Joe Atack is the producing artistic director for Good Luck Macbeth Theatre Company, which recently moved to a new space at 124 W. Taylor St. GLM will be hosting an open house in its new space from 5 to 9 p.m. on Jan. 20.
What’s new?
In our current space, which is a lot smaller than this, we only really have our theater area—and we don’t really have a lot of other space. Here, we have two offices. This office is ours, and we’re sharing this space with the Reno Jazz Orchestra. They’re joining us on this voyage. They’re using this as a rehearsal hall and, occasionally, as a performance hall. The front office is being rented by Brian Egan, who’s a property broker here. So that helps us.
So you guys are sharing the lease?
Yes, it makes it affordable. Actually, we have the lease, and they’re subleasing from us.
Why the move in the first place?
A few different reasons. One, the space was very small—and there were issues that we had with the power for the kind of things we were doing. And, of course, Shea’s is very loud at certain times.
I’ve been at GLM and had the band at Shea’s fire up before the final curtain. Sometimes it kind of works.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. We love those guys, but not an ideal location for us really. And, on top of that, because the space was small, we couldn’t really grow in it. And we got to an average of 80 percent occupancy over the last couple of years. We really needed a bit more room, so here we are.
What kind of building needs to be done in the theater space?
We’re building a bar area and lobby area down here. It’ll be about 12 feet from this end wall and about 30 feet across. And then we’re building risers. And we’re going to have 75 seats. We’ve got all new seats, which are sort of movie-theater-style.
There were way fewer at the old place, yes?
Yes, it was 49. So we’re about 50 percent bigger, with the option of going up to about 95-98, in the future. So we still will have a little more room to grow—hopefully. We’re planning to build a stage down here. This floor is all brand new. … The landlords very kindly put in a new floor for us, which is beautiful.
Well else is on the horizon for GLM?
We’re going to be doing some building stuff in here on the 13th and 14th. Then, next Saturday, we’re having a little open house, showing where we’re at so far. People can see the new space, get excited about it—give us some generous donations, hopefully.
When’s the next production?
The first production is Feb. 2.
You guys are on a deadline.
We are on a deadline. But, you know, it’s a fantastic play. It’s being directed by John Frederick and co-directed by Jesse Briggs. It’s a play we’ve wanted to do for years. It’s called The Royale. It’s by Marco Ramirez, who is famous for his work on House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Daredevil. This play is based on the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion, who won his title in—I might be getting the date wrong—something like 1905. But it was here in Reno. Jack Johnson was his name. … It’s based on that story. … We’re really excited about it because it’s a predominantly African-American driven story, so the characters in it are African-Americans, as opposed to Caucasian actors, which is very unusual for Reno or, well, anywhere, really.