At Fabrefaction Theatre Company, Creating Opportunity is the Name of the Game

Fabrefaction Theatre Company's founder and artistic director, Christina Hoff, knows what it's like to be a kid missing out on the kinds of theater opportunities available to children in performing arts schools. That's one of the reasons she's made sure much of the company's programming focus is on education.

"We're known in the arts community as an educational theatre, and that is a large part of our programming," she said. "But the way I see it, the more training opportunities we have, the better."

Hoff said growing up in Atlanta, she "didn't have many opportunities" for rigorous study of acting and theater and had her eye set on Broadway. That changed when she entered Ben Franklin Academy in Atlanta and needed a work-study project to complete her curriculum. Naturally, she focused on drama, starting a theater ministry at her church in 2004.

"No one had any expectations for this little theater ministry," she said. "I wound up falling in love with it. That really was the founding ground for everything I've done."

Over the past 7 years, that church ministry has grown and expanded into what is now a full theater company. Fabrefaction, just going into its second year of full programming, now has a staff of 10 and occupies many more as volunteers and performers. Two staffers were Hoff's peers during her college years at New York University, where she was a student in the Atlantic Theater Company within the Tisch School for the Arts. She admits that she when she moved to New York, she was "completely unprepared" for the challenge.

"I wish I'd had more training," Hoff said. "Acting was always something I loved to do, but never something I was graded on."

One of the important pieces of information Hoff said she learned at Tisch was the importance of actors and others in the industry making their own opportunities. In particular, it was recommended that students form their own theater companies.

"I already had a great following of kids [in Atlanta] and thought that would be a foundation to build on", she said. "So I gathered up interested friends from theatre programs all over the country, and we found a warehouse on Craigslist."

The group put on four shows that first summer, then set up a nonprofit organization and upped their output to six shows the second year. Further fundraising, in many cases through the parents of both students and staff-Hoff's mother, Evelyn, is chairman of the theater's board-allowed them to purchase and renovate their current space.

By the time Hoff graduated from NYU, the theater's scope had grown to the point that she was ready to take it on full-time as artistic director.

"Acting is my main love, but I care so much about guiding [Fabrefaction's] future that I don't know if I can dedicate myself to that right now," she said. "I have very strong tunnel vision when I'm working on a project, but I'm a big picture person overall."

For the future of the theater, her "big picture" includes adding more outreach to bring in people who might never have seen a live stage production.

"We want to create and cultivate theater patrons," she said. "That's where our Open Theatre Project comes in."

This new program will debut in September with a performance of the raucous comedy Den of Thieves, featuring four founding members of the company, including Hoff. The regional premiere of the play will have a top ticket price of $10, with 50% of the tickets given away for free to students and the general public. The production will run September 15–19, an unusual schedule because it includes a performance on Monday night, when theaters traditionally stay dark. (The remainder of the theater's 2011–2012 season will be announced soon.)

While the theater will continue to offer mainstage theater performances throughout each season, education will remain the foundation of their work, Hoff said. She sees Fabrefaction's educational programs as one more way of creating opportunities and developing Atlanta as "an even stronger place for theater."

"We want to cultivate new works, and then bring that work outside Atlanta," she said. "There's so much potential and great theatre in the Southeast, and we really hope to be part of the upward tide."