Scrutinize your salad. Peruse the parsnips. Better yet, concentrate on the carrots.
Do you see one - and only one - vertical orange veggie brandishing a playbill and a miniature AK-47?
Baltimore's newest theater troupe takes its name from a quote by the painter Paul Cezanne: "The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution."
Single Carrot Theatre's opening salvo will be fired tonight at the company's official debut at Theatre Project, when Single Carrot opens a two-week, 11-performance run of Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter. This challenging work, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for drama, is about two college friends on vacation in Amsterdam who become enmeshed with a young prostitute.
"When you're just starting a new company, you can do anything," says Brendan Ragan, Single Carrot's public-relations director.
"We want to revitalize the art form. We want to push ourselves and our audiences out of our comfort zone, and reward serious theatergoers with sophisticated, ambitious shows they won't see anywhere else."
Though this is Single Carrot's formal introduction to the Chesapeake Bay area, its members already have waded in ankle-deep. In January, the troupe presented a short-play festival at Mobtown Players. And, at Artscape last month, members conceived, wrote, rehearsed and staged a one-act play in 24 hours - a technique they learned as students at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The addition of a new theater company with professional aspirations would be welcome under any circumstances. Though Baltimore has an established network of well-respected community theaters, the city is home to just three resident professional troupes: Center Stage, Everyman Theatre and the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival.
(Three venues - Theatre Project, the Hippodrome and the Lyric Opera House - don't create their own shows, but present national tours.)
That's awfully sparse for a city this size (population 631,366). Indianapolis (785,597) has at least six resident professional groups, and Milwaukee (573,378) has a minimum of nine. Seattle (582,454) has a dizzying two dozen.
The young artists' energy and savviness have favorably impressed Anne Fulweiler, Theatre Project's producing director.
"They remind me of what Everyman Theatre was like when Vincent Lancisi first came to town," she said, referring to the artistic director of the now well-established Charles Street ensemble. "When Single Carrot performed at Artscape, a number of people commented, 'They're really good!' "
The city's theatrical dearth is partly what inspired seven members of Single Carrot to pick up lock, stock and stage lights and relocate to Charm City.
"When we realized there were only three professional theaters in town, we concluded that Baltimore was underserved," says the group's artistic director, J. Buck Jabaily, who also is directing Red Light Winter.
Adds company member Giti Lynn: "We thought we could make a difference here."
Single Carrot was formed in 2005 by a group of friends studying directing and performance techniques on the Boulder campus.
"There aren't an abundance of things you can do with a theater degree," Jabaily says. "You can move to New York or Los Angeles or Chicago and throw yourselves to the wolves. Or, you can team up with people you know and like and have good collaborative relationships with, and form a theater company."
The company spent its debut year in Boulder, waiting for some of the founding members to graduate. But by June 2006, it was time to leave home. "If we had stayed in Colorado, it would have been too easy to kick back and not be as successful as we can be," Ragan says.
But, where should they pitch their pup tent? One of the Carrots - it might have been Lynn or Aldo Pantoja - suggested a nationwide search to identify the city that would offer them the greatest likelihood of success.
They took into account the cost of living, public transportation, the amount of support for the arts and the number of existing troupes. "We avoided locations that were oversaturated with theater," Ragan says. "We didn't want to get lost in the void."
The original list contained 50 metropolises. After researching possibilities on the Internet, four finalists were selected: Austin, Texas; Philadelphia; Columbus, Ohio - and Eden on the Chesapeake.
Company members set up e-mail contact with arts organizations in the various communities and made site visits.
"Austin has a great arts scene, but it wasn't close to anything else," Ragan says.
"Columbus was incredibly enthusiastic and welcoming, but there isn't any theater scene there at all. It came down to Philadelphia and Baltimore, and Baltimore's charm eventually won out. We also were impressed that you have designated arts and entertainment districts. It's great to have a city dedicated to growing, and that understands the value of the arts."
Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch, even for such an innovative bunch of root vegetables. Jabaily describes the production budget as "two cents and a bowl of lint," garnered in part from a fundraiser that the group held in Colorado just before moving east.
Single Carrot currently is applying for nonprofit status, which will enable potential patrons to donate to the company tax-free.
In the meantime, each of the seven has a full-time job. Jabaily is box-office manager for Everyman Theatre; Lynn, his fiancee, works in group sales at Center Stage, and Pantoja coaches a high school volleyball team in Bel Air.
"As soon as we can go professional and pay ourselves, we will," Jabaily says. "We don't want to be working extra jobs forever."
But they also want to keep ticket prices affordable, especially in the early, crucial audience-building phase. The group has adopted a fee structure pioneered by a Chicago theater collective called the Neo-Futurists - and, which, while no one is making this claim, appears to be modeled closely on airline ticketing practices.
To determine the admissions cost, ticket buyers roll the dice and add $3 to whatever number comes up. So, you could pay as little as $4, while your significant other might fork over $9. Those opting to skip the dice pay $7.
"We want to make theater affordable and accessible to young people and old people," Lynn says.
On a recent, sweltering summer evening, Single Carrot members were rehearsing in a loft space in the CopyCat Building on Guilford Avenue, where one company member rents an apartment.
The loft had the same hip, funky ambience as a suicide helpline center. A wooden chair with a jagged back was covered with an eggplant-colored shag. The temperature was near 100, and there was no air-conditioning. A lone fan pushed out breaths hot enough to come from Puff the Magic Dragon.
Four long strands of white, twinkling Christmas lights hung from the ceiling, looped together in a kind of soft, room-sized square. As the sun set, the room darkened, intensifying the glow. The lights seemed to anoint the space below and confer magic upon it.
Was it, perhaps, a stage? Or was it a garden plot filled with fertile soil where a Single Carrot can grow?
mary.mccauley@baltsun.com
Future productions
Single Carrot Theatre's inaugural season is dishing up a Shakespearean history, a holiday show based on an early 20th-century poem and an evening of sketch comedy.
Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel. When an elementary school teacher learns that her brother is terminally ill with AIDS, she sweeps him off on an imaginary odyssey. October and November; specific dates and location to come.
La Muneca by Aldo Pantoja. The troupe member has taken a poem written in the early 20th century (the title translates as The Doll) and expanded it into a one-act play appropriate for the whole family. December; specific dates and location to come.
Richard III and sketch comedy. Shakespeare's study of the hunchbacked English king who murdered his young nephews will run in repertoire with a performance of original sketch comedy. April; specific dates and location to come.
[Mary Carole McCauley]