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’s 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’m not chasing novelty miles. I’m 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 I’ve known since grade school, listening to it gently join into the ambiance. I’m smelling evergreens in warm afternoon sunlight, 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 too. A lot.

This isn’t an either/or story. I work with local groups, I’m even VP of the board for one of them, and I’ve started rehearsals for a show with that company that opens in October. That’s real commitment: meetings, season thinking, nights in a rehearsal hall that doesn’t 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 who may not have known me as long but still have known me long enough.

Local theater isn’t the understudy life. It’s 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 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’s 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 aren’t 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’m 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