Rob Melrose is the Artistic Director at The Alley Theatre. The theater company is hitting a historical milestone, because four shows that originated here in Houston with them are opening on huge stages worldwide. Broadway World writer Brett Cullum had the opportunity to discuss all things Alley and how they shape the world’s theater landscape through their commitment to developing new work. 

Brett Cullum: I love the Alley. I grew up in Houston and have been a devoted audience member for my entire life. But first, I wanted you to walk us through the four shows that are debuting worldwide, which originated from the Alley. 

Rob Melrose: We’re really proud because we’ve put a big focus on new work in the past. Some of these even began as readings at our Alley New Festival. They have worked their way up to a full production at the Alley and then beyond. BORN WITH TEETH by Liz Duffy Adams is on the West End right now. I directed a reading of it for Alley All New before the pandemic. After the pandemic, we did a full production. That exact production went to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, also ran in Sarasota, Florida, and then the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. Now, it’s on the West End in a different production, but we’re really proud that it’s gone there.

Then we’ve got three shows that are either on or off-Broadway now, or will be soon. TORERA is at the Women’s Project theater. Soon, Rajiv Joseph‘s GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES will be at the Second Stage Theatre with two-time Tony winner and Alley alum Kara Young. And then at the end of this season, I’ll be directing Thornton Wilder‘s THE EMPORIUM at Classic Stage Company. So, having all four of these plays moving from the Alley to New York and London is pretty exciting.

Brett Cullum: Backing up just a bit, how long have you been the artistic director? 

Rob Melrose: Now it’s been 7 years! It feels both shorter and longer because of the pandemic. So, it feels like I’ve had fewer seasons, but it also feels like I’ve spent an eternity here, because two of those years were sheltering at home during and coming out of the pandemic.

Brett Cullum: That really did mark your early tenure. I feel like COVID really shook the theater world. It was the first thing to disappear, and it was the last thing to come back. Do you feel you have some lasting impacts from this? Are you still experiencing the COVID-19 aftershock?

Rob Melrose: Yes, well, subscribers haven’t come back in the same way that they were before COVID. The good news is, single-ticket audiences are really high. So we’re doing THE DA VINCI CODE right now, and we’re playing to full houses! The summer was Agatha Christie’s MIRROR CRACK’D, and that did really well. So our big single-ticket shows are doing spectacularly well, even better than before the pandemic. The thing that’s challenging, and that brings us back to new plays. These are plays that nobody’s ever heard of. And that’s where, in the old model, a robust subscriber model really helped support those new plays, because then people would come to see what you’re doing, even though they didn’t know what the play was. Now, they really come to the well-known titles, and because we believe in new plays so much, we program them, but those are the ones that are challenging to get audiences for. The message to everyone should be: look at where these plays go. You can see them first at the Alley. Don’t wait until you’ve heard of it; come to the Alley first and tell your friends you saw it before it was off-Broadway, before it was on the West End.

Brett Cullum: I recently saw THE DA VINCI CODE, and I loved it. I thought it was a great spectacle. It was just amazing to look at. And it was a lot of fun, and it is one of those shows where you go for the experience. However, it’s a movie and a book that are translated onto the stage, and many of these new works you develop are specifically created for the stage, and they are starting here. So, it’s a different animal and leans more into what theater does best. It’s definitely something people should take advantage of, as we can see these premieres here that have a life after them. The Alley has historically been a place where that’s happened a lot.

Rob Melrose: For example, NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES by Tennessee Williams started here. It was kind of a lost Tennessee Williams play. And then, of course, Edward Albee did a number of premieres with us, like THE PLAY ABOUT THE BABY and A MARRIAGE PLAY. He had a lot of his stuff start with us, which is really cool.

We also have our new play festival. It will be in October, and that’s a chance for people to see the plays as readings; at this point, almost no one has had the opportunity to experience the play. Even the playwright hasn’t seen the play on its feet in a full production; they’re often hearing it for the first time. It’s fun for the audience to come and hear a play reading, because for the past few years, every festival has wound up having one or two of those readings programmed as full productions in our season. So, it’s always fun. I love it, especially when board members and regular subscribers come to the Alley All-New Festival, because then they know these plays, and when we announce them, they’re already built-in fans, they already know the play, they’ve heard the playwright talking about the play, they know how it was written and why it was written, so that’s kind of a fun thing that the Alley offers. We really show you underneath the hood; we show you the beginnings of all this stuff.

Brett Cullum: For the All-New Play Festival, can you buy single tickets for each play, or can you buy a pass? How does that work?

Rob Melrose: You can buy a package, which gives you reserved seats, but the readings are free, so you can also just come and see the plays. If you want to reserve seats, it’s general seating, but you can just come in and sit down. Some of them sell out, or we get a capacity, so it’s always good to buy a pass to guarantee your seat, but oftentimes people come hoping there’s a seat, and there usually is one.

Brett Cullum: For someone who doesn’t know what an artistic director does, what is your role for Alley Theatre?

