Interview: Go Inside the Renovation of Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's with Executive Director, Jennifer Pluff

From 1995- 2020, St. Luke's Theatre has been a staple of the Off-Broadway scene, playing home to numerous notable productions including: Tony & Tina's Wedding, Late Night Catechism, Disaster! The Musical, FRIENDS! The Musical Parody, Sistas the Musical, and so much more.

Having weathered the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the venue has returned to full operation under the moniker Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's and sporting some exciting new renovations! During the shutdown, with the support of the parish community, the space has been overhauled and modernized to a 170-seat Off-Broadway theater-in-the-round.

The nearly $200,000 project has elevated every area of the space, from the state-of-the-art wired LED lighting to the new arena seating configuration, new chairs, new control booth, updated dressing rooms, bathrooms, shower, washer/dryer hook-up, offices/green room, box office, and two LED backlit window boxes for front-of-house art.

In addition to the widespread upgrades to their facilities, the company recently launched its first production in the space, the acclaimed new musical Islander, imported from the United Kingdom! Go inside the new space and get full details on this massive project in our chat with Jennifer here!

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When did you all make the decision to take on this massive project? What was the planning process like?

The church decided to start a committee and they took people from the congregation that were in the industry. I was on the committee and we decided it was time to just elevate the space. We needed to do some insulation. The biggest thing was to make sure that we had some kind of sound barrier between the sanctuary above and the theatre down below, so that we didn't have a lot of sound bleed so that we could actually do things simultaneously. That was always the problem in the past. So that was the first and foremost issue, then it became about all of the things to make it clean and functional. The offices were completely gut renovated and remodeled, new fire exits, new flooring, new kitchen, new green room. Then we decided as the committee to hire a theater architect. So, we contacted ARUP and they were the ones that put together some configurations of the space.

How did you settle on the arena seating and what is the advantage of that layout for the space?

One advantage is sight lines. It's a basement, so we don't have tall ceilings. You can't have a lot of rise for seats. So to have the traditional proscenium or even a little thrust stage, you'd have to have that height. So the idea was how do we configure the space, knowing that we have height restrictions and knowing that we want to get as many bodies in there as possible for the off-Broadway business model. We went through all of the different configurations and landed on the arena setting because we were able to fit 172 people. Before the renovation it was 135 or something like that.

It sounds like you really optimized the space.

It makes a huge difference. The tech booth was completely invisible. I mean, there was no way that anyone sitting in the tech booth where it was built in the back corner of the space could actually be functional and see anything that was happening on stage to call the show. So we had to arrange that in a different location, too. And then by doing so we also wired everything for LED. So we are state of the art in that sense. But again, we were also thinking about the comfort, not only of the actors, but the patrons. In a smaller, low-ceiling space having LED lighting [the temperature] is going to be cooler. So we also wanted to make sure that it was going to be a comfortable space in that regard.

The space itself then lent it itself to the arena, but the other thing that was the biggest factor in getting the architect is that we're still a working soup kitchen.

I did not see that coming. [laughs]

[laughs] So on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 PM until 2 PM, the church still has, and will always have, the mission of the soup kitchen which has been longstanding in Midtown. It is one of the only ones that actually serves hot meals. It's a sit down, have a hot meal that is homemade, every day. We had to design something that could then convert. So the second row of seating actually retracts into the riser behind it so that it extends the open space so that now we have walkthrough space for the soup kitchen patrons. We have tables that will be there with chairs, and so they are able to then walk in, we have a buffet line, and they come in and they sit down, they walk out the other way. It exactly how we've always done it for years and years and years. And so we knew we needed to keep that same soup kitchen model. Behind one whole section of seating is a galley kitchen and that's where all of the food is made and that's how we kind of applied it to the theatre. So it's a soup kitchen that turns into a theatre instead of a theatre that turns to a soup kitchen.

It sounds like a really well thought out project.

The only downside about this renovation that we haven't yet mastered and we're gonna need more our money in order to do this...I'm hoping that we do establish ourselves as a non-for-profit that we can apply for grants and hopefully get some money to make us more ADA accessible. That is the biggest unfortunate setback for being like a hundred year old building, we don't have that accessibility, There's steps coming in and steps going down. Even the bathrooms aren't wide enough to be handicap accessible. So, we have a plan for how this could work and it would actually somehow benefit our soup kitchen, too. We would have to renovate down there to accommodate a handicap accessible bathroom down in the space. So we do have these goals and plans for, you know, five years out, ten years out.

It's amazing that you accomplished this in such a precarious time for theatre. How did you find the funding for this project?

Pastor Arden Strasser of St. Luke's Lutheran church has been the most instrumental in this. I mean, the church has put up and the congregation has put up this money to make this happen. It's not a good time to be part of a church, either. So, they're literally taking money out of the coffers when a lot of people aren't able to go to church and aren't able to give.

Talk about a leap of faith!

It's exactly what it is. Yeah. It is such a leap. I'm amazed, amazed every day throughout this entire process that we were able to get it to this point. I mean, we don't have any money left [laughs] but we got it to this point!

You guys are presenting the new musical, Islander, which was a big hit in the UK. How has that been going? what are your hopes for the future?

It's been really great and the show is perfect for our space. I mean, it couldn't be more perfect as far as the mission of what we wanted to do at Playhouse 46, as far as bringing together shows from the heart. We really want to cultivate something that is to be progressive, that reflects the congregation of St Luke's Lutheran church. So, it's very important for us to highlight, LGBTQ+ issues, social justice topics and dealing with people that are less fortunate. I mean, that is what our message is. We want to provide help and aid and have that social mission.

Yeah. Well it's certainly part of its DNA, right down to the custom, built-in soup kitchen!

Learn more about Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's and the new musical, Islander, here.