On Friday, Sept. 6, the Rogue Theatre will not only open its 2024-2025 season but founders Joe McGrath and Cindy Meier will celebrate a milestone — the company’s 20th anniversary.
Twenty-one years ago, however, the Rogue was nothing more than the two of them working on Act II of “Moon for the Misbegotten,” by Eugene O’Neill. They met in a classroom at Pima County Community College.
They had no plans for the work, just a desire to say great words.
“We had no idea when or where we would perform the scene,” Meier said. “We just wanted to work on a good play. We met every Monday night for about a year.”
Those weekly meetings were about conversation, as well as rehearsals and that’s how the pair discovered they had much in common when it came to theater.
“We began talking about theater as much as we were rehearsing,” McGrath said. “We wanted to climb plays that were mountains and we wanted to find an audience that wanted to climb them with us.”
They found that audience in Tucson when the Rogue Theatre was born.
Audiences will not find lighthearted musicals here, though McGrath acknowledged there is nothing wrong with them. In fact, he has performed in “The Music Man,” he said, but no, this is a place to take a deep dive into deep ideas.
“It’s comparable at times to a book club,” McGrath said. “We’re here for the curious, basically, people who are not afraid of bestiality — of ideas and challenges.”
He was referring to a production of “The Goat,” by Edward Albee, which they mounted in their third season. McGrath calls it their most important production.
“This is a really serious, harsh kind of play and funny, very funny at the same time,” McGrath said. “Basically it’s about an architect who’s about to win a big prize and it is revealed that he is having a love affair with a goat, an actual farm animal.”
Two things happened because of that production. One, they gained “four or five really critical supporters to the Rogue Theatre over the years who really put us up into the next bracket,” he said.
Two, a tradition was born.
“That production of “The Goat,” the audience in the third or fourth performance, we came out and they were still sitting there, trying to process what they’d just seen,” McGrath said. “We eventually said, ‘Well, we have got to talk to these people or they'll wander into traffic or something, so we started post-show discussions and we haven’t stopped. We have a discussion after every show.”
Meier remembers the night well.
“We had changed out of costume and we’re getting ready to close down the place and half the audience was just sitting there talking to each other, (saying) ‘Oh my gosh, do you believe what we just saw?’” she said. “That’s how our post-show discussions got started.”
It turns out, audiences really like the discussions.
“Often when people write to us they’ll say, ‘The play was great but a really important part of it to me was having somebody to talk about the play afterwards,’” Meier added.
The company performs at the old YMCA at 300 E. University Boulevard. The theater itself is intimate, holding only 165 people, but it is a great opportunity to really see the actors.
This season, the company is going to climb mountains with “The Skin of Our Teeth” by Thornton Wilder, “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino and adapted by John Capecci, “The Playboy of the Western World” by John Millington Singe, “Marjorie Prime” by Jordan Harrison and “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare.
Also part of the show season are play readings. Theater goers will have two opportunities to see actors read. Scheduled are “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, “The Great God Pan” by Amy Herzog, “Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons” by Sam Steiner and “No Man’s Land” by Harold Pinter.
Both Meier and McGrath are in their 60s and although they are not ready to retire, they are looking at succession plans.
“We’re doing the work that we love but something that’s been important to us over the last several years, we’ve gathered together a number of younger people who are walking the path with us and climbing the mountains with us,” Meier said. “We’re really preparing them to take over the theater and so that’s something we’ve been thinking a lot about because we’d like it to continue beyond us.”
In the meantime, though…
“We’re here,” she said, “and we've been producing great literature for 20 years.”
“By the Skin of Our Teeth,” by Thornton Wilder
WHEN: Various times from Friday, Sept. 6 through Sunday, Sept. 29
WHERE: The Rogue Theatre, 300 E. University Boulevard
INFO: 520-551-2053 or theroguetheatre.org
COST: Ticket prices begin at $37, season tickets are available
