A Shot in the Dark: Brooklyn Rep
Charles Quittner is the founder of Brooklyn Rep the self-described theatre company “for gay London basements.” We return with….
Charles Quittner on Brooklyn Rep
From backyards in Brooklyn…
The first production I ever produced was Adrienne Kennedy's adaptation of Electra (Euripides). We did it in a backyard in Bushwick, New York, and it was all hands on deck, baby! We got a groundswell of support, because Vice did a feature on us - they thought we were just so kooky. On night two we realised it was going to rain, and we knew we couldn’t cancel. We cannot cancel the show! But what do we do?
I’ve always been friends with my neighbours, I think that’s important. So everybody already knew what was happening, what the schedule was etc. When we knew the rain was coming we bought a bunch of giant blue tarps and tied them onto the fences, to the upstairs’ stairs, the neighbour’s balconies and covered the whole length of the backyard. All the cast and crew worked together to build this huge freaking dome, it was incredible. The rain beat down against it and nothing got in. We’d have these amazing parties afterwards, DJ-ed by Ty Sunderland who’s now really famous, but this was his New York debut.
For every performance we’d have people watching on fire escapes and out of windows, as well as in the backyard. We even had one neighbour whose daughter was turning eight who was going to have a backyard party. So they organised the party to be a viewing of our play. When we were about to start someone yelled, “Okay kids, line up along the fence” and they watched the whole show and loved it! That was awesome, it felt directly engaged to the community, and that set me up for a lifetime of backyard community theatre.
To basements in London….
I think what Brooklyn Rep is, is the rigour and structural ingenuity of New York playwriting with the sensation and fabulousness of London nightlife. All of our shows so far have been comedies with big music elements. And I’ve found the greatest actors I've ever worked with from the nightlife scene of London. I genuinely think that drag performers make the best actors and some of the best performances I've ever gotten have been with drag artists.
So, we do new international plays and we stage them in a very celebratory London drag kind of way. Most of the time there's a pizza party afterwards. I love creating an environment where friendships are made at my shows - after all, it's nightlife! I hate a cold theatre space where you go in, leave and don't talk to anyone. If we're sharing a space, I want to create a community from that. People have dated from our shows, have joined each other’s bands, audience members have gone home together. I love that.
I love a basement too. They're inherently vibey. They upend expectations so easily, like when people first saw All the Fraudulent Horse Girls in the basement of The Glory, they weren't expecting it to hit as hard as it did.
At The Glory/The Divine I facilitated some London debuts of the artists I love. For example, Daphne Always was doing her honeymoon tour of Europe after she married herself in New York, and so we did a Brooklyn Rep cabaret in The Glory. We got Daphne and all these amazing luminaries complementary to what she does to come together: we had West End performers, drag queens, drag kings, etc. We’d sold out on a Monday night, and afterwards - this is something you can’t do in America - we all found a bench, sat by the canal, had a smoke and a drink. It was this lovely group of people from all around the world, audience members, drag artists, theatre goers, partners, school friends, friends of friends, all hanging out at 11pm by this picturesque canal. And I thought to myself “Wow, I am so proud of what Brooklyn Rep does: this community started over this wonderful woman's London debut”. I'm really honoured to be the gay bar basement theatre company. It’s a stamp I want and I wear it with pride. I love a basement and I love a backyard.
Shows to check out 👀
Too Much Pills and Liquor this June and July at The Divine.
All the Fraudulent Horse Girls this July at the Seven Dials Playhouse in London and in the Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh Fringe, this August..
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