Mad River Theater Works mixes it up
- Published: March 20, 2025
Engaging communities in the arts has been a foundational part of Mad River Theater Works’ mission since its founding in the village in 1978 — and it aims to keep doing so in new and unique ways.
After several decades headquartered outside of Yellow Springs, the company returned to the village in 2023, taking up residency in the Foundry Theater. Mad River has since produced a series of stage works focused on the American history of civil rights for young and wider audiences, both in Yellow Springs and on national tours, and in 2023, launched its summer theater residency for youth.
Last week, Mad River’s Managing Director Chris Westhoff said the company is working to expand what it brings to local audiences.
“Mad River is really finding its legs in a project-to-project way of how to activate its mission and use its resources to be an agent of artistic work here,” he said.
To that end, last fall, Mad River produced both the Rhythm in Shoes dance company’s revival show, “The Big Family Business,” and performances of the original, collaboratively written play “The Language of Dolls,” by Lizzie Olesker, Peggy Pettitt and Louise Smith. Earlier this year, Mad River helped produce a performance of Terry Riley’s minimalist musical work “In C” with “Neutrals and Friends” at the Emporium. All three projects were distinct from the original, history-based works the company has produced thus far at the Foundry, and for more than four decades prior.
Mad River is leaning into bringing these and other varieties of performances to the village in the future — including two events set for this month.
First, at 1 p.m. Sunday, March 16, is a free performance from the Three Rivers Young People’s Orchestras Symphonette Orchestra. The Pittsburgh-based youth orchestral organization is in its 51st year of providing youth musicians with opportunities to perform together outside of school hours at a high level. In Yellow Springs, the group’s Symphonette Orchestra will present the concert program they’ll have just finished performing at the Music For All National Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Westhoff said the opportunity to present the young musicians to Yellow Springs audiences came when a villager familiar with the Symphonette Orchestra mentioned the young musicians would be staying in the Dayton area while traveling home after the festival. Wouldn’t it be nice, the local resident thought, if the young musicians could stop and play in Yellow Springs on their way home?
Knowing the village’s own history with supporting young musicians through the 60-year-old YS Youth Orchestra Association, Mad River agreed.
“I thought it was a strong opportunity to relate to families and young people — especially musicians — in our community,” Westhoff said.
Westhoff reached out to the YS Community Foundation, which issued a mini-grant that Mad River will use to produce the program and provide each of the young musicians with lunch from Current Cuisine. Though the upcoming performance is free, donations are encouraged, with all funds to support the YS Youth Orchestra Association.
Later the same week on Friday, March 21, a wide swath of young folks in the village will get another opportunity to learn about a variety of musical traditions. Mad River is bringing the musical trio Tomchess and the Love Dogs to town for both an evening performance at the Foundry and, earlier in the day, a performance workshop at Mills Lawn School.
Tomchess is a long-time friend of Westhoff and a musician and composer with deep roots in improvisational styles and study of Near Eastern and North African musical traditions. Westhoff said Tomchess and the Love Dogs routinely present educational workshops and performances in schools, often focusing on the improvisation at the foundation of their original compositions in working with up-and-coming young musicians in ensembles.
At Mills Lawn, the trio will focus more on the history and culture behind the wide range of instruments they play: Tomchess performs on the Middle Eastern stringed oud and end-blown flute ney, and the South Indian morsing, which is similar to a jaw harp; Ravi Padmanabha performs on a variety of percussion instruments, including the Indian tabla drums, as well as the South Asian stringed sarangi; and Will McEvoy plays upright bass.
“It’s a very global sound that they create, so there’s a lot of inroads to talk with students about where the instruments come from, how they’re played traditionally and what of [the trio’s] music is inspired by those traditions,” Westhoff said. “It will be a good program at Mils Lawn — and they’re good at knowing their audience, so they can talk about deep musical ideas in a way that’s good for kids.”
At 7 p.m. on Friday, March 21, Tomchess and the Love Dogs will perform in the Foundry’s experimental space; tickets are $20 for general admission and $5 for students. Westhoff said the experimental space’s smaller dimensions compared to the theater’s main auditorium are well-suited to the trio’s performance style.
“It’ll be full-feeling and intimate, and that way we can really hear the sounds of the instruments as much as their amplification, and just be in the space together,” he said.
