No swan song for 'Nightingale'
By KAREN SHADE, 8/27/2006
Performance of "Old Crow Confessions" at the Nightingale Theater in Tulsa. MICHAEL WYKE / Tulsa World
Troupe battles money woes to hang onto vision
Over a cup of peppermint-flavored coffee on a crisp, cloudy day back in February, Sara Cruncleton excitedly talked about building a pool in the middle of the Nightingale Theater stage floor.
Both she and her husband, John Cruncleton, had seen "Metamorphoses," an adaptation of Ovid's classical Roman poem on myth and transformation, and they were both eager to get the production started at their home stage.
Six months later, however, the theater nixed the production. Instead, the Nightingale crew engaged the audience with a curious little phenomenon called "Old Crow Confessions" involving theater lighting, a bottle of whisky and strangers divulging their secrets in front of a paying public.
The pool was not a bad idea -- the theater can be warm inside when it is over 95 degrees outdoors. It's just part of the offbeat charm of this house of chaos at 1416 E. Fourth St.
But while it may look like the theater has surrendered its creative integrity for the easy (well, easier) money coming in from a line up of cabaret shows, its four owners insist the Nightingale is not giving up its vision.
The Cruncletons and their business partners, Amber and Jeff Whitlatch, won't get to present their treatise on transformation, but the Nightingale and its crew is in the midst of a transition that will color the order of business from here on.
"I really feel like it's been a blessing in disguise that we've had to hunker down and do these real low-profile shows, because everything we've done in the past month or two has been really audience-oriented," Cruncleton said.
"Metamorphoses" wasn't the first production to disappear. "The Sex Habits of American Women," described as "Kinsey"-meets-"Desperate Housewives," had been on the flexible Nightingale schedule for nearly a year, set for run in July. It also was dropped.
Sara Cruncleton was set to direct the play, but she was not satisfied with the age range of actors who showed up for auditions.
"I had a specific idea of how I wanted to cast and block and produce that show, and I just wasn't finding the right people," she said.
Then it was time to look at "Metamorphoses," an adaptation that called for a pool through which characters would emerge.
"That came down to the technical. We did not have the cash flow to produce that show," Sara said.
The group sought donations and a variety of means of paying for a small pool to be installed in the theater floor, but it didn't happen.
The decision was simple -- no pool, no show.
"We weren't enthusiastic enough about the project to make the sacrifices necessary to make it happen," Cruncleton said. "It's that way with theater in general. You have to either be in love or passionate about some aspect of the project or we're not going to waste our time on it."
But are they passionate about cabaret shows that allow all comers access to a mike so they can rant about their sometimes wild escapades?
An evening of "Old Crow Confessions" is a grab bag of music and true stories, some of which are questionable.
Over the summer, the theater's solution to empty space was weekly cabarets. Cabarets ran throughout July and August. Both "Old Crow" and a series of the adult spelling bees sold well, and that success opened an unexpected door into the theater's mission.
"It's been very revealing to me how much that seemed to answer a need in our audience," Cruncleton said. "It's answering some need in them that is akin to the church-going impulse in people. It was also like I reintroduced myself to the whole reason I was into theater in the first place."
Speaking under spotlights affords an interpretative, unguarded form of communication with strangers that isn't present in most person-to-person communication.
"The audience really seems to enjoy these types of things." Sara said.
When notice went out earlier this month that Andrew Agee's "Puppets Gone Wild 3D" would play at the Nightingale starting in late September, people calling the theater were greeted with that familiar shrill tone indicating that you have dialed a non-working number.
"Even the big (theaters) in New York are always scrambling for money. It's hard. It's the arts in America," Cruncleton said.
"Now we're getting E-mails asking if we're still doing a show, if we're still in business," he said.
Despite the bare-bones budget, the owners want to stage more original works, works generated by the Nightingale family, which includes not only the resident Midwestern Theater Company and 50 Swats Collective, but also outside groups such as Theatre Club, Youth OnStage and other companies that present there.
With Agee's show set for September, the 50 Swats Collective's original "Old-Fashioned Poison Candy" tapped for the month of October and a Theatre Club show ("The Pillowman") slated for November, the owners feel their vision to create questioning, unsettling and introspective theater has been refocused.
"The theater is starting to get up and walk on it's own," Amber Whitlatch said. "All of a sudden we've got this huge network of people who are willing to spend their time, money, energy and their sweat and tears and to work at that place," she said.