Generic plans to take its act to new digs

NORFOLK

When the Generic Theater opened its doors in 1982, the founder named it for the latest trend in commerce - generic items - reflecting the low-budget, plain-wrapper concept.

This summer, the Generic will be changing its label and its wrapper. The semi-professional theater expects to move its operations from the Ghent section of Norfolk to a 100-seat venue just off the lower parking deck beneath Scope and Chrysler Hall.

The new playhouse will be called Generic Theater Down Under Chrysler Hall, said Denise Dillard, managing director. Onstage, however, it will be the same, old Generic - edgy contemporary plays, biting satire and topical comedies, many of them premieres.

"We're actually very excited about it. We'll be in a real performing space," Dillard said.

The company has not signed a lease, however. "There really isn't a holdup," said Steve Harper, acting director for Norfolk's Department of Cultural Facilities, Arts And Entertainment, which manages the venue that is officially called Little Hall. "I'm reviewing the proposal I got from the Generic, and I've got to share that with a couple of people in the city."

Harper said he needs to make sure the Generic's rehearsal and performance schedules do not conflict with other uses of the hall, such as rehearsals of touring Broadway shows or the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. He also must make the Generic's deal consistent with the leases the city has with other arts groups using city facilities.

The Generic will pay a monthly fee to cover utilities, custodial and maintenance, as it has in its current city space on West 21st Street, he said.

Since the city's goal is for all venues to be well used, and Little Hall has been rarely used for performances, Harper said he is glad to see the Generic going in. He expects a lease will be signed by the end of June.

The lease is likely to be for two to three years, with the idea that the Generic will then find a permanent home. If the Generic wanted to become a permanent tenant, "I don't believe there are any insurmountable obstacles."

The Generic's final show in its longtime home is "Ain't Misbehavin': The Fats Waller Musical Show," which opens Friday and will be performed weekends through June 15. (See Thursday's Break for more on the production.) The theater's managers will break the news about the venue change at each performance.

"Even though this place has been great, we are limited on space. We have no wing space, no fly space, no backstage space," Dillard said, reeling off the backstage amenities most theaters take for granted.

The Generic was organized in 1981 as a project of the city's Parks and Recreation Department. The first show opened in January 1982.

Early on, the Generic performed in an all-purpose room in what is now the Harrison Opera House. Tickets were $3 to sit on a sofa or stuffed chair and watch a show. Capacity: 50. In October 1983 the Generic moved to its current site at 912 W. 21st St., into a nondescript, one-story city building used for vocational-technical classes. Capacity: 77.

Around 1993, after the Generic was booted from parks and rec and asked to reorganize as a board-run nonprofit, the city continued to provide a facility for a modest fee covering expenses.

About two years ago, the city announced it would put the site of the Generic's building up for sale, said Patti Wray, the theater's board president.

The Generic's managers hoped the theater might relocate across the street in a one-story brick building to be refurbished by Cooper Realty, a commercial real estate firm that is buying the theater site and other properties in that block.

"We were trying to find a way to help them keep their location in Ghent," said Jeff Cooper, vice president. His firm's proposal to the city "included an option to provide a new home for the Generic, but the city didn't pursue that part of our proposal," he said last week.

When that possibility dissolved, the Generic's managers wondered if they might have to go dark for a year, but help came.

Mark Watson, arts manager for the Norfolk Commission on the Arts and Humanities, was adamant that the Generic not shut down, Dillard said, and helped them seek alternatives.

"The Generic fills a unique position in our roster of theater groups," Watson wrote in an e-mail last week. "You can't find what they offer anywhere else."

Wray then spoke with Norfolk City Councilwoman Daun Hester about the theater's plight. "She called me about two weeks later, and said the council would like for us to go into Little Hall and for us to begin talking to the managers over there," Wray said.

"Norfolk is their home," Hester said last week, "and because we are making improvements because of growth, they lost their home. We still want them to stay in Norfolk."

Little Hall has housed a theater before. The venue was dubbed Stage Downunder in 1977 and '78, when it was the performing home of Norfolk Theatre Center, the predecessor of Virginia Stage Company.

Dillard said last week that the Generic will promote its 2008-09 season to Generic's patrons starting Friday.

Opening Aug. 22, the first show in the new space will be the comedy "The Art of Murder," a Joe DiPietro social satire set in the contemporary art world. A collection of one-act plays, "Unwrap Your Candy" by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Doug Wright, opens Oct. 10.

"Nickel and Dimed," opening Feb. 13, is a Joan Holden play based on Barbara Ehrenreich's best-selling nonfiction book about how ludicrously hard it is to live off a minimum-wage job. The Generic may do a few previews of this one, charging the minimum hourly wage, Dillard said.

The season will end with "What's Wrong With This Picture?" by Donald Margulies, another Pulitzer winner. Opening April 10, it's a comedy about a Jewish family that has just lost its matriarch. She comes back from the grave in Act 2 to cook and clean for her clan.

"It's very funny," Dillard said, "but it's also a very touching play about moving on."

In the Generic's case, "moving on" means surviving - and adding to the energy of the downtown arts district.

"We're fond of pointing out that Norfolk is the cultural capital of the state," Watson wrote, "and the Generic Theater is one of dozens of arts groups that makes that true."

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com