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The Producers: What they do for love

It's not the pursuit of fame and fortune that brings up the curtains on Long Island theater

BY STEVE PARKS | Newsday Staff Writer

January 14, 2007

Reflected in a mirror, Long Island theater producer Fred De Feis talks to actress Barbara Kirshner as she gets ready in the dressing room before she performs in "How the Other Half Lives" at Arena Players in Farmingdale. Barbara Kirshner plays "Fiona." (Newsday / Michael E. Ach)

"I wanna be a producer
Show the world just what I've got"
-- From the Mel Brooks musical "The Producers"

"Under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit," says accountant Leo Bloom.

In fact, Max Bialystock, his co-conspirator in show-biz fraud, concludes that you could make a killing.

That's the premise of the ridiculously successful Broadway musical "The Producers," in which Bialystock & Bloom sell 25,000 percent of a show that's a cinch to close in one night. Well, that's Broadway -- land of long shots and, under the right circumstances, long open-ended runs.

But for The Producers of Long Island -- land of sure things (where you can find 'em) and weekend runs of four to eight weeks -- it's impossible to make a killing. Even with ticket buyers in every seat.

"We're a nonprofit -- and we're very good at it," says Jeffrey Sanzel, artistic director of Theatre Three. His biggest annual onstage role is fiction's most famous miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. Together with financial director Vivian Koutrakos, he produces live theater in Port Jefferson for a company that has thrived, more or less, on the North Shore since 1969. Sanzel, artistic director since 1993 (with a year's hiatus), is one of a dozen or so Long Island producers running theaters from Elmont to East Hampton.

"You have to love doing this," Sanzel says. "It's not going to make you rich or famous, that's for sure. But you do hear applause every night."

56 years as a producer

Frederic De Feis has been hearing applause every night -- or at least every night he has a show -- for 56 years. Having celebrated his 80th birthday in 2006, he's the dean of Long Island producers, though he started out at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University.

He migrated to Brooklyn and then Queens, eventually landing at Idlewild Airport. (That's how long De Feis has been in the regional theater business: He was here before they renamed the airport JFK.) His aptly named Theatre-in-the-Skies was on the fifth floor of Idlewild's control tower. "We got quite an international audience in those days," says De Feis, recalling his 1959-63 run at the airport.

By the time the Beatles arrived in 1964, De Feis had moved on to a vagabond career in Nassau and Suffolk counties. "It was the first taste of dinner theater on Long Island," says

De Feis. His Arena Players also toured libraries and, in summertime, state parks. "We developed an audience and proved that there was a following for serious theater east of the East River," De Feis says.

During a stint as an Equity company (union scale for actors, directors and crew), Arena presented the classics -- Shake.speare, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller -- across the Island. De Feis still produces two Shakespeare plays each summer in the courtyard of Centerport's Vanderbilt Museum.

In 1972, Arena found a permanent home in an East Farmingdale strip mall, echoing its Idlewild roots by locating just across Route 109 from Republic Airport. De Feis added a second stage for "plays that challenge, provoke and stimulate the discriminating theatergoer" -- those are his recorded words that introduce every second stage performance -- plus a children's theater and acting school. Among those who got their start at Arena are Brian Dennehy and Edie Falco.

Some nights, the applause gets pretty thin at Arena Players and other local theaters. Opening night on a Thursday, for instance. Even if it's a whodunit or a sex farce. Or especially at the end of a six-week run of, say, an Arthur Miller play that's not "Death of a Salesman" or a Tennessee Williams that's not "A Streetcar Named Desire." (The Stage in Merrick currently is taking a chance on Williams' "The Rose Tattoo.")

"I think that we are rather lucky here that they do support many of the local theaters," says Bob Spiotto, producer of Hofstra Entertainment, a university-affiliated company whose casts have included such pros as TV star Tony LoBianco, Tony nominee Lorraine Serabian and the late Eddie Bracken. "What is more difficult to convince them of, however, is that ticket prices do need to increase, albeit slowly, as the costs of producing shows has also increased across the board," says Spiotto, who, like most Long Island producers, also directs and occasionally performs in his shows.

On the Island, Sanzel points out, "You can take a family of four to a show for less than $100. You can't get a single Broadway ticket for that amount -- and that doesn't include transportation, parking, etc."

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