Nonprofit theater group plans to grow Las Vegas’s arts scene

More than 200 actors and 39 casting directors from 21 nonprofit theater companies occupied the Paul Harris Theatre at UNLV over two days in early August for an extensive casting session for the 2017-18 theater season.

The auditions were the kickoff for the Las Vegas Theatre Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by Cockroach Theatre artistic director Mindy Woodhead. The alliance’s mission is to grow and expand community theater in the Las Vegas Valley through auditions, marketing and education.

When Woodhead moved to Las Vegas in 2009, she was surprised to find what she said was a lack of professional theater groups. While there were nonprofit theaters, not many paid actors a living wage, she said.

“And that makes them, essentially, community theaters,” Woodhead said, “so we don’t get a lot of the professional performers coming in.”

A market with 2 million people, such as the Las Vegas Valley, would have four or five professional theaters in other parts of the country, Woodhead said. In Las Vegas, many top actors end up performing at Strip resorts, she said.

“We don’t necessarily have the underground scene that a lot of communities do because there’s so much work here,” Woodhead said.

The mission

After auditions, “the second step is a joint marketing effort to let people in our community who have never heard about us know that there are high-quality contemporary and classic plays and musicals being produced on a weekly basis,” Woodhead said.

Using her experience in development at Cockroach, a Las Vegas nonprofit theater company that started in 2003, Woodhead plans to fundraise and create a marketing budget to advertising every member company’s performance season through direct mail and online campaigns.

Woodhead also has taught acting and directing at the College of Southern Nevada and UNLV, and she would like the alliance eventually to host classes.

Paul Malluk, artistic director for The Speeding Theatre, a company that provides acting opportunities for seniors, said that he was surprised by how well the August auditions went. (The Speeding Theatre doesn’t just cast seniors, Malluk said, but focuses on plays that have a lot of senior roles.)

The Speeding Theatre has a relationship with Super Summer Theatre, as the production group for its off-season series. Two plays, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Suddenly Last Summer,” are planned in October and March, respectively, at Super Summer’s studios on South Valley View Boulevard.

The auditions allowed Malluk to fill some roles and introduced him to actors he hadn’t seen before.

“It was a wonderful way for me to see the talent pool here in Vegas and create a file for myself when I need to cast shows,” he said.

Mindy Gilkerson, who has been acting professionally for a year and a half, said the auditions were invaluable.

“There’s not anything like that in Las Vegas … where you can go audition for 20 different directors at one time,” Gilkerson said. “If you’re an actor, even if you’re not interested in theater, it was a great opportunity to practice your skills.”

Looking ahead, Woodhead said she’d like to expand the auditions to include musical-theater components and youth roles (no actors younger than 18 were allowed at this year’s auditions) and to create an online talent database.

Contact Madelyn Reese at mreese@viewnews.com or 702-383-0497. Follow @MadelynGReese on Twitter.