Interview: Matt Hune on REC ROOM ARTS SEASON 10

Matt Hune is one of the founders and the artistic director of Rec Room Arts, the 60-seat theater located within walking distance of Minute Maid Park that has been producing critically acclaimed work for the past ten years. He taught theatre and creative writing at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He has lectured and taught at Prairie View A&M University, Alley Theatre, and Theatre Under The Stars, and has worked with Houston Grand Opera, the Alley, Stages, and numerous other Houston arts organizations. But right now, Matt is working both as a therapist and an artistic director for Rec Room Arts. Hune has programmed four productions that reflect many of the ideas that have defined the company: outsiders, rebellion, art, performance, music, and the challenge of finding a home in an environment where you might not initially belong. The 10th season opens with Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, followed by Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and The Light Fantastic. BROADWAY WORLD writer Brett Cullum spoke with Hune about the milestone season, the challenges and possibilities of producing major works in a 60-seat theater, the origins of Rec Room Arts, and what he hopes the company will become.

Brett Cullum: This is your 10th season, so tell me about the four shows you have picked for Rec Room Arts.

Matt Hune: This season felt big and important, and it was really important for me to sort of look back at where we've come from, what's brought us here, and where we're going from here. So I was interested in shows that explore art, performance, music, theater, whatever that might be, but the idea of what art is and what it could be. And also, show interesting works that characters are really scrounging to find a home in a place where they might not really feel at home. So, outsiders really, elbowing their way in to become established. So we start the season with Peter Schaefer's classic Amadeus, which was turned into a film in the 80s. The play premiered in the 70s, and we thought, you know, gosh, you know, we've been thinking about this play for quite some time, but really felt right to program it now. Put it in our small space. We are distilling this big epic down to an 8-person show that is really about the relationship between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, who was the court composer in Vienna at the time. Going back to this idea of distilling down an epic in our small space, that has become our driving force, putting on big shows that don't quite necessarily fit in a 60-seat theater, and making them fit. Being able to sort of look at the story from that perspective. It's such a fun thing that Rec Room provides that starting it 10 years ago wasn't necessarily at the forefront of my mind, but it really has been, you know, one of my favorite parts about Rec Room.

Brett Cullum: And Amadeus is definitely one of those. Who are your two leads for Amadeus?

Matt Hune: We have Rose Morrigan, and this is Rose's first time with us here at Rec Room. She's very, you know, I'm just like… our conversations on, kind of, who Mozart is, and her approach was just so exciting to me, so Rose is playing Mozart, and then we have Luis Galindo, who is playing Salieri, and those two, really taking charge and leading it. We also have Wesley Whitson, who many people may remember from our last show, Angels in America. He's playing the Emperor, and just perfectly. I'm really, really excited for this group of people.

Brett Cullum: Rose is an incredible casting choice. The last time I saw her on stage, she was doing Sherlock Holmes.

Matt Hune: It's amazing… she’s doing these big characters, for sure.

Brett Cullum: Yes, yes, and a transgender lead for a show is just amazing. I mean, I would have expected that with Hedwig, and you're doing that later in the season, but for Amadeus to come right out of the gate! Incredible casting! This is gonna be an amazing crew to see do it, and of course, the rest of the cast is just stacked. 

Matt Hune: It was really important for me and this story of Amadeus. You have Mozart, who's being thrust into this environment by necessity. He's strapped to a comet and has just landed here, and Mozart can't not do what Mozart does. Mozart really goes into an environment where people are very black-and-white. This is how things are done; this is how things are not done. These are yes, no, and labeling everything, and Mozart comes in as this enigma that people are not sure how to respond to or define. It just happened to be that Rose was great, and oh my gosh, wow, these… these things really fit, and it ended up working in a great way.

Brett Cullum: And then the next show that you're doing is Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

Matt Hune: Yeah, this is a new adaptation from a Dario Fo play, an Italian playwright. This is our Christmas show that's not a Christmas show. It's a farce of conspiracy theories, rebellion, and institutional distrust. I'll say rebellion is another theme we were looking for in the season, because that has kind of been our spirit from the beginning. But yeah, Accidental Death of an Anarchist happens after some death threatens to expose corruption in the system, and how the system really figures out how to manage that potential exposure. But this is Christmas time at the police station. It is hilarious, it is very of the time, and people will really love it.

Brett Cullum: Yeah. And then, of course, you've got your big musical, just in time for Valentine's Day, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which, of course, is a show that I know backward and forwards, but what made you want to do Hedwig?

Matt Hune: I just love the music. The themes of the show fit so well into what we were thinking, and in terms of that rebellion, in terms of an outsider trying to find home. And, yeah, just felt right.

