March 18, 2008
Dramatist Article- April/May

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL

By Jayme McGhan


The professional theatre has a new branch. Smack in the middle of the glossed over rows of indistinguishable houses, next to the mega strip malls with the Bed Bath and Beyond in the middle shining like the last bastion of soccer-mom bliss, around the corner from the forty-seventh Starbucks/Caribou/Dunn Brothers, nestled in the remnants of an honest to God strip mall from the eighties is the new home of the Twin Cities metro areas latest artistic endeavor, Yellow Tree Theatre. This is theatre for the burbs and by the burbs. You can’t beat it with a stir stick.

You also can’t help but admire the absolute tenacity and bravery the dynamic duo who started it possess. While all of their peers are heading to graduate school to continue their education, Jason Peterson and Jessica Lind figure they’ll just take the money they would have dumped in to an educational institution and open up their own theatre instead. Oh, it helps that they’re married and can co-sign a loan and a lease. The young husband and wife (father and mother as well), both originally hailing from one of the many suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul, recently moved back to Minnesota from New York City with exactly this plan in mind; to start a professional theatre company in the suburbs. Jason, a talented actor with television credits including Six Degrees, Guiding Light, and As The World Turns will serve as the companies Artistic Director while Jessica, a member of the Guild, will get the joy of watching her plays on her own stage. The theatre will kick-off their season with Jessica’s play String this fall. In the meantime, a festival of short work will introduce the community to Yellow Tree Theatre in May.

“We always wanted to start a theatre in New York, but it was simply too overwhelming. Minnesota seemed right for us,” says Jessica. “There’s a ton of exciting theatre in the downtown area,” adds Jason, “but we wanted to bring the theatre to our own community, where we live. So we though, why not Osseo?” Why not Osseo indeed? After all, there are nearly two million people within twenty square miles of the northern suburb. Located on an extremely busy intersection, well over forty-thousand of this built in audience drive past Yellow Tree Theatre’s space every day. And what a space it is. Converted from the warehouse section of an old strip mall, the theatre now takes up a majority of the square footage and includes a lovely wine bar and socializing area.

The happy couple met while pursuing their undergraduate theatre degrees at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Married during their junior year, they began to get that inevitable bug to try their hand at New York theatre. After graduating, they moved to NYC and, for a short while at least, began a relatively successful climb. But it sure wasn’t a bowl full of cherries. “I was in constant communication with an editor at Samuel French who was trying to shop my play to a New York audience,” explains Jessica. “He finally told me that there simply wasn’t a market for my writing there. According to him, New York audiences don’t like happy endings. So, what’s the next move after that? Minnesota.” Hopefully Minnesota audiences do like happy endings.

“We want to tell good stories, that’s it. We want to produce new and exciting plays,” says Jason. “We don’t want to be a theatre for theatre people, for artists, for those who are already a part of the mix. We want to produce theatre for people who don’t see theatre,” he adds. “Even if we tried to be a theatre for theatre people, we’d fail at it,” laughs Jessica. Yellow Tree’s mission statement backs this up one-hundred percent, exclaiming proudly, “We want to see your uncle Al, the big burly truck-driver in the third row, get out his hanky, wipe his eyes, and blame it on hay fever.” In an industry that seems to continually be filled to the brim with artistic nepotism, this concept is an absolute gasp of fresh air.

Of course, the risks are high. In a country where new theatre companies fold quicker than an omelet, these two are putting their money where their mouth is. They took out a small business loan to get the theatre on its feet. “We’re positive we’ll at least break even. Worst case scenario, we walk out after our two year lease is done in debt,” says Jason. “But if we went to graduate school, we’d walk out after two years in the same debt. We’ll just consider this the school of hard knocks.” Jessica pipes up with conviction, “I’m more afraid of not pursuing my dream, what I really love to do, then being in a little bit of debt. It’s more important to us that we give it a go, and maybe establish a community while we’re at it. It’s not Broadway, it’s not the Guthrie, but it’s ours.” It seems that being behind the wheel of your own fate is, with a little roll of the dice, possible. Not only possible but perhaps preferable to leaving it in the hands of a literary manager/casting director/artistic director who have their own visions to worry about, sponsors to please, and friends to produce. Yellow Tree Theatre seems bent on proving it.

So all you suburbanites out there who have been wandering in the stucco-front capitalist desert without a fulfilling artistic drink for what seems like ages…never you fear. Yellow Tree Theatre has arrived. And they want you to invite your uncle Al.






Posted by Jayme on March 18, 2008 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)