While Matthew David Gellin was an undergraduate theater major at the University of Buffalo in 2007, he was questioning his chosen career. “I feel like I’m wasting my life,” he told his advisor. “I hate theater.” Asked what was troubling him, he confessed to love his studies and performing, but that wasn’t enough. He had been reading theater history, and he felt that contemporary theater wasn’t playing the important role it had in the past.
“I was in love with how the Peloponnesian Wars would cease fire and even go into peace treaties after participating in a theater festival. I was enamored with the idea of New York City’s yellow taxicab drivers going on strike because they saw Waiting for Lefty on Broadway. For me that is what theater has always been about, and we’ve gotten away from it,” Gellin tells CityBeat.
Gellin had big ideas and wrote a 20-page paper about the role he envisioned theater playing and handed it to his advisor, Kazimierz Braun, the former director of Poland’s National Theatre. Gellin says the veteran theater professional told him, “About half the things in your writing are not really done here in the United States. They’re done in theater in other parts of the world, but not here.”
When Gellin asked about the other half, Braun responded, “That’s easy. I’ve never seen it done before.”
Gellin says Braun told him, “Maybe that’s what you’re supposed to do in this life. Maybe that’s your space in the world of theater.”
That set Gellin to pondering a different kind of theater as he traveled the world. Once he and his wife with Cincinnati roots settled in the Tri-State, the time seemed right to launch a new type of theater. In 2018 he decided, “Let’s actually do this. I devised a singular mission and started to roll it out,” he says.
The result is a new Cincinnati-based theater company, American Legacy Theatre. Its stated mission is to generate “inviting, reimagined theatrical experiences for people to have a voice in enriching society.”
Gellin thinks of it as a “national theater,” the kind of institution that exists in many nations — like London’s National Theatre, which aims to entertain, challenge and inspire, per its mission statement, or The National Theatre in Poland, conceived in the 1700s to present theatrical works and engage in debate — but not in the United States.
American Legacy Theatre plans to both present productions and enrich society with professional shows in a “sporting event” atmosphere where live-tweeting, eating, drinking and chatting about the performance are encouraged.
Gellin also intends American Legacy Theatre to be a professional development opportunity for local theater artists, using experimental workshops to create new best practices in theater and to develop new American works. He is emphasizing educational impact on students and considerable community engagement.
Gellin’s first endeavor — funded by a grant from the now-shuttered local creative incubator People’s Liberty — produced 10 theatrical performances in October and November 2018 on the Cincinnati streetcar. Transit Theatre’s sketches were presented in three different four-hour blocks during which streetcar riders could watch the material in its entirety or hop on and off as young actors addressed gentrification in Over-the-Rhine, the neighborhood through which the streetcar travels on its 3.6-mile loop.
“Many people who ride the streetcar are not traditional theatergoers,” Gellin says. “So we were listening to the community, meeting them where they’re at, breaking down the walls of thinking what theater is supposed to be. Whether someone showed up for just a few minutes or more, they might get a beginning, middle and end story told with a call to action.”
Gellin is about to take another step toward creating theater to address contemporary issues with the upcoming production of Higher, an original Rock musical.
Produced as part of The Carnegie in Covington’s “Creative Disruption” initiative, it’s the story of Benjamin, who seeks love from people around him and develops a lifelong relationship with heroin. The Carnegie’s goal with their initiative is to “act as a creative engine and rapid response team to the changing situation of live performance in a pandemic world.” Gellin’s Higher, with original music by Mark Levine, demonstrates how a love affair with heroin has a ripple effect on Benjamin’s family and community. American Legacy Theatre partnered with local agencies Price Hill Will, Housing Opportunities Made Equal and others, bringing theatrical emotion and experience to demonstrate the missions and goals of these organizations.
Gellin collaborated with Levine, a composer and musician who struggled personally with addiction but is now a recovery counselor. The show grew out of stories of hundreds of veterans who Levine has met across the United States and who are affected by the stigma of addiction, which Levine hopes his show can reduce.
Higher came out of American Legacy Theatre’s program to help playwrights and composers bring their ideas to life.
“We work with them one-on-one for every single week for three years, in this particular case, to move that idea into an actual, publishable, producible piece,” Gellin says.
He envisions that Higher will be produced elsewhere after its six performances on The Carnegie’s mainstage.
Gellin has helped Levine craft the show. “It’s still something of a work-in-progress. There’s only so much you can do in a vacuum — you need the response from the audience to say this piece is great,” Gellin says.
Gellin workshopped Higher at the Recovery Center of Hamilton County and hoped to produce the show there. “But there’s a lot of red tape around that, and the space did now allow for audiences,” he says. Nevertheless, he’s already in conversation with possible subsequent locations.
“We spoke with the Heroin Coalition of Hamilton County,” Gellin says. “They say they have great strategies in place to rehabilitate people, to get them in the doors to seek help, but what they don’t have is a great strategy to get public awareness to support and move this forward.”
He hopes that people who don’t regularly go to the theater will attend this show. American Legacy Theatre is offering discounted tickets for people receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and other subsidies. Anyone unable to afford regular admission should call American Legacy Theatre directly at 513-443-5429.
The ambitious Gellin no longer feels he is wasting his life, he says. His vision for American Legacy Theatre, while currently limited to his hometown, shows promise for using theater to engage communities well beyond Greater Cincinnati.
Higher, presented by American Legacy Theatre, will be onstage at The Carnegie (1028 Scott Blvd., Covington) from Oct. 29 to Nov. 7. For tickets and more information, visit americanlegacytheatre.org.
This article appears in CityBeat | Oct. 13-26, 2021.
