Turn, turn, turn

And now the season is September, and “the days dwindle down.” It’s a fresh theater season–but 2017-2018 will be imbued with the sense of an ending. Manbites Dog Theater–that bold upstart, that instigator, that model of theatrical activism; the mature presenter of new theatre for the thinking class; a support system for independent art theater in Durham and the Triangle–will darken next May, at the close of its 31st season.

There is no way to overstate the size of the hole this will leave. MDT founders, artistic director Jeff Storer and managing director Ed Hunt, along with the theater’s board, plan to help fill that hole with advice and money to other theater artists from a donor-advised fund they will establish at the Triangle Community Foundation with the proceeds from selling the theater’s building in the now-fashionable Foster-Geer Street zone, in the overheated downtown Durham real estate market. It is unlikely that another theater might take its space. The Manbites organization will live on with a somewhat altered mission, but there will be no place for us to go. I won’t see you at the theater.

Yes, of course, more theater-makers will find more spaces. And some of them will be great. But they will have to go some to create the kind of welcoming meeting place for public conversation about being human that Manbites Dog made. One felt that open welcome in the rooms, even in the early itinerant years, but in the theater’s 20 years in its own space on Foster Street, it has become an important physical spot in the urban intellectual fabric, a nexus of art and politics, a crossroads of thought and emotion, and a haven for those who care about such things.

Jeff Storer and Ed Hunt have agreed to a series of interviews with me, and I will be talking with many other people involved with the theater, with the aim of writing a somewhat episodic history of Manbites Dog, its impact on the community, and it importance to various artists. These pieces will run more or less side by side with my reviews of the final season’s shows, beginning this week with the Other Voices series piece, a devised work by Summer Sisters, Bad Mothers & Neglectful Wives. If you would like to talk about some aspect of Manbites Dog Theater, please contact me through the comments section. Or buttonhole me at the theater.

This series will likely be my final project for The Five Points Star, and will be my sole focus. It has been a privilege and often a joy to review and critique visual art, theater, music and dance for various publications, including this one, but it is time to wind it down. When Manbites completes its 31st season, I will conclude my 30th year of writing about the arts, and I believe after that I’ll do some other things as the days dwindle down. Thanks for reading all this time, and stick with me a little longer. And really, you ought to go ahead and get some tickets. We’re still paving paradise and putting up parking lots, but in this particular case, we do know what we’ve got, before it is gone.