As the story goes, during one of their first productions in 1988, the Elden Street Players invited the Herndon town council and mayor to see the show and placed a supporter directly behind them to make whispering comments about how great it would be if Herndon had its own community theater. True or not, the result was the same: Herndon rented a vacant warehouse on Sunset Park Drive and made investments to support the Elden Street Players.
From that warehouse, which was converted into a 114-seat black box theater, the Elden Street Players spent 25 years establishing themselves as one of the premier community, all-volunteer based theaters in the area, putting on lesser-known, challenging works instead of the usual fare of Rodgers & Hammerstein and Neil Simon. In 2013, the theater made the change to go professional, hiring their first full-time staff members, including Evan Hoffman as the producing artistic director, and rebranding as NextStop Theatre.
“There are already some great artists out here, and there are a lot of great artists in the city who would happily come out here, so why not bring the art to the patrons instead of making all the patrons out here go all the way to the art?,” says Hoffman in reference to other professional theaters in the area being in or closer to D.C. “That has proved a pretty successful theory thus far.”
NextStop will celebrate not only its last five years, but all of its 30-year history with its production of Amour, a musical about a man who can walk through walls. The production will once again be an all-volunteer effort, directed by frequent Elden Street Player collaborator (who has continued to work with NextStop Theatre) Gloria Dugan.
“Because we wanted to celebrate that history and we wanted to involve people who were a part of our history, we decided to do this special production to honor that,” Hoffman explains. “And so the majority of the cast and production staff are people who worked with the Elden Street Players. … It’s a NextStop Theatre production, but we’re doing it the way we did Elden Street Player shows.”
While the ability to perform big shows like Amour in its compact space has been a calling card for NextStop, Hoffman and the company continue to seek opportunities for growth. The company has been in long discussions with Herndon on being one of the residents in a planned 18,000-square-foot art center in the downtown area, which would provide a bigger, better theater facility. Hoffman sees the space as a potential arts hub and something that will draw audiences to NextStop and Herndon.
“It’s my hope we can continue to grow so that young artists can say ‘I want to be an artist, I want to be a performer or director and I can still be a part of this community; I don’t have to flee this community because that’s not an option,’” he says.
Amour will run Friday, Saturday and Sundays from Aug. 3-26.
