New Haven Independent

Mariah Sage, Rebecka Jones, Jackie Sidle (right to left in photo above) and their director Jane Tamarkin and an all-female group of professional Connecticut-based performers and acting teachers decided to found Theatre 4 in no small part because they live in and around New Haven.

“Most of us are in Actors Equity,” said Tamarkin, second from right in the team photo, during a run-through at the Parachute Factory for their upcoming production of Anton in Show Business, a comedy by Jane Martin. “Frankly it’s hard for us to keep the instrument sharp in a place like New Haven.”

Theatre 4’s inaugural run opens on Oct. 10 and 11 at Oddfellows Playhouse in Middletown. It moves then to the Little Theater at 1 Lincoln Street in New Haven for two weekends, Oct. 17, 18, 24, and 25. Two of the performances are benefits for New Haven Home Recovery and The Parachute Factory.

The issue for the troupe seems to be that as professional, Equity actors, Tamarkin and her colleagues cannot participate in local community theater; that puts their Equity status at risk. Yale’s productions use their own students, of course, and the Long Wharf generally brings in actors, usually from other cities, often New York.

“If we lived in New York,” said Tamarkin, who for a dozen years taught theater at the Hopkins School, “we could act in formal Equity showcases. Here, in New Haven, to work on the professional level, we, by the regulations of Actors Equity, have to form what’s called a members project’.”

It seems as if Actors Equity rules are certain to be to New Haven theater lovers’ great advantage. Theatre 4 formed last year when Tamarkin and Sage met in a production of Behave Yourself Quietly, a drama set in Auschwitz by local writer Doron Ben-Atar. After that, they did Donald Margulies’ two-hander Collected Stories. Nearly all the members of the company and this cast are pros, that is, Equity members. Most not only perform but also teach their craft either currently or formerly at Quinnipiac and Southern and at the Educational Center for the Arts.

“We want to do theater that’s accessible to everyone,” said Jones, which is why their tickets will be “suggested contributions” of $20. “And we are actor-centered, doing plays that emphasize less gadgetry and far more relationships and stories.”

In Anton in Show Business, we meet the performers of the Texas Actors Express, who blow into San Antonio (pun on Anton intended). Lisabetta, a third-grade school teacher, Maria Sage’s character, is trying out for passionate Masha’s role. She’s insecure about being an actress, but we learn she had a dream in which the Lord came to her and convinced her to audition.

Rebecka Jones’ character Casey is trying out for Olga. Casey’s had a breast removed recently but the two actresses, one older and jaded and the other a naive ingenue, overcome a huge cultural gap as Lisabetta tells her what a nice match the surgeons made with the artificial breast.

The play is an equal-opportunity offender with its edgy satire on every aspect of theater from the actors to egomaniacal British directors to African-American artists with black-and-white obsessions. In one scene Aaliyah Miller’s character (in photo), who runs a local outfit called Black Rage, gives this laugh-out-loud critique of one of the world’s greatest playwrights: “Brother Chekhov, man, all he do is talk, talk, talk. I say cut out all that self-pitying shit and get to the race problem and the poverty problem!”

The company is by no means all-female; it’s just started out that way, although the actresses are looking for plays with strong roles for women. Eventually they also want to teach acting to adults, which, Sage says, is a vacuum in New Haven these days. Ultimately they ‘d also like to have a space of their own too, where they can teach, solicit plays, work with new writers on new productions.

As they have just recently incorporated as a formal not-for-profit. However, one step at a time, and as Laurence Olivier said of acting in general: They will say their lines, one at a time, and not trip over the furniture.

Theatre 4’s run opens on Oct. 10 and 11 at Oddfellows Playhouse in Middletown. It moves then to the Little Theater at 1 Lincoln Street in New Haven for two weekends, Oct. 17, 18, 24, and 25. Two of the performances are benefits for New Haven Home Recovery and The Parachute Factory.

The group’s website is t4ct.org. Reservations for this month’s performances can be made there or also by calling 623-7560. Anyone interested in contributing financially, in becoming a board member, with in-kind support is encouraged to call.

Other cast members not mentioned above include: Annie DiMartino, Rachel Shapiro, and Kaia Monroe, one of whose roles is a local country western singer who auditions to play Masha’s lover; Vershinin with a Texas drawl is priceless. And never forget the stage manager, Sally Tamarkin!