Despite its name, the Invisible Theatre is right out in the open, plain for all to see. The trick is to find it.
Situated on the unlikely corner of Drachman and First streets, the theatre shares a building with Eldon Drapery, Carpet and Upholstery Cleaners. Inside it is intimate to say the least, seating 76 on a good day and 80 in a pinch. Audience members are practically in the actors’ laps. That becomes a good thing when they can see the actors’ every expression and if actors are doing their jobs (which as professional actors they always do) those watching can really lose themselves in the story.
Although only a few are on stage, it takes a small army to get a show to opening night. At Invisible Theatre there are six paid staff, a bunch of volunteers and the actors. It is a true collaborative effort.
“Everybody has to do everything,” Managing Artistic Director Betsey Cruse Craig said. “If you don’t like doing that, then theatre is not for you. Our theme around here is that it’s always something. Every day.”
This year the Invisible Theatre celebrates 55 years of staging interesting, independent, sometimes new, small-company plays. For 50 of those years Susan Clausen ran the show so that explains why her name can be found in the lobby.
Behind the stage to the side is a tiny dressing room where usually two or three people might be getting ready. For this season’s first play, however, there will be a crowd: seven actors. The season opens Sept. 13 with a show called “In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play,” by Sarah Ruhl.
“It’s really great,” Cruse Craig said. “In the late 1800s at the dawn of electricity doctors would relieve women’s ‘hysteria’ with a medical device known as a vibrator.”
This season, the main stage is home to six plays, but there is more than just that going on at this busy theater. They call them IT Specials. There are the Ten-Minute Dramas, which feature a $5 barbecue after the show; those were in July. Then there’s a monologue showcase called “Going It Alone” beginning May 22, 2027, and Women’s Voices Play Reading, beginning in October.
Cruse Craig said she chooses plays far in advance, according to timing “and instinct. If I feel a pull to something, I feel like plays kind of speak to me a little bit and that’s how it happens although you read, you think, you worry.”
She worries because there’s plenty to worry about.
“There’s an art to choosing a season,” she said. “For me, that is the most important part of my job, getting an artistic team together for every single show and it’s like making a great recipe or making a great cocktail.”
Her biggest lesson?
“You’ll never make everyone happy so you have to choose things that align with your core values and mission,” she said.
Currently she is almost done planning the 2027-28 season.
Invisible Theatre has its roots in the early 1970s and was begun by four people from the UA who wanted to do work they wanted to do, not what someone assigned them.
“It was 1971, they didn’t go to Vietnam and they wanted to do something artistic and creative,” Cruse Craig said. One of the original founders, Tim Fuller, still works with the IT company.
Other shows planned for IT include:
Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector, Nov. 1-22.
Holiday Harmonies, holiday music by an array of local artists across genres, Dec. 4 – 13.
Vintage Hitchcock, A Live Radio Play by Joe Landry, Jan. 24 – Feb. 14.
Mud and Fire, The Pottery Play by Lindsay Joelle, April 25 to May 16.
Before you go, here is just one word of advice: Enter the theatre prepared to sit for a stretch. Generally speaking, there are no intermissions and the bathroom is situated right beside the stage so everyone will know although there are two of them.
