InterAct Bids Adrienne Farewell with 'Three Christs of Manhattan'

Like legions of June graduates, InterAct Theatre Company celebrates its commencement this month with Three Christs of Manhattan, by Seth Rozin, InterAct producing artistic director. The new comedy, about a psychiatrist visited by three individuals convinced they are Jesus Christ, concludes the company’s 18-year residency at the Adrienne Theater.

This fall, InterAct will move to the Drake, an historic space on Spruce Street currently being transformed into a multistage theater for InterAct, Azuka Theatre, Inis Nua Theatre, Sympatico Theatre Project, and Play Penn, a development workshop.

Move affords control, creative advancement

InterAct holds the lease on the 8,500-square-foot building and will rent space to its resident partners, an important difference, according to Rozin, who founded InterAct in 1988: “We will be in control of our own destiny at the Drake, 100 percent responsible for the premises, able to shape the artistic and administrative experience.”

Besides increased authority and responsibility, InterAct will have more room in which to play at the Drake, which has 15-foot ceilings, views unobstructed by structural pillars, and a mainstage with 128 seats compared with the Adrienne’s 106.

Though more room is an advantage, Rozin notes that the quiet block on Sansom Street has been a comfortable home. “The Adrienne’s physical attributes added character and challenged us,” he says. “Exposed brick walls, for example, made it a warm and intimate space in which to make and see theater. It formed our whole aesthetic. We love the neighborhood.”

A center for cultivating new plays

Moving will also improve InterAct’s opportunity to develop new plays, a cause that Rozin has championed throughout his career. In addition to having written several plays and directed numerous productions of new work, Rozin helped form the National New Play Network and currently serves as the organization’s board president, a connection that has allowed him to observe theater across the country. Philadelphia, he says, compares favorably.

“In 27 years we’ve gone from completely marginal to one of the top five cities in the country for new and contemporary plays, especially in the last 10 to 15 years,” explains Rozin, who grew up in Lower Merion. “More top artists are calling Philadelphia home, theaters start and flourish here, and the city has a residential community who can walk to the theater.” Thanks to Philadelphia’s affordability and compact geography, in addition to a supply of skilled actors and craftspeople, the city has become a hotbed for new theater.

Inspired (sort of) by a real story

Three Christs grew out of a conversation, between Rozin and colleague Thomas Gibbons, about a psychiatrist treating three patients who thought they were Christ. Rozin tried to get a copy of the book about the case, Three Christs of Ypsilanti, but was unable to. Which was lucky.

The book “wasn’t the only impetus,” he recalls, explaining that his play also resulted from frustration with the “constant appropriation of Christianity in particular, and religion in general, to serve partisan ideologies” by political and social pundits.

The play was well underway by the time Rozin finally read the book, which he found “not very helpful. Though some of the observations were interesting, it was dry and clinical, and might have turned me off.”

Interestingly, this is the third time that one of Rozin’s scripts has been echoed by a separate theatrical production. Last year, a serious treatment of the ideas Rozin explores in Three Christs of Manhattan was produced in New York. Though the inspiration is similar, the results are very different, Rozin says: “Ours is a comedy and not abstract at all.”

An appropriate goodbye

Three Christs of Manhattan, which Rozin codirects with Kittson O’Neill, and InterAct’s previous production Uncanny Valley, written by Gibbons and directed by Rozin, are an appropriate farewell to the Adrienne, he says. “A year ago we didn’t know these would be our last plays here, but they have involved our core actors and many of our core designers, as well as Tom and myself, who have written many of InterAct’s plays. It’s fun and fitting — a comedy with our favorite artists. It couldn’t have ended up better.”

Three Christs of Manhattan, written by Seth Rozin; Seth Rozin and Kittson O’Neill directed. InterAct Theatre world premiere, May 29-June 21, 2015 at the Adrienne Theatre, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. Tickets: http://interacttheatre.org/season/three-christs/, at the box office, or by phone at 215-568-8079.