August 21-27, 2003

art

Inner Space

On the upswing: Janette Hough tests out the trapeze in the main hall of the St. Lawrence Art Space (pictured above).

Miles from the city, minutes from a creek, an aerial artist’s fun house opens.

by Juliet Fletcher

Idling by the rosy brick edifice of the old St. Lawrence community church in Reading, passersby might nod at the newly gleaming sunlit stoop, where potted geraniums attract fat bumblebees, or, as dusk draws in, they might notice that after a months-long period of darkness, warm lights now shine out of the main rooms. Otherwise, nothing threatens the quiet, unless oneís eyes linger for a fragment of a second longer on the windows and spot a pair of feet arcing through the air.

What's afoot within the walls of St. Lawrence has been a matter of speculation on the part of the inhabitants of Exeter Township for several hot months, as they eyed the arrival of its newest tenants. Doors were thrown open to vent the dust from the former vestibule (more recently the site of a children's theater club) and its cavernous adjacent hall. Pale fabric was swagged across the ceiling, and great quantities of furniture were moved outside -- almost as if someone thought there'd be little need for the stuff.

Now the dust has settled, and the goings-on inside are starting to lure curious Philadelphians west on Route 422. Visitors are welcome. As one of the building's new owners -- none other than Janette Hough, spritely aerial performer and co-founder of Apparatus Co. -- urges whenever the St. Lawrence Art Space is mentioned: "We want to bring people out here, to see it and to share it." Even the most cursory look confirms there's more than enough to go around.

Hough and her husband, rigging director Perry Fertig, had no sooner taken the step of buying their own place on Seventh Street, ending the joyless hunt for a space in which they could rehearse and perform, when they spotted a September 2002 ad on the Theatre Alliance's listserv: "Dinner theater near Reading, comes with church pews." The first deal was rescinded and the second done, though not immediately. Hough recalls it took about six months to complete the purchase, assisted only by the other determined party, Diane Smith, the building's previous owner. She and her late husband, Ray Fager, had acquired it at auction 10 years ago and run it as Smager's Theater and Supper Club. After Fager's death, Smith decided to sell; enthused by the pair's work and their plans for the site's future as both a private rehearsal room and public forum for arts education, she battled to help Hough and Fertig sign the agreement. Months later and with the center's projected opening set for November, Hough is still sincerely grateful, hushedly declining to say how much they paid: "I honestly feel as if I've been given a huge gift, and that it's up to us to make use of it."

Wandering its three expansive floors -- two of which are largely below ground -- it's apparent that this gift was originally to the community, and is wrapped in history, much of which remained a mystery to Smith. Working backwards, this much is known: Before it housed Smager's (with seating on the first floor below ground level), the Borough Hall, as the building was called, served as a teen recreation center, including (on the floor beneath that) a full-scale, two-lane bowling alley. (A dip into Reading Public Library's historical records by the ever-helpful reference staff shows that the original church was built in 1894; the church's growing congregation vacated it for larger premises in 1951.)

Throughout the building, history appears not in layers but in chunks. The bowling alley, complete with '50s-style reload mechanism, remains, although water-damaged on one side, while the kitchen is still decked out with mammoth scoured hobs and Hobart pressure dishwashers, once used to cater for dinner-theater audiences. Fertig wryly remarks that, before purchase, the most obvious safety considerations associated with performing aerial work had to be checked out: He recalls asking nonchalantly "whether we could take a look at the ceiling." In fact, recent structural work meant the ceiling was reinforced with steel beams, to which Hough's response was, "Let me at 'em."

So far, a single trapeze swings in the center of the room, all that Hough needs to start work, though she plans to eventually practice other aerial formats: "harness, fabric possibly, [a] hoop if we can get our hands on one." Already, she's broken her record for average yearly output, usually one long, conceptual piece and a few shorter ones: Now, she says, the house is both a labor-saving device, "because I don't spend all my time looking for rehearsal space instead of rehearsing," and a motivation to work harder. "It can be time for practice at 3 a.m., 8 a.m. -- whenever I'm ready to go." If Hough's dedication to training shows through, it can be traced to her early days as a 1994 Pennsylvania state roller-skating champ.

Joining Hough in this intensive work atmosphere is Valentine Aprile, aerialist and dancer, and Hough's collaborator on two shows debuting at this year's Fringe Festival. Log, a "mutated excerpt" of a much longer work-in-progress weaving trapeze and dance, has been selected as part of Fringe's New Steps series. The pair will also present Grip, a full trapeze and multimedia work. Featured in the Bumpin' Big Top, Grip was developed after Hough and Aprile studied intensive duo trapeze techniques with Elsie Smith and Serenity Smith Forchion, better known as Cirque du Soleil's Trapeze Twins. As befits a piece created in a deconsecrated church, Grip explores the impulse toward icon worship, inquiring whether devotion to religion and celebrity are really alternating currents of the same human need.

Smith and Smith Forchion are reputed for introducing a new awareness of injury prevention to the traditional trapeze arts, and their influence is palpable in Apparatus' members: Both sets of performers rely on pilates to condition their bodies for flexibility and precise strength. (In fact, Hough and Aprile met at auditions for Trapezius Aerial Dance in 1995, and both subsequently worked with Louise Gillette, whom they admire as a "pilates master.") It's this elemental approach that Hough wants to communicate in her teaching, as part of an extensive class schedule to be unveiled at St. Lawrence for the autumn. Aprile -- who has an M.A. in arts and education, and who recently returned from a 10-day creative workshop with Group Motion in Arcosanti, Ariz. -- hopes to organize the dinner theater's prop room, currently filled with gowns, wigs and three-piece suits from floor to ceiling, into a studio for painting and drawing workshops. There will be collaborations, such as one planned between Aprile and sculptor Robert Kafes. Most ambitiously, the three have plans for an artist's residency program, shipping in artists from Philadelphia and elsewhere for several months in the beehive, and completing a cycle of regional cross-fertilization.

Out back, away from the road, runs a green acre of lawn sloping down to Antietam Creek. Hough describes it as an easement, a patch of land attached to private property but open to anyone who, for pressing reasons, needs to reach the creek. The very same attitude extends indoors: Fertig and Hough plan to open their doors freely. And there is pressing need for an arts center of this kind in Reading: As Fertig puts it, the west end of town "seems to be the more artistic side," while at this end, on the eastern edge, "what was here was Smager's, and now it's closed."

Hough regards her experiences in her new neighborhood as eye-opening: "Honestly, I expected people would bring apple pies 'round to say hello," she admits. "They haven't -- I've had to introduce myself. But we've now had families knocking on the door with their kids, asking when the fall classes start. I expected pie, but we really appreciate the interest more."

St. Lawrence Art Space, 3400 St. Lawrence Ave., Reading. For more information, call 610-370-5529.