Named for the space it uses, the Carriage House Theatre in Ann Arbor, MI, performs in a two-story rustic building that looks more like a small barn than a house. The downstairs of the 26' long and 16' wide space serves as playing and seating space; part of it is occupied by a staircase that leads to a dressing room area on the second floor. Upstairs are benches, mirrors, and clothing racks, but there is no bathroom; the theatre rents a portable one, accessible in the yard. Actors enter through the large doors in front, a side door, and the staircase, which they can only reach by ladder after they exit from one of the downstairs doors.
You’d think the main effect the space would have on play selection would be dictated by its size—small cast shows, for instance, or one-set plays—but Carriage House did Inherit the Wind, cutting the 30-character play all the way down to 13 characters. “It created the desired effect of being crowded,” says founding artistic director Forrest Hejkal. And plays often have multiple settings; the theatre uses distinct furniture and props to suggest different places, against a wall treatment that isn’t literal.
When Hejkal creates a season, he looks through stacks of plays, reading only the opening pages of scenes that describe the settings. What matters most is how the play will work in this space. The theatre opened its large doors in 2011 with Uncle Vanya. “The space doesn’t look like a Victorian Russian country estate, but there’s sadness to it,” he says. In his program notes, he writes he didn’t choose the play. “The space chose it. I knew as soon as I began considering converting the carriage house into a theatre that I wanted to make the building itself the set.”
The space has continued to select scripts. For Joseph Fournier’s production of Cindy Lou Johnson’s Brilliant Traces, about a runaway bride who is lost and trapped in a snowbound Alaskan cabin, Hejkal took advantage of exposed studs to suggest a rustic cabin. By putting boards between the studs, he created bookshelves for Office Hours, an original play written and directed by Griffin Johnson, in which a Professor Steinway tries to save his department from an impending sale to a mysterious financial corporation.
Brian Friel’s Translations is set in a barn in Ireland, which Hejkal points out would have timber framing, but for him, the carriage house, built sometime between 1900 and 1910, captures the feel of the play directed by Angie Feak. “You couldn’t put a play in there that had a very cold feel,” he says. “The set for Office Hours didn’t look like a college professor’s office, but the warmth and intimacy work. Another office setting might not. I couldn’t do Glengarry Glen Ross in the space.”
For a production of J.M. Barrie’s Mary Rose, about a girl who disappears on a Scottish island during a family vacation and then returns home with no memory of events that transpired, Hejkal built a false wall in front of the stairs, making the tiny space even tinier but allowing an extra door and entrance. He covered the studs on the other side with the same paneling, which he acquired from someone who had a collapsed barn from the same period. An antique table and wicker love seat set the stage when Mary is home; a picnic basket served when on vacation. He created a new window in a door to the outside, through which characters could look at an apple tree, prominent in the story. Reversible curtains made it possible for audiences to see a fabric that was fresh, and then frayed, when the house fell into shambles.
Limitations Suspended Through Imagination
The plays Carriage House does are realistic, and so is the acting style, but the lack of realistic settings hasn’t made it difficult for spectators to suspend disbelief, even though they see each other in the crowded space. “I’ve never been concerned with detailed literalism,” Hejkal says. “When actors are that close to you, you don’t have room to build intricate sets, and that’s all you can see, the people, three feet from you.”
Carriage House doesn’t use stage lights, depending instead on halogen lights that Hejkal sometimes gels. Although he installed a room air conditioner last season, the summer theatre can get very hot when filled with actors and patrons, and he doesn’t want to heat it further with more lighting equipment.
Hejkal isn’t concerned about building real costumes either. “Fabrics are important. Costumes approximate the period in a fairly vague sense. You always have that person in the audience who says, ‘That’s not correct.’ If I had the resources to customize suit jackets with the right lapel cut, I would, but if you make them feel genuine, you don’t have to be precise,” he believes. “It’s a suit. People sometimes take off their jackets and roll up their sleeves. How you use a suit is timeless.”
Of all the technical concerns, the one that plagues the theatre most is sound. Sure, everyone can hear every actor in the close space. The problem is that people outside the theatre can hear through the uninsulated walls. Carriage House was perfect for the squalid farm home in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, but after Martin Hutchinson’s production opened, neighbors almost called the police to report an incident of domestic violence before realizing there was a theatre on the block. “The whole opening scene is an argument with one person upstairs and the other downstairs,” recalls Hejkal, who now works with directors to find ways to create intensity without too much volume. “We’re finding more interesting ways,” he says, adding that brief moments of loudness aren’t problematic.
Because of zoning regulations, the theatre is not allowed to call itself a business and charge admission, but spectators are asked to pay a suggested $10, and the money accumulated one season pays for the next. The cost of sets and costume materials is small, never more than $500 for a show. Hejkal built the false wall for Mary Rose, for instance, from wood discarded from a demolished barn and used the remaining boards for shelves. The biggest expense thus far has been for rights to plays that aren’t in the public domain.
Hejkal and his dad, a professional carpenter, renovated the space to make it a theatre initially, a project that involved wiring as well as building. Thus far, Hejkal has designed all the sets for his theatre, often in collaboration with directors; sometimes he directs or acts as well as produces and designs.
Adjusting To Other Spaces
Last fall, Hejkal and other Carriage House artists decided to bring theatre to the people instead of inviting people into a space. They painted a bus and set out on tour, doing Commedia dell’Arte scenarios suitable for outdoor spaces. He built a free-standing flat with a window in it that could be broken down to fit in the tour bus, but they discarded it early on. “When you perform outdoors, you don’t necessarily have one place where the audience is. In Copley Square in Boston, we started playing to a set of benches,” he recalls, explaining that they had to adapt quickly to spectators who stopped behind them, and any set piece would get in the way. “You never know where people will come from or where they’ll stop and watch.” 
Hejkal says that, although they choreographed some moments, the troupe enjoyed finding new props that inspired new actions: a tree in the park to duck behind, for instance, or rocks to climb. “Walking the streets in costumes and masks becomes a way of life. It’s sort of weird to come back to civilization, and nobody notices you,” he reflects.