In the second semester of his junior year at Syracuse University, Timothy Simon, an acting major, wasn’t cast in any productions.

This gave Simon the opportunity to pitch and produce his own show through SU’s drama department. After he configured budgeting and made a strong pitch, the department decided to give him a shot with Annie Baker’s “The Aliens.”

An SU alumnus, Simon had to go through a very similar process with friends and fellow SU alumni Seth Landau and Ethan Butler in New York City this year.

After pitching their production ideas for a version of Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann’s “Urinetown,” the three friends reunited as co-executive producers.

“Urinetown” is the story of a town where private toilet use is illegal. If citizens want to use a toilet, they must pay a fee to access amenities owned by a corrupt company called Urine Good Company. It seems as if the future of the town is doomed until a man named Bobby leads a rebellion in hopes of overthrowing Urine Good Company.

“Urinetown” will be performed at the Chernuchin Theater at the American Theater of Actors on West 54 Street in New York City. The crew is currently preparing for the show, which will take place the weekends of Oct. 16 –18 and Oct. 22–24.

The trio is producing “Urinetown” through an entertainment production company, The Araca Group. The Araca Group partnered with SU, Northwestern University, The University of Michigan, Florida State University and Yale University to form the theater production project.

The project’s goal is to foster entrepreneurial spirit in recent college graduates by giving them the opportunity to produce an off-Broadway production. Recent graduates from other universities can pitch and produce a show as well, as long as they have a large enough team of alumni involved in their production.

If a team’s proposal is selected for production, they are given significant financial support and mentorship from the two executive producers of The Araca Project.

The current co-executive producers of the Araca Project, Danny Bateman and Phil Blechman are also graduates of SU’s drama program. They got their start with the Araca Group in 2012 as participants of the production, “The Black Book.” Experiencing both sides of the pitch and application process, Bateman shared what he looks for in production pitches.

“We look for passion in teams, as much as we look for the work to be good, The Araca Project is more about fostering the entrepreneurial spirit in people so if the work is good, that’s great, but its more about the people,” Bateman said.

Traditionally, “Urinetown” is a fun, comedic and satirical musical, but this team decided to take a new, more serious approach that would make the it more relevant to today’s social issues.

“We get to see how the masses go from being oppressed to this kind of revolt and this kind of revolution that we see akin to things in Baltimore and Ferguson, and that’s where I locked on to the concept that were approaching it with,” Landau said.

Landau, a director of “Urinetown,” said that he learned from professors at SU that directors should feel personally connected to and proud of the shows they produce. He said he plans to make his adaptation of “Urinetown” socially significant.

“I really want to make a statement with this,” Landau said. “If I’m going to do this in this time and this climate politically and socially, I need to make it matter.”

Published on September 30, 2015 at 10:23 pm

Contact: slgozins@syr.edu