complicated. Any of those things, they’re factors we deeply consider, and so we tend to steer towards plays that are smaller cast size. And the other thing that we keep in mind is, is it a good fit between what we’re bringing to it, what the actors are bringing to it and what the company aesthetically brings to it. Is that a good fit? So there might be certain material that we think, this is great, but it may not be in our wheelhouse. And then there’s other material, we go, this is completely in our wheelhouse. There are aspects of this play that seems to feel like we’re in our wheelhouse. The dialogue is written the way people talk. It allows for this group interaction.”
Barrish said the Barrow Group is in a good place when they are engendering content on stage that is loose and spontaneous. They want to produce plays that don’t feel scripted.
“We’re ending up with an end product that is as lively as possible,” he said, “so that audiences are sucked into it and feel less like they’re watching a play being presented and more like they’re a fly on the wall to an actual event.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Muswell Hill, co-produced by the Pond Theatre Company and Barrow Group Theatre Company, is currently playing at the TBG Theatre in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
