The Ruth Gordon Amphitheater in Quincy, Massachusetts

You want to break new ground. You want to do something different. You want to build a following for your theater, made up of people who are interested and look forward to the work your theater presents, much in the same way that people anticipate a movie by their favorite director, or a book by their favorite author. And that desire takes up a large portion of the worrying that you do as you build a new theater, trying to figure out how you do it, because in theater, the old try and true methods don't seem to be working anymore.

And then, on a cold, wintry day after Christmas, when you and your wife are out trying to find that place where you can rent kayaks in the summer on the estuary that leads out onto the bay, you stumble upon an unkempt amphitheater, something that looks like something out of ancient Greece. And you suddenly remember that play your friend has that would be perfect for this setting, and you think of the short play that you have, and maybe some of your friends have other short plays you can present (and you think, of course they have short plays I can present; the problem I'll have is having too many short plays) and imagine the stone steps filled with people, and lights coming on on a summer night, and microphones--will they need microphones, or will the actors project?. And the next day you look at the pictures, and the theater looks definitely like a fixer-upper, the kind of place where you fall in love, and only you can see the beauty and possibility.

If anyone who's reading this knows how I can get this done in Quincy, Massachusetts, please message me. Let's put on plays in the park in the summer, giving people a chance to put down their phones and sit together on a balmy summer night and listen to stories and laugh and cry a bit, and go home, maybe changed just a little bit.