As one of the region's most well-known and consistent directors of everything from extravagant Broadway musicals to high-concept sociopolitical plays, Troy Nickerson has worked with theaters large and small for over two decades.
Now, along with his creative partner Chris Jensen, he's left the theater behind.
The finer points of that claim bear teasing out. The duo's new joint venture, Theater on the Verge, is still fully devoted to theater as a performing art — perhaps more strongly than ever.
But the discrete brick-and-mortar institutions that identify as theaters? Those not so much.
"For me personally, it was more just kind of about having the ability to have the artistic control over what we do," Nickerson says of their floating community theater company.
"And I think sometimes, especially with the bigger theaters, they can't do some of the things that a smaller company could do because they rely so much on the sales and the season and everything. Whereas we can pick and be as risky as we want."
"The key term for us is independent," Jensen adds. "It means we have limited resources, but it also means that we can be pretty nimble in terms of how we approach things. And we can just sort of make snap decisions and say, 'Oh, this feels good. Let's go with that.'"
In keeping with that philosophy, Theater on the Verge chose Every Brilliant Thing for its debut production. Written by the English playwright Duncan Macmillan and first produced in 2013, the single-actor dark comedy takes its title from a list of positives that a young boy creates to cheer up his depressed mother. Some of the humor comes from the fact that the list is clearly skewed toward a 7-year-old's priorities.
"The list is just all the things that make him joyful and want to live," Nickerson says. "For all of us right now, I think we have to look for the joy in the world."
The show's six-performance run opens this week at Hamilton Studio, a venue that up to now has been building its reputation on live music gigs. Nickerson describes Hamilton Studio as the "right space" for the play precisely because it lacks a conventional stage, putting the actor on equal footing with the audience.
"I could probably almost perform this in a friend's living room and give them the sense of the show," says actor Doug Dawson. He plays the nameless narrator, who's now the adult version of the young boy at the heart of the story.
"He says in the script that he's an introverted person. He says, 'I was very shy at college. I mostly sat in my room and listened to records.' It's almost as if the story is going on in his head. As an actor, it's a challenge. And it's very fun."
Like many monologue-style plays, Every Brilliant Thing sees Dawson shifting between acting out scenes and more straightforward storytelling. One unique aspect is that it breaks the fourth wall in ways that both Jensen and Nickerson are reluctant to describe in detail, lest it spoil how the play creates a rapport between the actor and the audience.
That humanizing connection is something that Jensen says is special about this play, and it captures an important angle of suicidal depression. The time Jensen spent as a volunteer crisis counselor on the 988 Suicide Lifeline opened his own eyes to the "more nuanced understanding" that's required to talk to someone who's in the midst of suicidal ideation.
"That's part of the reason why [this play] resonated so much with me. It's a human experience where everybody's in this story room together. When you first hear the premise, you think maybe it's about toxic positivity: Just tell people how great everything is and they're going to be fine. It's a lot more complicated than that," he says.
"But that doesn't take away from the value of trying to find beauty in things. It goes to this idea of, you think you're helping someone else, but in the end, you're ultimately helping yourself. That's what being on the suicide line did for me. It saved me in a lot of ways."
Dawson says that Theater on the Verge's marketing of Every Brilliant Thing as "the funniest show you'll ever see about depression" is spot-on, though the humor largely serves to enhance its poignancy.
"It doesn't make light of suicide by any stretch of the imagination. It takes it very seriously. I'm getting choked up just saying this, but if we do this right, and I think we will, nobody is going to not cry. No one is not going to laugh till they're in tears, and no one's not going to be in tears from heartbreak."
Leaning on the directorial skills that have made him such a mainstay of the local theater scene, Nickerson is looking to capitalize on those emotional dynamics.
"I love that explosion of laughter that can happen, and then the next moment you're just like, 'Stab 'em in the heart!'" he says, laughing.
And while Theater on the Verge already has a good fix on its follow-up production, Nickerson hasn't said goodbye to the stages where he forged long-standing friendships with people like Dawson and Jensen years ago. In May, for example, he's directing the hit musical Waitress at the Spokane Civic Theatre.
But the lure of productions that are intimate and personal — qualities so fundamental to Every Brilliant Thing — is proving harder and harder for him to shake.
"The older I get, the more I feel like I want to have those one-on-one connections with actors. I really have been craving smaller, impactful pieces, whether they be comedy or drama, that feel relevant to us, like they have something to say right now." ♦
Every Brilliant Thing • Feb. 27-28 and March 6, 8, 14-15 at 7:30 pm • $37.50 • Hamilton Studio • 1427 W. Dean Ave. • theaterontheverge.com • 509-327-9501