Rob Melrose: Well, there are a couple of different ways of looking at it. We’re a double-headed leadership model, so a two-person leadership model. I’m the artistic director, and Dean Gladden is our current managing director. Next month, Jennifer Bielstein will come into her new role as the managing director. But Dean, and soon-to-be Jennifer, is responsible for everything business-wise associated with the theater. So marketing, budgeting, that kind of stuff.

I’m responsible for everything artistic, which means choosing the plays and deciding what will go on the stages. I choose the directors to direct those plays, choose the designers who are going to design the plays, and then I am involved in casting. And then I’m involved in all the steps along the way, monitoring, quality control, and making sure everything’s running right. And of course, in addition to designers and directors, we’ve got a whole staff of people who are building the sets, making the costumes, making the wigs. We have a Sound Department and a lighting department, so all that is part of my world.

Brett Cullum: Well, that’s amazing, and a lot of places have gone to this double-headed leadership model, because it’s well known that sometimes the business people aren’t as artistic and the artistic people aren’t as business-focused, so you’ve got people doing what they do best at all times. When you design a season for Alley Theatre, I always wonder what factors you consider?  

Rob Melrose: Well, I have a different job from almost any artistic director in America, because we’re one of the only theaters that still has a resident acting company. I have a colleague who actually came into a theater that had a resident acting company, and he felt like he had to get rid of The Acting Company, because he said, “Well, I choose actors for plays, not plays for actors.” And, you know, I love our acting company, and I do the opposite. I choose plays for actors. I have to figure out what plays they can do for 52 weeks out of the year. Then, after that, I have many things that I weigh against each other. 

We’re a little like the MFAH now. I ran an avant-garde theater in San Francisco. And there, I could just program, very, very niche work. Here, I’m much more like the MFAH. I can’t just show our audience one kind of painting; I’m showing many different kinds of paintings, so I look at different kinds of classics, new work, and popular work. I also have to balance financially what plays are really going to bring in a big audience, like THE DA VINCI CODE, or NOISES OFF, or an Agatha Christie mystery. But our mission isn’t just to do the plays that everybody wants to see. We also have a responsibility to honor the classics and show audiences classics done in the best way possible, and we also owe it to our audience to show them great new plays, ones they’ve never heard of, ones they don’t know they want to see. My job is to say, “Hey, you don’t know about this, but it’s really great, come see it.”

Brett Cullum: Well, there’s an interesting dichotomy between these two types of plays. But when you look at something like a TORERA, or a Thornton Wilder‘s THE EMPORIUM, or BORN WITH TEETH, how do those shows come about? Like, how do they hit your radar?

Rob Melrose: Gosh, they all hit in different ways. For Born With Teeth, Liz Duffy Adams and I went to Yale School of Drama together, and so I’ve known her and directed her plays for a long time, so she’s an old, old, old friend, and she knew I was coming to New York and said, “Hey, do you have a spare evening? I’ve got two friends who are willing to read the play out loud. I want you to hear it.” So that’s how I first experienced BORN WITH TEETH. 

For THE EMPORIUM, Kirk Lynn of Rude Mechanicals, who lives in Austin and teaches at UT, he just told us about this project, and I’ve always been a little jealous of the Alley doing NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES, because I feel like being able to do a world premiere of a Tennessee Williams play, to me, felt like the ultimate. Then, when I found out, (oh my God!) Thornton Wilder has a lost play, and Kirk Lynn has gotten permission from the Wilder estate to complete it. I knew I wanted to get involved in it. In both cases, we put them into Alley All New

With TORERA by Monet Hurst-Mendoza, Liz Frankel, our former new play director, just submitted the play, and now Bradley Michalakis is our head of dramaturgy, and he runs the New Play Festival. Bradley and his team of readers read hundreds of plays a year. As a result, we receive plays submitted to us through agents. If you’re a Texas author, you don’t need an agent; you can simply submit it to us, because we value local artists. These readers recommend plays for us. It’s called our artistic department. We meet once a week and discuss plays, and it’s there that the season gets all hammered out.

Brett Cullum: Your artistic vision, if you had a vision statement for The Alley Theatre, what would it be?

Rob Melrose: Yeah, well, we do have one, which is to be an essential theater to Houston, the nation, and the world, and that’s really intentional, that the first group we serve is Houston, so we need to do shows that Houstonians want to see, we need to make sure all the different communities of Houston see themselves in the theater and feel welcome. That’s why every show of ours begins with “Welcome,” said in about 40 different languages. The whole idea is to be accessible and open to Houston. I really do believe theater’s for everybody, and it takes work to let people know that they’re invited and should come. Then, with the nation, the mission is to do work that is at a national level, where we’re a leader for the American theater. A way to decide if you are a leader or not is whether other people are following you. You know, if other people are following you, that’s a pretty good sign that you’re being a good leader. And then, the world is, you know, really reaching all the way to the top, and doing things that go beyond the nation, and BORN WITH TEETH is a great example of that. It actually broke through in the U.S., and now it’s in London’s West End. I hope some of these plays will eventually be translated and performed in other countries. That’s kind of how we think of our approach: we start local, start small, but then our ambition is to make a worldwide impact.

Brett Cullum: Well, congratulations, because obviously, that’s working. The Alley All-New Festival is playing this year, October 24th through the 26th. You can find more information on their website or by following the BUY TICKETS link below.