Katy Brown
The Barter Players touched the imaginations of more than 100,000 children last year.
“We became The Barter Players around 2000, and while honoring our past to train and tour, we began to expand programming for children at the theater throughout the year. We added a national tour in 2014, and we toured internationally in 2015, all while bringing faithful adaptations of great literature to life in ways that never talk down to students. The year we became the Barter Players in their current form, we were performing for just under 17,000 young people. Last year, we performed for over 100,000,” says Katy Brown, Barter Players artistic director.
The Barter Players were originally called First Light. The group began in the early 1990s primarily to tour to schools during the school year and to train young actors.
Brown joined First Light in the late ‘90s as an acting apprentice. She was enamored with the teaching and the work and stayed to tour with the company and to train as an actor and director. Her responsibilities have grown to include roles as artistic director of the Barter Players and associate director of Barter Theatre.
She auditions more than 1,500 actors each year, either locally or at regional auditions across the country.
“We’re looking for actors early in their careers who have strong enough skills to be in big roles in Barter productions, and who also are interested in growing in their craft in an ensemble format and who have a real service mindset. The young people I hire love theater but are not focused just on themselves, but on how their art can give back to the community. Once I narrow the field to a group of actors I know can do the level of work required, there is a series of callbacks and interviews to select the final company,” she says.
There are six year-round Barter Players. In the summer, they add eight summer players. This year, they have players from Arizona, Texas and Wisconsin and those who grew up locally watching shows as children.
“I am so proud of all the Player alum we have out there working in the arts. We have many Players who have started their own theater companies, many acting in cities and theaters throughout the country including on Broadway, many teaching theater and voice, many directing and many running theater and education programs in theaters. All of them have taken what they learned here and built upon it, and they support each other passionately,” she says.
They share that passion with audiences primarily on Barter’s Smith Stage (formerly Stage II). But for three months each year, they go on tour.
“The Players get into a van together and take three plays on the road to students as far north as Maryland and as far south as Florida. We see close to 30,000 students on this tour each year, and a large portion of them are kids who don’t get the arts any other way. These are students who sometimes wait all year for the van to show up at their schools. It’s an incredible thing to do theater for young people, but that specialness is dialed up when you are bringing it into their space. Sometimes we are performing on the very spot where a kid might have been bullied yesterday, and we often get letters from young people that seeing a show in their school made them want to be brave. We also have a national tour for young audiences that features Barter Player alum (Barter Players Encore Company) that has toured throughout the country and into Canada. In 2018, the Barter Players toured to over 85,000 young people between the two tours.
They take three plays on tour, but local audiences have more opportunities to enjoy The Barter Players. This season they perform seven plays: “The Princess and the Pea,” “Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Tarzan,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” “Tarzan,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Twas the Night Before Christmas” are upcoming shows.
“When choosing the plays, we look at stories that we believe have great things to say to young people. We love stories that focus on bravery, acceptance, friendship, imagination and other themes that help kids grow strong. Sometimes there will be a particular script that we rent, but often, we go to Catherine Bush, Barter’s playwright in residence, with a story we like, and ask if she will adapt it into a play. She will keep the heart of the story and translate it into a Player style that she has helped to hone over 12 years of creating scripts for us. We are incredibly lucky to have a playwright who writes shows especially for us — it has revolutionized the work we are able to do,” Brown says.
Performing for children is different than it is with an adult audience because they are a tough audience.
“The main difference is in the capability of children for belief. Theater is the art form of imagination and believing — and kids are the world’s best at believing with you. If you say that ‘we are on a mountain,’ kids will see the mountain. This means that we can do all sorts of epic stories, and the audience will go with us. It also means that you can’t mess around with anything less than your full commitment to the story. Kids are professional pretenders, and they won’t stand for it if you are not immersing yourself truthfully in the story. If you aren’t fully committing to a play for adults, adults will politely start thinking about their grocery list. If you aren’t fully committing to a play for young people, they will tell you right away. They will shout, they will wiggle, they will tell you it was boring. It’s an incredible litmus test for acting work— you have to bring your best. There is some sort of idea that theater for kids is ‘less than’- but nothing could be further from the truth. They are the best audience in the world to perform for.
“After ‘Charlotte’s Web,’ I went out to the lobby, and a little boy and his mom were waiting to meet Charlotte. The actor hadn’t been assigned to meet and greet that day and, while they had met some of the rest of the cast, Charlotte was the one he wanted to see. I went into the theater and asked if she might be willing to come out to see him. When she opened the theater doors, the little boy saw her from across the lobby, sprinted into her arms and started talking to her like they’d known each other all their lives. His mom and I stood there crying and smiling,” Brown says.
Brown is an associate artistic director at Barter Theatre, the artistic director of both The Barter Players and The Barter Players Encore Company and heads casting for Barter.She has directed more than 100 professional productions, taught workshops around the country, acting coached, dramaturged, choreographed, produced national tours and helped young artists reach their goals, among other theatrical adventures during her 21 years at the theater.
Visit www.bartertheatre.com for a complete schedule and more information about The Barter Players.
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