New space, new play at Riverside Theatre in downtown Iowa City

Initially, Producing Artistic Director Adam Knight wanted to christen Riverside Theatre’s new home in downtown Iowa City by staging a “newish” play that would have name recognition. But during discussions, Managing Director Irena Saric suggested opening with a world premiere.

Doing so would carry forth Riverside’s history of producing more than 40 world premieres in its first 40 years.

Knight agreed the time was right to debut a new show in its new space at 119 E. College St. So he turned to his college friend and longtime collaborator Mat Smart of Brooklyn, N.Y., who penned “The Agitators,” an explosive drama that wowed Riverside audiences in the winter of 2020, before the pandemic shut down shows.

This time, the theater is producing Smart’s “Eden Prairie, 1971.” It’s part of the National New Play Network’s Rolling World Premiere program, so it will debut in Iowa City from Feb. 4 to 20 before the script moves on to the New Jersey Repertory Company and Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado.

“World premieres carry with them a lot of risk,” said Knight, 42, of Iowa City. “Obviously, it's an unknown play you have to develop. You have to add extra time in the process to let it find its way. And so it was a risky thing to program, but I love the idea that when audiences sit down in this theater, they're not only going to hear the first words of theater ever spoken in this space, they're also going to hear a piece of theater that's never been heard in any space.

“And so there's this kind of double rainbow of new,” he said, adding that “The Agitators” “meant so much to our audiences because that was the last multi-character play in our old Gilbert Street space. There seemed to be a nice bookend of this story that we're telling — a connection to how we ended things, how we closed things out at Gilbert Street, and with how we plan to operate this new theater.”

Even though the two plays take place in different centuries, both are rooted in history, friendships and difficult situations growing out of a period of divisiveness and unrest in the country that mirror issues continuing to vex society.

“The Agitators” explored the friendship between Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass in the 1880s, as they worked to secure voting rights for Blacks and women.

“Eden Prairie, 1971,” revolves around a draft dodger who risks arrest when he sneaks home to deliver a message to a former high school classmate in Eden Prairie, Minn. It happens to fall on the night Apollo 15 lands on the moon, so the play not only looks at relationships, but also at the controversy roiling around the Vietnam War that divided the United States during a time when the country was embarking on world-changing historic explorations.

“I'm always just trying to find flash points where people change, and if you can combine that with a moment in history where there is a great amount of change in volatility,” said Smart, 42.

“I'm just always trying to go deeper in the questions that I'm asking, and in the complexities of the characters of the people. I think that's probably the biggest thing that I take from creating a play.”

As he gets older, Smart said he sees that “people are full of flaws and nuance, and I think something that this media age doesn't do well is explore nuance in people. And so I'm interested in the gray areas of the soul, and I think the only way you can get better at that, is (by) getting older and writing more and keeping your ears open.”

Even though he wasn’t alive yet in 1971, the play’s name comes from the three years the Naperville, Ill., native lived in Minneapolis, of which Eden Prairie is a suburb. He felt the name evoked a “sort of collision of the Old Testament and the prairies of America together.”

He’s especially pleased with the creative merger he’s found at Riverside Theatre, being involved “at every step of the process” in bringing his play from page to stage.

“I've been in on every design meeting via Zoom, which I've never done before in my artistic career,” he said. “It's been really great to see the designers’ work evolve over the last several months. I was asked my opinion on the artwork for the show, the graphic design — that sometimes doesn't happen at theaters.

“I really feel like this is truly a new-play theater, because there's a place here really in every conversation for the playwright, and that doesn't happen all the time.”

New experiences

Directing a new play in a new space opens up challenges and joys for Knight, who staged plays in unconventional spaces in New York City before coming to Iowa City in 2018.

“The experience itself has been something I've never quite experienced before, which is where we're building the play and the playing space while the actual building is coming together around us,” Knight said. “It's kind of like fitting the lock to the key instead of the key to the lock. It’s very mind blowing at times.”

Because the stage and seating configurations can be changed with every play that’s produced in the new space, Knight added that he wanted to experiment with a different configuration than the Gilbert Street stage, where the seating was stationary. For “Eden Prairie, 1917,” the audience will be sitting on two sides of an L-shaped stage.

"I think that was important artistically — to both have fun and stretch ourselves — but also to introduce the audience to the flexibility the space affords. It provides a degree of intimacy that I think even a theater like Gilbert Street couldn't give you, because of the angles that you can observe the action from.“

He said the L-shape “makes every seat is a great seat, but every seat is a slightly different seat. And so the experience does change a little bit, depending on where you sit. You might get a moment from one character that you won’t get in the same way from a different angle. That's true in any theater, but especially in a configuration like this, that’s part of the fun of it — that we're all experiencing the same story, but in slightly different ways.”

Actor’s perspective

Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers, 48, of Iowa City, who is portraying Mrs. Thompson in “Eden Prairie, 1971,” is a familiar face to Riverside audiences, having appeared in many new and familiar shows on the Gilbert Street and outdoor festival stages in Iowa City.

She said that while saying goodbye to Gilbert Street was sad for her, because Riverside had been there so long and so many theaters were closing in the wake of the pandemic, “the fact that Riverside was able to make the pivot and into a space so abundant and so amazing, I continually am just full of gratitude for that.”

A professor in the University of Iowa’s theater department, she said the acting experience offers similarities as well as differences between Riverside’s old and new homes.

“It’s beautiful in there,” she said of the new Crescent Building space. “It’s kind of similar in some ways. Gilbert Street was a black box essentially, except for the fact that the stage was quite separate from where the seating was. And here it’s all just a room and we can arrange seating differently for different shows.

“It some ways, it feels like it’s honoring what the theater has always been like and the kinds of work that we’ve always done there,” she said. “It doesn’t feel super, super different, but yet at the same time, it’s fun to be downtown, and it’s got such a different energy in that regard, so that’s kind of neat.”

Working with the L-configuration gives her new things to consider as an actor.

“It’s interesting,” she said. “When I’m moving around stage, I want to make sure I’m not directly facing (another actor). I want to do shoulder-to-shoulder so we still look like we’re looking at each other, and we are, but both sides (of the audience) are getting something interesting to look at. They're either looking at your scene partner or the other side’s looking at you.”

Having worked on many new shows at Riverside Theatre, including works by former Iowa City residents Sean Christopher Lewis and Jennifer Fawcett, Hartsgrove Mooers has been excited to again work with the playwright.

“It’s nice to be able to ask questions,” she said. “When you’re dealing with someone like Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams, you can’t just tap the playwright on the shoulder and (say) ‘Am I doing justice to this?’ When the play is new, you can definitely clarify, ‘Oh, so this is what you’re saying.’ It’s nice to have that conversation and opportunity.”

She’s also loving her character, calling this role one of her all-time favorites.

“She’s funny and fussy. She’s a mom that lacks boundaries. She wants her daughter to be happy, but doesn’t realize that might mean giving her space.”

With a career military husband, Mrs. Thompson is under tremendous stress and not coping well, Hartsgrove Mooers noted, so her daughter has come home to take care of her.

And while the play deals with serious issues, audiences will find moments of humor, too.

“The play is funny, it's heartfelt, but it also asks the big questions,” Knight said. “There were moments of this age at this moment in history that were terrifying. This play doesn't shy away from those moments. But it was also a time of wonder and because of the story, it was a time of youth and the hope of love and of friendship that in some ways sustains humankind through hard moments.”

Smart added, “I hope (audiences) laugh, I hope they cry, I hope they’re moved. I hope they learn something. I hope they’ll think a little differently about this time in history and our present moment.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com