A Forever Home

Penumbra Theatre takes a momentary break to retool -- and hopes to come back stronger than ever

Abdul Salaam El Razzac and James Craven were actors in Penumbra Theatre's "Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking."

Image credit: Ann Marsden/Penumbra Theatre

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Editor’s note: This is the third in a three-part series on theater venues in St. Paul that are writing new chapters for themselves. On Monday, we wrote about Park Square Theatre’s $4.2 million fundraising campaign. On Wednesday, we wrote about the Ordway’s ambitious $75 million fundraising effort. See our complete guide to St. Paul’s spring theater activity here.

Just because St. Paul's Penumbra Theatre was recently forced to drop two shows from its lineup doesn’t mean the theatre company isn’t active. In fact, even though the main stage might be dark for the next few months, staff are furiously working behind the scenes to implement a new plan so that the theatre can come back more vibrant than ever next season.

The efforts comes after years of  evaluating the theatre’s mission and developing a new business plan "to change the way we talk about our theater," says Chris Widdess, Penumbra’s managing director of external relations.

That means engaging theater patrons beyond just main stage productions. The company is already starting to experiment with some fresh ideas and making more practical moves, such as a creating a new website and adding more comfortable theater seats.

December also marked the beginning of Penumbra’s new "Let's Talk Theater" program where artists and audiences can enjoy a happy hour conversation about a topic relevant to Penumbra's work. The series continues on Tuesday, Feb. 21, when Penumbra founder and artistic director Lou Bellamy will discuss the relationship between real life social change and Penumbra's history.

Widdess says she hopes that this program becomes a staple of the theater's next season.

New play development is also a tenet of Penumbra's mission, and the theater will begin a concept to foster new African-American playwrights in April. They will hold staged readings of classic black plays, and new playwrights will write a 10-minute response to the classic work. "It's a way to talk about the continuum in which playwriting happens," Widdess says. "To hear from the new August Wilsons and James Baldwins of the world."

Penumbra also hopes to introduce more new plays into its future seasons as a way to nurture up-and-coming playwrights and cut costs since staging new productions is often much less expensive than classic plays.

Widdess notes that much of this new business plan will still be in a testing phase next season, but she says, "We're going to present a season we know we can afford based on conservative projections."

While there's much to look forward to next season, audiences can still expect great events from Penumbra the rest of this current season.

Through a partnership with the University of Minnesota, the theatre has begun presenting a lecture series on the black arts movement, featuring scholars from across the country. Its next production The Amen Corner will kick off at the Guthrie on May 11, and in June, Penumbra will celebrate its 35th anniversary.  

Despite setbacks in the last year, Penumbra is still working to grow as a theater while also sticking to its roots in St. Paul's Selby-Dale neighborhood, a historically African-American community.

"This neighborhood is our home, and we contribute to the vitality of this neighborhood," Widdess says. "Penumbra has to be there for the community. St. Paul will always be our home."

 + To learn more about Penumbra Theatre and its upcoming events visit penumbratheatre.org.