Brett Cullum: Well, it's ironically perfect for Rec Room Arts, because you are in the shadow of Minute Maid Park, so I can imagine Hedwig screaming across to a big concert at the stadium. 

Matt Hune: I hate when there's an event going on at the ballpark, just because parking is so bad for us, but part of me wishes it would be great if there is, during… You know, it's not baseball season, but sometimes there are, you know, those big concerts that happen over there, so we'll see.

Brett Cullum: And then you round out with The Light Fantastic, and this is a show I'm not as familiar with, so can you tell me about what The Light Fantastic is?

Matt Hune: Yeah, we've had a long relationship producing work by Ike Holter, who is another Chicago playwright. I've known Ike, and we’ve been friends since we were coming of age, and I love his work, so he's retooling The Light Fantastic for our production. At its core, it's a horror, but we call it a horror-comedy. But, yeah, it takes place in a rural Indiana town, where some weird things are happening.

Brett Cullum: Well, how did you get started 10 years ago? Tell me about the genesis of all of this.

Matt Hune: Yeah, I had recently moved back to Houston from Chicago, and there was a type of work that was happening there in Chicago that I didn't quite see happening here in Houston, so I was like, oh, there's a little bit of a hole in the market. I created what I called the Living Room Series and started performing theater in my living room. And now, it wasn't a theater in my living room. At the time, I converted my living room into a black box theater. It was a Montrose townhouse, and we did a season of four shows. I had just recently married, and after the fourth show, my wife was like, "Okay, either you leave, or the theater leaves!”

So that happened, but eventually, like, I had hooked up with Stephanie Whittles Wax, who I co-founded Rec Room with. And we were both teaching at HSPVA at the time, and we kept floating this idea around. Her brother Harris Whittles, who many people may remember or know of for his work in comedy. He was big in the show Parks and Rec, but he had recently died, and we wanted to generate this new work. So we just got together, we called it the Rec Room. It was sort of a homage to Parks and Rec and the Living Room Series, hence the name. And then, yeah, we stumbled upon the space. What happened was that someone who cold-called me while I was doing the Living Room Series said, “I read what you're doing in the Houston Press, I think it's great, I have a loft downtown, I want you to do theater in my loft.” I was like, okay, I have to meet this person. So we met, and she actually lived up above the Rec Room, and introduced me to Stefan, who has been with us, really, since then, and was there and got us going in the space. It was one thing after another. Still, you know, it started as an experiment. Like, what are we putting in here? How does this look?

Brett Cullum: I was always wondering, is there a production from those first 10 years when you look back and you think, okay, this is the moment where we defined what Rec Room Arts really is?

Matt Hune: It was our production of Sender, an Ike Holter play. It felt right! We had a real kind of unit set. It was Stefan's first scenic design in our space, and I was like, okay, this is… this is taking hold. You know, there were things before that that I was like, oh, this is cool. You know, our version of The Rite of Spring, which was really cool. Laura Gutierrez choreographed it, but I would say Sender really was the first show we did that kind of catapulted us in the direction we're still kind of continuing in.

Brett Cullum: What do you want Rec Room to look like in the next 10 years? Is there a vision there?

Matt Hune: In order to have a strong theater ecosystem, not just a theater ecosystem, but, like, a cultural city ecosystem. You have to have strong theater. To have strong theater, part of it is theaters of all sizes that are of good quality. So, I am not interested in creating the 200-seat version of Rec Room. I want to keep the Rec Room at its seating capacity. Certainly, we could go up a little bit more, but it's just a space that's kind of still presenting the type of work we're presenting, but in a way that's more engaging in terms of people understanding how big our small thing is. And not… and by small, I mean our physical space. Which I think is happening, we're on that trajectory. You know, I think there's a world in which Rec Room becomes part of the theater district that I would be very interested in. I am also interested in developing new work and supporting writers; that is a really important obligation for a theater like Rec Room to… to… support the creation of new plays and new theater. So, we're doing all that, lots of things behind the scenes, that are moving in that way. You know, I… someone might look at this current season like, well, there's no… new play, aside from, like, a new adaptation of an old play. However, I just, just say, like, we are… we are doing that, and there will be things to come that will resemble that.

I'll say, in terms of that 10-year period, we have a lot of upgrades to the space that people would be excited to know about or experience. We have not just renovated bathrooms, but also added additional bathrooms. The bar is getting a makeover, and the flow is gonna be really nice. The space is gonna feel different for those people who are used to it.

Brett Cullum: All right, well, Matt Hune, congratulations on 10 years. I'm excited to see where all of this goes. We'll see you for Amadeus, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and The Light Fantastic!

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