Why do theater so far away when there are local groups?

People ask, usually kindly: if you have theater where you live, why drive so far?

Fair question. I already admitted the round trip is roughly four hours when traffic behaves. Local stages exist. I use them. So why the long haul?

Straight answer: I grew up there. I did theater there for many years. I love the venues. Bonus: I get to spend time with a bunch of old friends doing what we love and remembering why we love it so very much.

That is the whole thesis. The rest is texture.

The favorite house

I occasionally do work for several theaters over there when it fits. My favorite is a century-old outdoor theater in the woods.

Yes. Outdoors. Trees, sky, the particular acoustics of a place that was not designed like a black box with perfect HVAC. Weather is a cast member whether you invited it or not. Something about that house still feels like the reason the craft stuck to me in the first place.

I am not chasing novelty miles. I am returning to a room (well, a clearing) that taught me what “the show” means when the world is literally around you. I’m spending intermission looking at a creek that I’ve known since I was in grade school, listening to it gently join into the ambiance. I’m smelling the scent of evergreens in warm afternoon sunlight, and reveling in the brilliant greens, blues and browns all around me. I’m remembering what home feels like in a different way.

I do theater closer to home. A lot.

This is not an either/or story.

I work with local groups. I’m even VP of the board for one of them. I’ve started rehearsals for a show with that company that opens in October. That is real commitment: meetings, season thinking, nights in a rehearsal hall that does not require a gas tank novella (or in my case, most of a fully charged EV battery). Don’t get me wrong; I’m home here, too, with friends that may not have known me as long but still have known me long enough.

Local theater is not the understudy life. It is part of how I live here.

What the faraway stretch is for

Once or twice a year, I spend a swath of time with those old friends whom I love dearly, in the places where I learned to love the craft. We laugh our way through the memories – oh, so many of them! We crack our old inside jokes that still mean something to us. And we perform. Some of us are onstage. Some are in the pit. Some are doing all the myriad tech work and labor behind the scenes that make everything come alive. But we’re all performing.

It is a reminder of why I do what I do. Not a brand origin story. A recharge that happens to look like tech week and cue sheets and late notes in a group text.

Software has its own “why.” Theater has its own “why.” Sometimes they collide on this bench. Sometimes the why is simply: these people, this woods, this outdoor stage that has outlasted a lot of trends.

So… why so far?

Because home is allowed to be more than one zip code when the craft and the friendships grew up somewhere else first.

Because local and faraway are not rivals. One is how I plant new memories and grow. One is how I remember to be me.

Because a century-old theater in the woods is a ridiculous gift, and I am not too practical to keep showing up for it.

Instruments, not vibes. Sometimes the instrument is a long drive and days under the trees with people who still know your old laugh.

~ Trish