In a dimly lit underground space, a small audience watches an aging woman named Marjorie talk to a much younger version of her husband, Walter.
Marjorie: I feel like I have to perform around you.
Walter: Well you don’t.
Marjorie: I know.
Walter: It’s just me, it’s just Walter.
The setting is Wild Oscar’s, a 50-seat theater located two levels below Main Street along Lock 4. And the production is “Marjorie Prime,” a 2014 play by Jordan Harrison that deals with the creeping advance of artificial intelligence and the effects of memory loss and aging on a family.
The play follows the cast of four characters over the span of many years as they try, sometimes successfully, to navigate life’s hardships: family conflicts, mental health struggles, death. It’s an engrossing story, if not always an easy one to sit with.
It’s exactly the kind of play Elynmarie Kazle and Mark Zimmerman want to spotlight with their new company, Wild Thread Theatre.
“It’s a short play, but it’s really deep,” Kazle said of the 75- to 80-minute show.
She continued, “There’s a lot in it about what is your quality of life after you’re entering your sort of retirement [era]. What is that like? How does it feel? And if something does happen physically or mentally with your health, who’s there to help you? What’s going to happen? What’s the net that catches you?”
“Marjorie Prime,” which runs through Sunday, is the first play from Wild Thread Theatre. Zimmerman and Kazle, who besides being creative partners are also married, founded the company in June. That same month, Zimmerman retired from Firestone Community Learning Center after 30 years as the theater director.
Wild Thread Theatre offers something new to audiences
The two didn’t plan to start a theater company after Zimmerman’s retirement. He had started looking for directing gigs, and Kazle kept busy with stage and production management and overseeing the Foundation for Stage Managers. But a lunch with Francine Parr, one of Zimmerman’s former students, changed that.
Parr is the artistic director for Millennial Theater Project at the Akron Civic Theatre. She also oversees programming for Wild Oscars. Over lunch, she pitched Zimmerman on the idea of having an in-house theater company for the venue.
“I don’t know that this would have been my first choice to start a new theater company,” Zimmerman said, “but it was offered, and it was just too good to pass up.”
There’s no shortage of theater companies in Akron. But with Wild Thread, Kazle and Zimmerman want to offer theatergoers something different.
“The good news is that most people seem to be doing musicals all the time. So we’re not going to do musicals at all,” Zimmerman said. “We want to do interesting and exciting well-acted plays — comedies, and dramas. … The kinds of shows that we like and we think other people will like too.”
Wild Thread Theatre’s first season continues with three more plays
Wild Thread Theatre will stage three more plays during its inaugural season. Up next is “Shelter,” a new work by local playwright Eric Mansfield, which will run from Nov. 5-15. After that is the holiday-themed production “Seasonal Shorts” from Dec. 10-20.
The season will wrap with a production of “The Trial of God” by Elie Wiesel in late January. Wiesel is best known for “Night,” a memoir about his experiences as a prisoner at the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps during the Holocaust.
“It’s based on an incident that [Wiesel] witnessed during the Holocaust,” Kazle said. “He witnessed rabbis putting God on trial for the Holocaust in the concentration camp.”
Kazle and Zimmerman have collaborated on theatrical projects throughout their marriage, but this is their first time running a theater company together.
“Here, we have to collaborate. But the good news is we really have the same concept. We really want the same things,” Zimmerman said. “Which is high-level acting and storytelling and low-level razzmatazz.”
