After a divorce left her economic resources nil, Bethany Ford, artistic director of the new Minneapolis-based Prufrock Theatre, found that theater lovers with thin wallets had to watch Dancing with the Stars to experience live performances. With that in mind, Ford gathered a group of theater impresarios to form the fledgling company, whose premiere performance, Landscape of the Body, begins this month at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage. The traveling troupe’s goal, says Ford, is to create affordable theater (by offering “pay what you can” performances, as well as reduced-price tickets) that appeals to all walks of life.

And what of the company’s titular nod to T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”? “I was talking about local theater with my boyfriend and I sat down to read poetry and came across this poem I’ve loved for so long,” says Ford. “As corny as it sounds, I read the poem aloud … and I knew what I had to do.” Ford says that Eliot’s masterpiece challenged her to “do something that might facilitate or nurture human connection.”

After settling on the company’s name and mission, Ford tapped former director of the Minnesota Fringe Festival Leah Cooper to direct Prufrock’s first production. Written by John Guare (best known for penning Six Degrees of Separation), Landscape of the Body focuses on the lives of two sisters who are uprooted by death, gangsters and their respective roles in the porn industry in 1970s Manhattan. “What appealed to me about this play is that John Guare is so good at giving us a gritty, difficult reality that forces audiences to face corruption and the nastier sides of human behavior head-on while still giving you this amazing sense of hope and the American dream,” Cooper explains. The cast is comprised entirely of Twin Cities actors, including Fringe favorite Ariel Pinkerton and Tony Williams, star of Mu Performing Arts Center’s The Walleye Kid.

Keeping productions as local as possible is a key part of Prufrock’s mission. Both Ford and Cooper cut their teeth in regional theater scenes outside the Twin Cities (Ford down South, Cooper in L.A.), but they’ve stuck around here because they believe Minneapolis connects theater to community in a way that doesn’t happen elsewhere. “When I first moved here, it felt like a home I never knew existed,” says Cooper. “Theater is very much an art form driven by the need to connect to one’s community.” Ford, along with the theater’s three-person board, aim to foster that connection by donating tickets to charitable organizations like People Serving People and Advocates for Human Rights, and by telling stories representative of the socially oppressed sector of the population. As Ford puts it, “When [theater] is relegated to be an art form of upper-middle classes, especially white upper-middle classes, a vast majority of the population is losing out on one of humanity’s finest forms of expression.”

Through Saturday, November 21
7:30 p.m.
$8 - 18

Landscape of the Body
Minneapolis Theatre Garage
711 W. Franklin Ave., Mpls.