Interview with Jason Crespin
Photography by Chriselda Photography | Amarillo Little Theatre

In the small Texas Panhandle town of Amarillo, known for its Wild West landscape and cowboy culture, another type of action is stealing the show.

Jason Crespin, managing/artistic director of the Amarillo Little Theatre (ALT), explains how this venue stages prestigious theatrical productions that serve the western plains a dose of the performing arts.

Would you talk about the origins of Amarillo Little Theatre?

You wouldn’t think of Amarillo as the arts hub of our nation, but you’d be shocked! Our theater was founded in 1927 and is one of the oldest continuously running theaters in the nation. Even during major wars and COVID, we have never shut our doors. We also have a symphony here that’s closing in on its centennial anniversary.

Why Amarillo?

Back in the 1920s, Oma Link Rowley, our founder, decided, This is a great town, and it deserves great art as well. She felt the area needed a public venue where artists and patrons could come together and witness stories in action, so she established the Amarillo Little Theatre.

The very first production held here was a play called Three Live Ghosts. In fact, we have a playbill of that first production in our lobby. That season also included shows like Jazz and Minuet, Our Little Wife, and The Thirteenth Chair. We’re working on putting together a stage reading of one of these plays for our one-hundredth anniversary in a few years.

How has your theater grown since its founding?

We now have two locations. The original is called the Allen Shankles Mainstage—to honor his thirty-eight years as our managing/artistic director. It’s our bigger theater and seats 453 people. This is where we do more of our family-friendly shows. For example, at this stage, we opened Elf the Musical in December 2022.

Back in 2001, we acquired a second location just a block away called the Adventure Space, which houses a theater and the children’s academy. The theater is a black-box-type space where we do more cutting-edge shows for adults. It sits 180 people, but it’s a flexible venue—we’ve done theater in the round, regular thrust-stage shows, and other setups. For example, we staged a great show there years ago called Metamorphoses. The stage surrounded a huge pool of water that the actors went in and out of, and we had rain pouring down—it was a really cool stage.

What is the most fulfilling part of working at this theater?

We’re a nonprofit organization, and all of our performers are volunteers. We’ve had actors who have performed on national tours and even on Broadway, so our talent is not little, even though our name is. I love that we’re one of the few organizations in Amarillo that anyone can walk into, volunteer time, and become part of a positive force for our community. It’s amazing to see people from all walks of life—such as doctors, students, teachers, Christians, atheists, and nonbinary people—come together to do something positive and tell stories that challenge, entertain, and enlighten our audiences. Clybourne Park is a prime example of this. It’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about racial tension and family trauma. It was amazing to stage such a brilliant show for our community.

Which have been your favorite shows you helped stage?

I’ve been heavily involved in this theater for over fifteen years, so I have a handful of favorites. We’ve staged huge, big-name productions like Newsies and The Wizard of Oz on our main stage. But I also loved directing a production of Into the Woods at the Adventure Space. The musical is an intersection of different stories like “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” Normally it calls for a cast of at least twenty actors, but we selected five females and five males to each play two parts. We staged it in an attic-like set, as if these actors were just finding props and costumes around the room to tell their stories.

For example, a rolling ladder was used as Rapunzel’s tower, a feather duster was the hen that laid the golden egg, and the actors who played both the princes and Cinderella’s evil stepsisters held up curtain rods in front of them to represent dresses when they switched over. It was so much fun, and it was so fulfilling because it was one of the shows where my vision and all the pieces came together really well.

What is the process of planning a show?

We have a selection committee made up of ALT board members and some community members. They come up with a list of potential shows they think would be good for our theater. That list then goes to me and our staff to narrow it down because sometimes they’ll suggest shows that we just cannot do. We can’t do Hamilton yet, for example.

We decide on about ten plays and ten musicals, and then we actually go to the audience in the spring and ask them to vote for the ones they want to see next season. We review the votes to make sure that we don’t have two similar shows. We try to do one golden age musical and a more contemporary musical. Last year was a great example: we did Guys and Dolls and Elf after.

Once we know what shows we’re doing, we vote on who the director will be for each, as well as the music director, the choreographer, etc. Then I’ll meet with our set designer, choreographer, and music director to discuss themes and concepts.

About nine weeks out, we advertise and hold auditions. Once we put a cast list together, we jump right into rehearsals. We like to have about six weeks of rehearsals for a play and eight weeks for a big musical. Then we have a set-work call for people to build the set, paint it, place props, etc. A set designer, production team, and tech team come together to build our sets; we also hire local people and purchase local supplies to give back to our economy. There’s always so much work going on at the same time. For example, we closed Clybourne Park on a Sunday afternoon. That evening, we tore down the set to hold the first cast meeting for Clue. It’s a huge endeavor for everyone involved, but that’s part of the fun.

For more info, visit amarillolittletheatre.org