Time for the show: Managing Director Keith Baker discusses Bristol Riverside Theatre’s upcoming season

Jack Firneno, the Wire

The Bristol Riverside Theatre announced the lineup for its 2015–2016 season last week, promising another batch of shows that offer the quality and variety that’s made them more popular each year.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF MARK GARVIN Derrick Cobey and the Harlem Ensemble performing during this year’s production of “Ragtime.”[/caption]

“It’s all about what [founding director Susan Atkinson] and I feel passionately about, and what we want to share with the community,” said managing director Keith Baker. “These are the ideas and entertainment we want to share with them.”

Baker himself is starring in Mountain: The Journey of Justice Douglas. It’s the story of accomplished, if controversial, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

“He was one of the great liberal justices,” said Baker. And, he added, taking into account the current makeup of the Court, “It’s a perspective we often don’t hear any more.”

The play finds Douglas on his deathbed, pondering the meaning of his accomplishments as a defender of civil liberties, personal privacy and wilderness preservation against his personal failings as a husband and father. “It’s the story of his life and coming to terms with if he really did what he wanted,” noted Baker.

The Riverside is also mounting a newer play, The Language Archive, which Baker said he’s surprised hasn’t been picked up by more theatres already. It’s centered around a linguist dedicated to preserving dying languages. “It’s about the difficulty in saying what you really mean, and the disastrous loss of languages that’s going on in the world,” he explained.

At the same time, however, “It ends up being a tremendous love story between two couples.”

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PHOTO COURTESY OF BRISTOL RIVERSIDE THEATRE Managing Director Keith Baker.[/caption]

But the new season also has its share of laughs — and songs. Baker himself is directing the classic Neil Simon comedy Rumors, while Atkinson is helming the romantic comedy Bus Stop for the season’s opener. And, the Tony-award winning Man of La Mancha will be the theatre’s annual musical.

“I love the community and the people we’ve been able to attract here,” said Baker, who is celebrating his 25th year at the theatre in 2015. “We’re able to work with the highest level of professionals in the business and we’re able to present the community with an extremely wide variety of work.”

Part of that variety also includes the theatre’s America Rising series. Developed six years ago, it’s a chance for playwrights to workshop new pieces, many of which have not been performed at all before, while local audiences get a rare glimpse of these works.

The theatre holds four installments a year in the Riverside’s nearby rehearsal studio. There, the writer, director and actors hold a “table read” of the play, where they sit and perform the piece, and discuss it with the audience afterward.

This year’s final installment, The Window’s New Umbrella: An Italian Fable, will be held on May 18.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF MARK GARVIN A photo from the November 2014 production of “Lost in Yonkers.”[/caption]

Introduced seven years ago, the America Rising series has been growing in popularity as the theatre itself gains new subscribers and bigger audiences each year — no small feat today, noted Baker.

“Contrary to national trends, our subscribership is going up,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of new subscribers, and that’s just part of us being here for a long time. People know they’re going to see the highest-quality theatre productions they can.”

For information, visit www.brtstage.org