It’s much ado about something at the Gamm Theatre, as the Warwick playhouse celebrates 40 years of making bold choices and reviving classic shows. It’s an impressive run for the Rhode Island theater born of the talents of a small group of plucky actors and artists from the Trinity Repertory Company Conservatory. The artist collective was known as Alias Stage and went through a few name changes and several moves before it landed on Jefferson Boulevard in a distinctive mint-green building. The Gamm team has also transformed the former Ocean State Theatre into a community space, with free movie nights, school programs, library partnerships, summer camps, classes, and more.
Each season, five shows are performed in an intimate black box theater. As one might expect of an exuberant anniversary year, season 40 is ambitious. It includes “Amadeus”, “The Effect”, “Girls & Boys”, “Between Riverside and Crazy”, and “Hamlet”. Artistic Director Tony Estrella has noted that no play is more important to the world than “Hamlet”, and the decision to honor Shakespeare’s tragedy as the season finale marks a revival of the masterpiece that hasn’t been staged at the Gamm since 2011.
And while the Bard was right - the play IS the thing - the set is pretty darn important, too. Rhode Island PBS is celebrating the Gamm’s 40th anniversary in an episode of “ART Inc.” by focusing on the art of set design. It’s a behind-the-scenes peek at the manifestation of the lavish “Amadeus” staging by the multi-talented director of production, Jessica Hill Kidd.
An “ART Inc.” team tracks the whirlwind evolution of Hill Kidd’s design from real-life inspiration to the building of a mammoth ceiling feature, and finally to the audience’s first glimpse of a stage meant to transport them to 18th century Vienna. In the video, you can hear Hill Kidd’s enthusiasm for her work as she constructs a three-dimensional model, saying, “This is what people are going to walk on. This is what people are going to see. I mean, people are going to walk into the Gamm as an audience member, and I’m saying to them, ‘You need to believe that this is the 1790s in Vienna.’ And they do! And it’s magical.”
Among the Gamm team’s most daunting challenges: deciding how to incorporate live musical elements into the overall design. Director Tony Estrella noted, “Music adds a whole other challenge. The music becomes so important and integral to this play. We start it like you’re going to a concert because there are about 60 or so musical events throughout the show. So that’s a lot! One of the big themes of the story is what is virtuosity? What is artistic genius? We not only have to take it on (playwright Peter) Shaffer’s word or our understanding of who Mozart was in history. We get to see it produced in front of us and hear it, and we see the physical labor that goes into it. And I think are all the more stunned for it.”
A footnote: “Amadeus” became the highest-grossing production in the Gamm’s 40-year history. Did the magnificent set contribute to its success? You decide.