Westhoff said this is the first year in his 17 with Mad River Theater Works that the company is not producing a nationwide tour of an original play. Nevertheless, he said he’s looking forward to what’s ahead as the company aims to keep “understanding and then defining” its role in the community and the application of its arts-focused mission. Chief among that application, he said, is continuing to build a relationship between the public schools and Mad River Theater Works as part of its outreach work, and to make sure the Foundry Theater — which Westhoff manages in addition to his work with Mad River — is “used in a productive way.”
“Mad River has spent so much time in our organizational capacity being of use to a very specific kind of story that has to do with American history and civil rights and a very specific audience [of young people], and I believe in our ability to be more impactful by making sure our community grows and benefits, that the Foundry gets the kind of support it needs and that the schools feel more like a collaborative partner in the work that we do,” he said. “The kinds of things we’ve been bringing to town are so different — and these are the things Mad River is leaning into.”
Summer youth theater residency
As Mad River Theater Works continues to explore what’s possible for the company to bring to area audiences, it’s doing the same for its annual summer theater residency workshop aimed at young artists, which heads into its third iteration this June.
As the News has reported in the past, the annual two-week youth theater residency has, in some ways, picked up where the long-loved YS Kids Playhouse left off when it took its final bow in 2022. The following year, the summer youth residency kicked off in YSKP’s former home at the Foundry, focusing on collaborative storytelling, with burgeoning young artists spending two weeks creating an original show from the ground up.
The past two years of residencies at the Foundry have been led by Westhoff and by New York City-based playwright Daniel Carlton, who has worked as part of Mad River’s company on several past productions. Supporting Westhoff and Carlton last year were Mad River Company member Gabrielle Archer and local artist AJ Breslin. This year, Westhoff said, there will be a kind of changing of the guard for Mad River’s summer theater residency.
“AJ has a great background and energy for this work, and with both Daniel Carlton and I working on a lot of things, we thought, instead of AJ supporting us in the work we’ve been doing, what if we supported him and have him steer the ship?” Westhoff said.
Breslin came to Mad River Theater Works last summer with years of Dayton theater under his belt, serving in the past as co-artistic director for The Nerve Theatre and as an artist in residence at Dare2Defy Productions and, later, TheatreLab Dayton. For the latter two companies, Breslin helped lead several youth theater camps, creating curricula for the programs.
Breslin told the News this week that he looks forward to bringing his experience to bear for the summer youth residency again in June — this time, at the program’s helm. He said the team supporting the program — which will still include Westhoff and Carlton, as well as newcomers to the program, Jenna Valyn and Chris Hahn, who co-founded The Nerve Theatre — intends to continue its foundational principles of devised theater, or theater created collaboratively by its young artists without a prewritten script.
At the same time, Breslin said, students in last year’s residency expressed interest in not only performing theater with music, but musical theater. The young artists helped devise a few songs for the show they created, but during breaks, several participants routinely belted showtunes with their peers. As Breslin sees it, there’s room for established musical theater pieces within the summer residency program’s devised theater approach.
“There’s a different sense of community that you get out of performing those kinds of [musical theater] works than when you’re devising works — and both are really valuable,” he said.
As in years past, this summer, residents ages 8–17 will spend time over two weeks getting to know one another, participating in learning exercises and working together to create a show — but this year, the show will be created around existing musical theater pieces the young residents choose from a list put together by the program’s leaders.
“With musical revues on Broadway, for example, the way they do those shows is they devise scenes that connect the pieces, so it will be nice to give the kids those bones to build around,” Breslin said. “They’ll have the opportunity to perform those songs and create something new and original alongside them.”
As in years past, all residency participants are encouraged to try everything on offer — acting, writing, singing, set design, etc. — to find what they like best. Breslin said it’s part of the program’s built-in respect for its young residents as burgeoning artists with their own unique visions of the craft.
“Mutual respect is something I always craved [as a young artist] from my instructors, and for adults in a room full of children to bring that mutual respect, I think it really goes a long way and makes it feel safer for them to try new things — we don’t talk down to them,” Breslin said. “Whether they ever do theater again after [summer residency] is irrelevant — as long as they walk away feeling like it was a space where they were respected and able to explore, and hopefully make friends, I really think that’s what it’s all about.”
For more information on the upcoming Mad River Theater Works-sponsored Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestra and Tomchess and the Love Dogs performances at the Foundry, go to antiochcollege.edu/calendar. For more information on the upcoming Mad River Theater Works, slated for the weeks of June 2 and June 9, go to http://www.madrivertheater.com.
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