Sunday, January 11, 2009
A+E, Theater, Reviews

Climbing up

Barbara Uterhardt works to bring Onstage Atlanta to new heights

BY BERT OSBORNE
 
Navigating its share of ups and downs along the way, Onstage Atlanta is the longest-running avocational theater company in town, now in its 37th season. A mere 31, Barbara Cole Uterhardt wasn’t even alive when the troupe debuted in 1971, but the Atlanta native’s first show out of college (Emory) was a 1999 Onstage production of “Man of La Mancha.” In the ensuing years, Uterhardt has become something of a fixture on the local scene, both as an actress and a director, in addition to her work as a teacher and administrator with Applause for Kids, a program of the Atlanta School for the Performing Arts.
 
Call it a case of being in the right place at the right time: Uterhardt hadn’t been back to Onstage much, until she directed its 2006 version of “M. Butterfly,” and a few months later she co-starred there in “Bash.” The group was in the midst of an extensive reorganization process, replete with town hall-style meetings and feasibility committees, of which Uterhardt was a member. Since flourishing under Marc Gowan for most of the ’80s and ’90s (when the company was based downtown, in a building that’s now a soup kitchen), Onstage has floundered for most of the post-Gowan years, in a Decatur strip-mall space adjoining a noisy bowling alley. “I keep telling my husband [comic actor Googie Uterhardt] that now’s the time for him to finally write ‘The Big Lebowski: The Musical,’” she jokes during a recent interview.
 
Seriously, though, in the fall of ’07, Onstage’s board of directors adopted a new mission, built around a core ensemble of actors, directors, designers and business people, to share in the responsibility of running the proverbial show—and they offered Uterhardt the job of artistic company manager. She says "manager" is the operative word. “What I wasn’t interested in was being an artistic director in the usual sense of calling all the shots myself,” Uterhardt recalls, “not with a full-time job someplace else and with other acting or directing opportunities out there.” (She’s staging Center Theatre’s “High School Musical” next month.)
 
“It’s not so much about me looking over everybody’s shoulders as it is about delegating the work and trusting others to do their jobs,” she explains. “We have a company of 21 otherwise completely different people who share the same passion and drive and enthusiasm about theater, who want it to succeed and are willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. We’re all in this together, as a group. We’re all striving for the same thing. We were looking for Renaissance people, not only those from the artistic or production side of things, but also those who knew about marketing, financing, or other skills behind the scenes. Some have expertise in one field, some in another, but the more each of us can learn about all the variables that go into operating a theater, the better it’ll be for all of us, whether you’re running lines onstage, running a light board or running the box office.”
 
To that end, Uterhardt is designing the sound for two upcoming Onstage comedies: “The Underpants” opens Jan. 16; “Sylvia” opens Jan. 23, and the shows will rotate performances through Feb. 22. Co-directed by Charlie Miller and Cathe Hall Payne, Steve Martin’s Bavarian farce “The Underpants” features Carrie Walrond Hood, Darrell Wofford, Marcelo Banderas and Antjuan Taylor. In A.R. Gurney’s doggie tale “Sylvia,” Michael Henry Harris directs a cast including Jenna Edmonds (as the titular pooch), Pat Bell and Doug Graham. Slated for later in the season are productions of the personal drama “Wit” and the racy musical “The Wild Party.”
 
“We have a long way to go before we get where we want to be,” Uterhardt concedes, “but that’s part of the excitement, too. You could say it was an uphill battle, but the point is we’re not looking back or moving down the ladder. We’re climbing up.” SP