Wanted: A home of its own for avant-garde company

BY KAREN DeMASTERS
Correspondent

The Black Box of Asbury Park, an avant-garde arts and theater company, is sharing space with other arts organizations while looking for a new venue. Pictured are scenes from past productions. The Black Box is once again homeless. It is the second time in the relatively short history of the avant-garde theater and arts organization that it has been in this somewhat unhappy condition.

But the artists and organizers associated with The Black Box of Asbury Park live by the credo that out of adversity comes opportunity.

“We are very flexible and very moveable. That is why we’re called The Black Box,” said Terri Thomas, president of The Black Box and one its founders.

Pandora Scooter, a writer and performer who has created one-woman shows that debuted at The Black Box, admires the organization’s creativity.

“They have really made lemonade [out of lemons] by making the best out of the situation they have,” she said.

Scooter praised The Black Box for its production of her most recent work, “Samuraization,” a performance that explores life and mortality through audience participation. The work debuted at the Stephen Crane House, the renovated Asbury Park home where writer Stephen Crane lived before immigrating to Cuba.

PHOTOSBYPAULNEWLAND The Black Box is working on a moveable production about Stephen Crane that will be staged in various locations throughout the house in which the audience will move from room to room along with the actors.

The Black Box would like to stay in Asbury Park, where it was created through a collaboration of artists, residents and business owners, but it will consider any good offer.

“We would dearly love to stay in Asbury Park because of our connection to the revitalization of the city, but we need a rent that is even more than reasonable and we need a long-term lease,” said Carlton Wilkinson, vice president of The Black Box, who is a composer and adjunct university instructor.

The organization needs to be in a high-ceilinged, square room of 2,500 to 3,000 square feet.

“A lot of places have been reaching out to us, including a lot of art galleries in Asbury Park, but most of those are too small,” Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson is in charge of the “Music of Invention” series, which is held once a month at The Black Box and features artists who reinvent an instrument or use unusual objects as musical instruments.

For now the “Music of Invention” series is being held at the Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts (SICA) at 20 Third Ave., Long Branch.

“We produce our works everywhere from storefronts, to art galleries, to the boardwalk. That is part of the joy of creation, fitting the venues we are in,” explained Thomas, who is also an opera singer.

SICA always has maintained a close relationship with The Black Box, and it has become the home away from home during this transition.

“Anything that encourages the arts helps us all,” said Doug Ferrari, SICA executive director.

This is not the first time The Black Box has lost its home. Created in 2000 by a group of people interested in revitalizing the arts in Asbury Park, as the city itself began undergoing a rebirth, The Black Box started in a building on Cookman Avenue near Kennedy Park.

It then wandered for a while when that space was lost and eventually landed on the third floor of the former Asbury Park Press building on Mattison Avenue until developers wanted to transform the building as part of the city’s redevelopment. Now events are staged wherever possible.

In addition to the “Music of Invention” series, a short film forum is held once a month at SICA to air all types of films including narratives, animation, experimental, music video, art videos and works-in progress. A monthly poetry reading is in the works.

It all fits into The Black Box’s goal to provide flexible, intimate, classical and experimental theater not possible under the constraints of regular, commercial theater.

The Black Box also is dedicated to all genres and disciplines of the arts from dance to jazz to staged readings or any other artistic endeavor that will help revitalize the arts in Asbury Park for residents of all ethnic backgrounds and economic status, Thomas said.

The Black Box is helping to create a cultural plan for the city that will incorporate all types of artistic endeavors that have been part of Asbury Park’s history, from rock ’n’ roll through jazz.

The fact that The Black Box wants to work with artists as their work develops is one of the important and unique aspects of the organization, according to the artists.

For Scooter, the support of The Black Box was crucial to the development of her work, and Thomas points with pride to the performances that have debuted at The Black Box and then moved to New York City for production.

“Without the support of The Black Box, it would have been a much longer and more circuitous route for my work to open in New York City,” Scooter said.

She has performed several pieces as part of The Black Box’s “Women’s Festival,” which will be held next September whether or not the organization has found a permanent home by then.

Maureen Langan, a writer and comic, agrees with Scooter on the importance of The Black Box’s support.

“I was able to perform my autobiographical pieces outside New York City in an atmosphere that is safe and creative. It allowed me to develop the confidence to do this type of piece,” said Langan, who lives in New York City but spends summers at the New Jersey shore.

“I have never met any group of people so dedicated to what the arts mean and who encourage artists as much as The Black Box. It is heartbreaking that they do not have a home,” she said.

In addition to theatrical performances, music, film, poetry readings and other artistic events, The Black Box works with area schools on arts programs for students starting in preschool.

The organization works with students from Rider University, Lawrence, who are interested in working with not-for-profit arts organizations. The Black Box obtains funding from donations and grants and has always managed to operate in the black.

“We always want our tickets to be priced about the same as a movie ticket so the arts are accessible to everyone,” Thomas said.

Audiences are drawn to The Black Box events from throughout New Jersey, New York City, Philadelphia and beyond, according to the organizers.

One group scheduled to perform, the Harry Partch Ensemble, returned last fall after being shut out a year earlier when The Black Box was in its third-floor quarters.

“The ensemble came and the audience was here, but the elevator broke, so we had no way of getting the instruments to the third floor. When we restaged it this fall, some of the same audience members returned,” Wilkinson said. “That was incredibly gratifying. That is the kind of thing that gives us the energy to go on.”