More and more, the artists at Hat Trick Theatre are making a contribution to culture in the Tampa Bay area. Yes, they hurt their own cause somewhat by playing at the hard-to-find, unattractive Silver Meteor Gallery in Ybor City. And yes, their start two years ago with the regrettable Death of Zukasky and a largely unconvincing Frankie and Johnny gave no evidence of successes to come.
But since that time, Hat Trick has brought us several important plays (Bash, Fool For Love, Durang One-Acts, When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?) in productions that ranged from tolerable (Fool for Love) to terrific (Red Ryder). And coming up just this year are three exceedingly important plays — Waiting for Godot, Look Back in Anger, and How I Learned to Drive — that would make anyone's season worthy of attention. How does this small company, which came into existence almost by accident, see itself at present? What's in store in the next few months and beyond?
I posed these questions to artistic director Joe Winskye in the lobby of the USF Theatre building in Tampa one afternoon a few days ago. Winskye, 28, still resembles a college student. In his blue jeans and T-shirt, with his glasses and youthful face, he looks like the guy in the next dorm room, the one with the refrigerator full of beer. His way with words is like his way with clothes — casual, unpremeditated. Talking to him, you can't help but think that that's why he loves the Silver Meteor: it's as unpretentious as he is. And of course he loves Godot: You can hardly get more unaffected than its two heroes, Vladimir and Estragon.
And you can hardly be as unplanned as was the genesis of Hat Trick Theatre. It all started, Winskye explains, when Mark Marple, an older student at USF, assembled a bunch of former USF theater graduates to form Bayshore Productions. Among the participants were Winskye, Jack Holloway, April Bender, Kevin Whalin, Aisha Duran and Adam Belvo. Bayshore put on two shows at Viva La Frida café and restaurant — Lone Star and Sexual Perversity in Chicago — but then business drew Marple to Jacksonville, leaving the Bayshore personnel to "stick it out" without him.
The troupe intended to keep the Bayshore name until they "found out that it was already taken by a company that makes porn calendars, and we didn't think we could compete," Winskye explains. So, with the help of a few more good friends, creating a company of about 12, they settled on a name that was lighthearted "but also not so silly that people wouldn't take us seriously if were going to do Hamlet," he says.
Winskye became artistic director, he says, "sort of by default … There was no vote, no one else said, 'Hey, I want to do it,' so it was kind of left to me." In keeping with Bayshore tradition, they did their first show at Viva La Frida. But the next one — and every one since — has been staged at the Silver Meteor.
And that's been just fine with Winskye. "We've never considered ourselves as 'settling' for the Meteor," he says. "Honestly, I love the Meteor. I think it's a fantastic little space … I mean, even if we moved to a bigger space, I'd still love to make sure that new experimental works happened there."
On several occasions, Hat Trick shows have sold out at the Meteor — meaning an audience of about 40 — and spectators, once they find the tucked-away space, seem generally glad to be there. "I've only had, I think, ever, maybe one complaint in the last almost two years we've been there," Winskye says. "One person said that they didn't want to watch a show in a house, and they asked for their money back. But that's one out of almost a thousand."
Most important, the Meteor is inexpensive to rent; and on Hat Trick's current budget — which allows only about $1,500-$2,300 per production — that matters a lot. The theater is able to keep afloat by paying actors, directors and designers on a profit share: "That means that if the show does not lose money, they get paid," says Winskye. "So far that has meant anywhere from $10 for the entire run to a couple of hundred."
Most Hat Trick employees aren't in it for the money, anyway: they just "love doing it, and are committed to getting it right." And, Winskye adds, there's virtue in taking small steps at this time: "Our idea has always been to try to grow, but grow safely. Because we see a lot of theater companies get really ambitious and die."
Which doesn't mean that Winskye isn't trying out the waters elsewhere: Look Back in Anger will be staged at the Gorilla Theatre, marking the first time that these two companies have worked as co-producers.
As for Godot, the theater's first show of the new season, it will appear at the Meteor, with Winskye directing. "It's possibly my favorite show in the world," he says. For several years he talked about putting it on with Whalin and Holloway — who will play Vladimir and Estragon, respectively — and he's eager to do it before these talented actors are enticed to move out of town. As for his interpretation of the famously ambiguous text, he says, "Everyone gets hung up on who Godot is … In my opinion, Godot is the least important part of the title. It's the waiting. It's these two men who are waiting, and to me, that's the human condition … They always talk about it as the play where nothing happens twice, but I don't think that's true. Lots of things happen. They eat a carrot. A guy covers his friend with his coat when he's cold. And really, what's more important than that? Is the guy who built the Sears Tower more important than a guy who makes sure that his friend is warm at his own expense? I personally don't think so."
In response to my suggestion that Whalin and Holloway are younger than one usually expects the two tramps to be, Winskye disagrees: "It's people at the end of their luck. It's people who have nothing left but hope. And you don't have to be old to understand that." It shouldn't hurt, Winskye adds, that Whalin and Holloway, who are good friends offstage, "have a fantastic chemistry together."
Finally, I ask the artistic director how committed he is to staying in Tampa. He says he's committed "for the time being; I'm not going to swear I'll be here for the next 30 years. But right now we're going to stick this out. We're going to see where Hat Trick takes us, and maybe we'll find out that it wasn't meant to be, and like many theaters in Tampa, we just don't have what it takes. But I sure hope not. I would love nothing more than for Hat Trick to keep blossoming and for us to expand."
A theater like Hat Trick, he suggests, can give people something they mostly miss: "I mean, between cell phones and e-mails and drive-through windows and everything else trying to keep us away from people, finally a chance to re-connect, to be a part of something," he says. "Right now that's what we're trying to offer, just to be a chance to be a part of something.
"To be a part of a little family that is growing every day."
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.