Jump to Epiphany Saratoga

From On & Off (on Press front page)
December, 2002
By Elizabeth Quinn

O Night Divine! Off-off Broadway has an Epiphany

When Amy Singer and Rachel Smith graduated from the Carnegie Mellon directing program, they discovered everything but professional working environments. After e-mailing each other with similar frustrations, they too matters into their own hands and the Epiphany Theater Company was born.

Now entering its third year, Epiphany strives for variety in its programming while primarily focusing on new plays. Their upcoming show, Unreal City, is based on seven auto biographical stories from the "Lives" section of the New York Times Magazine. It explores the relationship between strangers and how they affect each other.

Elizabeth Quinn: How did you come up with the name for your company?

Rachel Smith: It came out of a literal epiphany of what we felt theater was supposed to be- it was supposed to be our career and we were supposed to be happy doing it.

Amy Singer: We wanted to create a small, professional theater where early-career artists could work and be happy doing so.

EQ: How do you work?

AS: We're basically a director's theater. We find a director we want to work with and ask them, "what do you want to do?" Then, we get all the directors together, look at the various projects, and out of that we piece together a season. We also have a directors' workshop that provides new directors a chance to work on smaller, and perhaps, riskier pieces.

RS: It's about the collaboration of them developing their craft and working with the actors.

AS: When we talk about nurturing young artists, it's about the beginning of a career and rallying artists to develop their strengths and what they want to work on.

EQ: Despite the constant struggle to obtain funding and the everyday demands of running a theater, are you happy with your experiences so far?

RS: It's great to see this finally come to something- us sitting 300 miles away from each other complaining about our jobs to finally having our own space. We're building a vibrant relationship with a lot of different theater companies.

AS: We feel like we're becoming a part of the community of small theaters in New York and that's where the exciting new artists are working. The artists who you're going to be seeing everywhere in ten years are creating stuff downtown right now.