No ‘Fluff Stuff,’ Morningside Players Theater Co. Offers an Affordable Alternative to Broadway

By Bonnie Eissner

Last Sunday afternoon, about three miles north of the dramatic finish line of the New York City Marathon at West 67th Street, drama of a different sort was taking place in the basement at 100 LaSalle Street in the Morningside Gardens housing cooperative.  

There, on a small stage in front of just over 50 people seated on plastic chairs, nine actors performed After the Revolution, Amy Herzog’s play about a young activist  from a family of leftist radicals who is coming to terms with a secret from her grandfather’s past.

The subterranean space is the home of the nonprofit Morningside Players Theater Co., and praise on the theater review website show-score.com and positive word-of-mouth drew a capacity crowd.

Many in the audience, like Larry Winderbaum, live in the six-building Morningside Gardens complex and are regulars at the theater. They greeted each other warmly as they found their seats or mingled during intermission over wine, seltzer, and snacks at the “bar” — a plastic table tended by Dana Minaya, a volunteer and fellow Morningside Gardens resident. 

“This is the best I’ve ever seen,” Winderbaum told Susanna Frazer, the theater’s artistic director, during intermission.

The two-act play, set in 1999, addressed a topic that was of the moment: how divergent political views and interpretations of the past can rend families. Creative staging minimized the quirks of the space, such as the low ceiling and a stage that is open to the audience on two sides with a stout pillar in the corner threatening to obstruct sight lines. 

Since becoming artistic director in 2011, Frazer has stretched modest resources to create an affordable alternative to Broadway for discerning theater-goers, and there’s ample evidence that she’s succeeding. The theater mounts two full productions a year, as well as presentations for Black History Month and Women’s History Month and an outdoor presentation in the summer. 

Frazer has directed classic dramas such as Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, as well as the comedy Mrs. Farnsworth by A. R. Gurney. Productions of John Henry Redwood’s The Old Settler in 2014 and August Wilson’s Fences in 2015 – plays that depict the African American experience – won Best Revival awards from the Audience Development Committee, an organization that honors Black theater in New York City. 

“We don’t tend to do fluff stuff,” Frazer said. She loves comedies, she said, but avoids dinner theater fare; she knows her audience members won’t tolerate it. Many are seasoned theater professionals who live in the Morningside Gardens complex that stretches from West 123rd Street north to LaSalle Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam avenues.

The cooperative went up during the urban renewal period in the 1950s. It was designed to create affordable housing for middle-income families, including those of performing artists and college professors. 

The roughly 980 apartments continue to attract artists and intellectuals, and residents describe the community as close-knit. Morningside Players, founded in 1974, is one of many amenities in the complex. For its first 37 years, the theater was run as a voluntary community project. Frazer, who spent years as a professional actor on Broadway, in regional theater, and in film and television, turned the theater more professional by establishing ties with Actors’ Equity Association. A large part of the budget comes from grants, which allow the theater to pay modest stipends to actors and the production team.

Tickets are pay-what-you-can. “One of the things we really want to do is keep it affordable,” said Bridget Leicester, the managing director and treasurer, who noted the theater suggests donations of $15-$20.

A push to move ticket sales online and increase the theater’s web and social media presence has attracted younger people from beyond the neighborhood, Frazer said. “The audiences are really fun,” she said. “They’re quite a mix, and they are from all over the city and sometimes New Jersey, Connecticut,” she observed. 

The actors, too, have varied backgrounds. Five of the performers in After the Revolution, including an understudy, reside in Morningside Gardens, as do Frazer and Leicester, a retired social worker who acted professionally early in her career.

“Most of the people who live here are professional actors, designers, musicians,” Frazer said. “So just using residents, we’re getting top-drawer people.”

Cast member Susan Peters has lived in Morningside Gardens since 1997. She performed off Broadway and in regional theater before taking time off to raise her family. She only got involved in Morningside Players after Frazer joined as artistic director. “It just became more of a real theater,” she said. “We don’t have battling divas,” she said. “It’s just a very cooperative, no pun intended, way of working.” 

Morningside Players Theater Co. is planning its spring production for April 24 to May 11. Details will be available on its website. 

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