Excited, challenged, motivated, and inspired are just a few of the descriptors I would use to invite you onto the stage with Arden Theater Players. Performance Art is popping up all over the country - not only because we are survivors - but also because artists want to share their craft and are willing to go to amazing lengths to do it. We are pouring out time, talent, and money into being the artists we are created to be. The very nature of theater art is to lift the stories of wonderful writers and composers up off the page and celebrate them in three-dimensional splendor. I am often asked when teaching, "Ron, what is art exactly?" I love this question and truly want people to know. Art is created to take the observer from where they are at the moment of experience to someplace different. The journey can be any range of emotions and thoughts - positive to negative, sad to joyous, perplexed to clear headed, giddy to very serious. You get the idea.

People tend to criticize and analyze art a good deal - and that is their prerogative. We at ATP have a different intent and mission in mind. Come to the theater to see well-crafted intimate cabaret style musical productions - close up - sparsely adorned - focus is on the star performers - and simply let go. Let the art move over, through, and around you. It may be profound. It may be just fun and frivolous. Gaze inquisitively or with simple abandon at the stories as they come alive. It doesn't matter. The amazing thing about the creators of art is that they mostly want you to have the freedom to interpret the things they do on your own. They have a plan in mind to be sure and so do the performers. That is certainly true. But mostly I like to call it an unexpected journey - with all manner of twists and turns, truth telling, and surprises - just to name a bit of what happens along the way. 

We are especially proud to present what I want to call star performers - artists who shimmer and shine and have the uncanny ability to pull the audience into their space for a rich conversation. Enjoy being with them - and seeing them afterward. You get a special look at the performers' world after each show because we are doing all we can to lure you back.

So we invite you to the theater with us - to feel, think, enjoy, and observe great theater art - crafted especially to move and transform - taking you from where you are to someplace different.

 

With great expectation,
Ron Arden

Ron Arden - CEO & Artistic Director