“It’s always been important to us,” Camille said, with the shows we do, “to be responsive to the times, our experiences, our location.”
The sisters, who are 18 months apart, have “almost like an onstage/backstage kind of dynamic,” Camille said. The older they’ve become, the more they realized how ”we complement each other,” she said. The two put on 25 productions in that first space before moving five years ago to their current – and much bigger – two-story location on Wall Avenue. Together, they transformed the former screen print shop into a theater, installing speakers and a lighting grid, painting the stage and cutting through a concrete wall downstairs to make a pass for actors.“I come in one day and she has a hammer and chisel, and she’s chiseling out the tile,” Alicia added.
When Alicia was cast as Aunt Eller, there was almost immediate pushback from parents, who used a derogatory term for a person of mixed race to argue that the character should be played by someone who is white, she said, “clearly making race an issue.” The director stood by Alicia, telling the parents that “she cast me in a role that she saw me in.”And of “what was to come,” added Camille, who was on the stage crew for that school musical.
Alicia said, “We faced our own barriers being in visual arts and then theater along the years, of people putting upon me how they want to experience or see theater, versus unlocking what theater could be.” At one of their first shows on Wall Avenue, “we had an audience member come out,” Alicia said, “and be like, ‘I can’t really get into it.’” The man felt “really put off” seeing the audience members sitting across from him and said, “I find myself watching their reactions.”