1st Stage Hits its Stride

New theater builds actors, and audience in Tysons

By Janet Rems

The cast of “Red Herring” at 1st Stage, performed April 3 through 26.

The creative side of the theater business is thriving at 1st Stage, a fledgling professional theater, off Spring Hill Road in Tysons Corner, which opened September 2008. The company—housed in a 6,500-square-foot retail space converted at a cost of about $200,000 into 110-seat theater—has already mounted five plays, receiving the kind of positive reviews more seasoned troupes covet.

Co-founder and artistic director Mark Krikstan says 1st Stage is extremely deliberate in the little-known plays it chooses. “Not highbrow … We want them to be great theater … entertaining but stretch [our] actors in a big way.”

For July, 1st Stage is concentrating on the future with two intensive, two-week training sessions for high school-age actors.

In August, it goes into rehearsal for the first play of its new season, possibly a new work by young Manassas playwright Brian Doyle.

A former theater teacher at Marshall High School, where he taught for 12 years before retiring in 2007, Krikstan, 58, is especially attuned to the needs of young thespians.

Both the plays and the summer camp advance one of 1st Stage’s core missions, succinctly summed up in its name—to give young actors their first professional experiences “while surrounded, taught, influenced, protected by some very seasoned professionals.”

For additional information about 1st Stage, visit www.firststage.org.

(July 2009)

Tags: 1st Stage, actors, Mark Krikstan, plays, Theater