Hamlet

New theater group serves up offbeat fare

Community theater has long supplied a healthy diet of mainstream drama, but a pair of theater lovers hope to offer quirkier fare to locals with a taste for the offbeat and slightly outrageous.

Anthony Taub and Charles Savoy IV of Houma last spring launched a theater group called The Sam & Jim Acting Co. in an effort to bring a slice of unconventional drama to the bayou region.

The pair of 30-somethings want audiences to walk away intrigued, flabbergasted and happy, they wrote in a play program.

"We want to entertain people and make people think," Savoy said.

The fledgling acting company started in April 2006, debuting its work in August with "Waiting for Godot," a "tragicomedy" by Samuel Beckett. The company returned to the stage late last year with "Human Relationships/Human Competition," a production that featured three one-act plays. The company will soon begin rehearsals for its third offering, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," a play by comedian/actor Steve Martin.

The company includes co-artistic directors Taub and Savoy, and a team of four company members heavily involved in the group’s productions. The group also includes four associate artists who offer support. One of the company members, Tory Graf, a Seattle management consultant, serves as executive producer, raising much of the money, they said. The company currently relies mainly on donations from family, friends and their own pocketbooks to produce shows.

Hovering over burgers and fries at Big Eddie’s Café in Bayou Blue, Taub and Savoy explained that they want to engage local audiences with the kind of edgy, thought-provoking shows more common to cities like New Orleans. Taub said his friends complain about having to leave town to catch deeper, more avant-garde shows.

The pair named the company after playwright Samuel Beckett and novelist James Joyce, whose own style, "disregard for convention and tradition," and "love of absurdity" inspire Taub and Savoy.

The pair met more than 10 years ago, but have only been doing theater work together for the past several years, soon after Taub returned to Houma from living out of state. They worked together on a play at Le Petit Theatre de Terrebonne and another at Dillard University in New Orleans, a feat that required Savoy to make two trips to New Orleans and back each day for more than a week. Each morning, Savoy had to drive to New Orleans, murder someone on stage, get put on trial, then return to Houma to care for his dogs, all to do it again in the afternoon, the pair laughed.

Both Taub, a waiter at Cristiano’s in Houma, and Savoy, a supervisor at the now-closed B. Dalton Booksellers in Southland Mall, cut their teeth on community and university theater performances.

Savoy was 19 when he got involved with Le Petit Theatre du Terrebonne, and spent years on stage and behind the stage with Le Petit, Thibodaux Playhouse and the Nicholls State University theater group.

"I needed something to do, so I went to the theater for the hell of it," Savoy said.

Taub became interested in theater his junior year of high school, when he auditioned for the musical "Godspell" at Vandebilt Catholic High School.

"I can’t sing or dance, so I didn’t get cast," he said, recalling the anger he felt at the time. When Taub didn’t make the cast list for the next play either, he successfully requested the role of assistant director. In his freshman year in college, Taub landed a five-minute part as a drunken French actor and from then on was addicted to the stage.

Taub and Savoy say they appreciate the experience and friendships gained from their involvement in local community theater but longed to venture into more-daring territory.

The pair share a delight in the more challenging, metaphorical and absurd works that draw audiences in and force them to not only be entertained, but to think and discuss. For example, "Waiting for Godot" has no simple conclusion or easy-to-digest outcome.

But the shows also must be fun. "We want to provoke thought, but if people aren’t enjoying it, there’s no point to it," Savoy said.

So far, audiences seem to have enjoyed the company’s shows, with attendees ranging from teen-agers to seniors, the pair said. About 200 people attended "Waiting for Godot," and about 150 attended "Human Relationships/Human Competition," they said. One elderly man commented that he never thought he would see "Waiting for Godot" in Houma.

The business side of theater can be stressful for a duo usually focused on the arts, but the two are slowly educating themselves with help from various community members and groups, they said.

The company rehearses in donated office space on Martin Luther King Boulevard and presents shows in meeting rooms in the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center.

The group is striving to offer as many shows as possible, but with limited resources and an all-volunteer crew, the number of shows each year "really depends on how often all our stars align," Taub said.

The duo has bigger plans for the company, such as establishing at least part of it as a nonprofit and securing money through grants and fund-raisers. They want to gain space to stage performances and host other productions, and offer a regular season of shows.

"We’re heading piecemeal in the right direction," Taub said. "Right now, we’re just happy to be able to put on the kind of shows we’re doing."

Charles Savoy IV (left) and Anthony Taub sit down for lunch Friday afternoon in Bayou Blue. The duo are the founders of the Sam and Jim Acting Co. (MAT STAMEY/THE COURIER)