Photo by Teresa Boardman. Courtesy of Creative Commons license

On February 24, Park Square Theatre (a Knight Arts grantee) announced a new partnership (PDF) with three Minneapolis-based companies: Theatre Pro Rata, Sandbox Theatre and Girl Friday Productions. The “producing partnership” will mount shows for Park Square’s new Andy Boss Thrust Stage over the course of three years, beginning spring 2015: Sandbox and Theatre Pro Rata will produce one show each season, and Girl Friday will produce a show every other year; Park Square will round out each of the three year’s Boss Stage seasons with at least five shows of their own, as well as additional presentations of work by guest artists from time to time.

In the press announcement, Park Square’s artistic director, Richard Cook, calls the arrangement a “joint mentorship,” saying:

This partnership is more than just a seasonal rental. We designed our new stage to be affordable to operate, not only for us, but for smaller companies. I wanted the Boss Stage to offer today’s young producers what I wished for in my early days here – the chance to develop faster and more efficiently with practical peer learning instead of just working by trial and error.

Cook says his hope is that, at the end of this initial three-year partnership, more local companies will join in, bringing an increasing variety of top-shelf theater from an eclectic assortment of companies working all around the Twin Cities to the new Boss Stage.

The participating theater companies.

Park Square Theatre will begin construction of the new, 200-seat Andy Boss Thrust Stage this year. With a relative scarcity of affordable stages for locally produced theater in St. Paul, the addition of this venue, and Park Square’s commitment to sharing both its space and limelight with a welcome diversity of smaller companies, is big news for the capital city’s theater-lovers.

For more information about Park Square Theatre or its new partner companies, visit www.parksquaretheatre.org.