Breathing life back into Bracken

“Private Eyes,” Nov. 3-6. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m., Phoenix Performing Arts Center (409-411 Main St., Duryea). $12. Info: 570.457.3589

When the Bracken Theatre Company lost its building, the Showcase Theater in Exeter, in the spring of 2007, a series of legal and technical disputes with the landlord made for some contentious situations. The building’s owner wanted to sell before the theater company’s lease was up, and he tried to force them to vacate early while threatening to sue if they didn’t.

For Kelly Clisham, the company’s president, that ordeal put a damper on the theater experience.

“I just needed to pull back a little bit because theater is a business, in a very real sense,” she said. “If you’re not making money and putting butts in the seats and paying the rent, you’re not existing. But at the same time, for all of us who do it, it’s a passion, and it has to be a passion or there’s no reason to do it. You’re not getting paid.

“So I really felt myself getting sucked into that business end and getting kind of consumed by that and losing the passion, so I think I really needed to step back so that didn’t happen completely.”

Although it may have seemed to some that Bracken disappeared after that, especially since it hasn’t been behind a show since about 2009, the company never actually disbanded.

“Typically, Bracken is a directors’ medium, and so directors can bring their shows to the group and sort of ask for the group to produce them,” explained Alicia Nordstrom, a member of the company’s board. “I don’t know if Bracken ever officially went on hiatus, but I think we just didn’t have a lot of directors bringing their shows to the group. So, whenever a show pops up that someone’s passionate about, usually that’s kind of what kicks things into gear again.”

Clisham and Nordstrom agreed that, in addition to losing their home base, many of the members hung back because life, with kids and full-time jobs, simply got in the way.

But this month, the show that will kick things into gear again for Bracken will be Steven Dietz’s “Private Eyes,” which will be performed for one weekend only, Thursday, Nov. 3 through Sunday, Nov. 6, at the Phoenix Performing Arts Center in Duryea.

A DARK INTERPRETATION

“Private Eyes” was written by Dietz in 1996 and centers around a husband and wife who are rehearsing a play with a director who sets his sights on the wife. A private investigator, who turns out to be more than what she seems, and a therapist also come into the mix. The theme of deception is strong throughout the entire show, and the truth and the reality of the situation are never entirely clear to the audience.

“I came across the ‘Private Eyes’ script last year,” Nordstrom, who portrays the wife, Lisa, said. “It’s been a year and a half, almost, in the making. And I was just so passionate about the show, and I love the script, and it hadn’t been done in this area for a very long time.”

The show was intended as a comedy of suspicion, but when Joe DeMuro signed on as director — with Nordstrom and Kim Wrazien, who plays the part of Cory, acting as assistant directors — and read the script for himself, that’s not quite what he garnered from it.

“When I read it, I didn’t do any research into it,” he said. “I didn’t want to be swayed. So I just read the script. I got done reading it, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is a really, really messed up play.’ I saw it as very dark and kind of twisted.”

The script has storylines that sometimes only make sense after the fact, if at all. It’s a complex undertaking, and for DeMuro, who is also portraying the husband, Matthew, that made it more of a challenge.

“It should make sense on all the levels,” he said. “And that was the hardest part, I think, because the way it’s written, it is very complicated. Probably by the fifth time I read it, I was still picking up little subtleties or weird connections on what was going on. So that’s the biggest challenge because you also don’t want to spoon feed your audience, because you want to allow them to discover it. That makes it more fun.”

REBUILDING REPUTATION

The play, with its unorthodox format and adult issues, is in sync with what Bracken is known for.

“One (goal) of Bracken is to really bring shows that are not done very often here, to really bring new works to the area,” Nordstrom said. “And it’s not for the sake of being unconventional, it’s just for the sake of getting new works that are not the typical stuff.”

Clisham noted that not having a space of their own now is a blessing — and a curse. Because Bracken doesn’t have a mortgage and other bills to pay, it can simply go at its own pace, picking and choosing shows without worrying about making enough money for upkeep. However, it also has to deal with the work of finding a theater to perform in, something that becomes more of an issue when the nature of most of Bracken’s productions comes into play. That is also the primary reason why “Private Eyes” will run for only one weekend.

“I think we got a little bit spoiled by having that space, in a way, because we could do what we wanted,” she said. “We tend to do sort of different stuff, we’ve never shied away from kind of adult themes or adult language. So now we’ve talked to some people about going into the space, and they’ll say, ‘Well, you know, we’re not really comfortable with that script,’ which is totally within their rights. But at the same time, I don’t think any of us want to sacrifice what we want to do in order to fit into a space.”

Though Bracken never truly split up, since this show will be the first in a few years, Nordstrom noted that she hopes it gets things going again.

“I hope that this is actually a revival of Bracken,” she stated. “I have scripts already that are waiting in the wings, so I hope that with ‘Private Eyes’ will come some other stuff, not too far away.”

Clisham agreed.

“I think theater is such a hard draw right now anyway,” she said. “There’s so much going on with the arena and different clubs and movies, and people have a limited number of entertainment dollars. So I think (‘Private Eyes’) is representative of what we do, and if we could build that reputation again, that this is the kind of stuff we present, I think there’s a market for that.”

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