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When Lisa Scheps first came to Austin from her former home in Chicago in 2003, and before that New York, she immediately started a theater group called the Play Theater Group.
“I brought all this urban energy and attitude with me,” says Scheps with a laugh. “I thought I was the queen of the Austin theater.”
She made waves. Her first show, “Marvin’s Room,” which was staged in a tiny former church in East Austin, received praise.
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But Scheps soon withdrew from art. Her next appearances were in social justice groups such as the Transgender Education Network of Texas and Equality Texas, where she stood up for people who, like herself, had experienced a gender change.
She also hosts a radio show on theater, “Off Stage and On the Air” on KOOP Radio.
In 2014, however, Scheps was ready for a fresh start in the theater. This time she consulted carefully with fellow Austin theater guides to find out what was missing from the local art scene.
She found loopholes, particularly in groups that were generally ignored. She couldn’t be everything for everyone, but she brought a new outfit, the Ground Floor Theater, a mission that, like a laser, focused on the trans community, women, people with disabilities and people of color, among others.
The Ground Floor Theater, which opens the edgy but accessible musical “Unexpected Joy” on December 2nd, has emerged from among the approximately 85 theater groups in the city – some as complete ensembles, others as transitional projects – and is for the. become absolutely indispensable scene.
In fact, Austin’s performing scene these days is hard to imagine without Scheps – and her co-artist Patti Neff Tiven – and her Ground Floor Theater.
“I became a lawyer and activist”
Scheps was in a hurry to visit places in the 1970s.
She grew up in the leafy Memorial District of West Houston. But after a short time in college, she went straight to New York City on June 21, 1977 to study theater where it mattered.
“I lived there for almost 20 years,” says Scheps, 63. “I see New York as my home. I grew up there. I would move back immediately.”
Her first job, which she cherished, was selling snacks on the observation deck of the World Trade Center.
Theater jobs followed, and she flourished in the Broadway and commercial sectors, particularly producing and directing “Industrials,” the sometimes lavish performances staged for – and about – business groups. (The documentary on musical industrials is the captivating “Bathtubs over Broadway”.)
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In 2000, Scheps owned an industrials company based in Chicago. But when she revealed her gender reassignment surgery – 1999-2000 – these partners forced her to do it.
“It’s been my whole life,” she says. “The stuff is still pretty raw.”
Scheps was ready for some aspects of the transition and not others.
“There was never a time when I didn’t feel trans,” she says. “I went from being part of the most sheltered class to being completely marginalized. I became an advocate and activist. I had a voice and decided to use it.”
After a few years mostly away from the theater, Scheps took into account what was already there in Austin: three touring houses, two large university education programs, and some smaller, one large residential company, a handful of long-standing medium-sized companies – some highly experimental, others decidedly traditional – and a wide range small, sustained theater projects.
Among other strategies, Scheps cleverly teamed up with some fervent talent at the University of Texas.
The Ground Floor Theater produced Lisa B. Thompson’s “Single Black Female,” Raul Garza’s “There and Back,” and Florinda Bryant’s “Black Do Crack.” The team wasn’t afraid of big or sometimes alarming musicals like “Parade”, “Fun Home” and “Next to Normal”.
On the way, Scheps put “TRANSom” together about a found family of transgender and non-binary people.
“I didn’t want a depressing woe-is-me piece,” says Scheps. “I wanted a story. A piece of life. A story about trans people where the trans part is secondary. So many people came up to me and said, ‘I’ve never seen myself portrayed in a’ normal ‘situation.'”
During the pandemic, she also produced “Trans Lives, Trans Voices,” a grouping of 5-minute personal stories from the trans community.
To be fair, it’s not that other Austin theaters ignored the topics covered in these and other shows, quite the contrary, but the Ground Floor Theater gave seemingly stable homes to several communities.
Curate a theater space
One thing that sets the Ground Floor Theater apart is the theater space.
A simple black box in a huge former industrial complex that once housed a frozen food outfit, it stands pretty much alone among Austin eateries run by small businesses. The Oscar Brockett Theater at the UT and the Rollins Studio Theater at the Long Center are comparable, but the smaller indoor stages in the city are usually configured as push, arena or cabaret rooms, while the ground floor is flexible thanks to light risers can be arranged.
Scheps and Neff Tiven have gone to great lengths to ensure that the artists who rent the space between in-house shows are connected to the sensitivity of Ground Floor. Personally, I’ve never seen a bad performance there.
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“Unexpected Joy” with music by Janet Hood and lyrics by Bill Russell came to director Scheps in a roundabout way. Like other theaters in the city, Ground Floor has changed its schedule to adapt to the ups and downs of the pandemic.
Scheps was ready to direct Memphis, the Tony Award winning musical loosely based on the story of one of the first white DJs to play music by black artists in the 1950s. In autumn, when the Delta variant was the worst, it made no sense to accommodate a large cast with crew and orchestra in one closed room.
Scheps had long admired the playwright and copywriter Russell, who had a promising project in the works but didn’t want to downsize it. Instead, Russell suggested his earlier musical “Unexpected Joy,” which opened in New York and London just before the pandemic.
The musical is about three generations of female singers, simmering family tensions, some of which have to do with sexuality, and a week together in Cape Cod where change is in the air. Just four actors on a simple set. Heard on the original album, the music is alive and current, although it does require watching the show to find out how the songs relate – or not – to the story.
“What I love: It doesn’t wrap the story in a pretty bow in the end,” says Scheps. “There is an arch, but the arch is messy.”
Again, like so many other ground floor projects, the show is accessible and edgy at the same time.
“Part of our mission is to be welcoming,” says Scheps. “I think we did pretty well.”
Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at mbarnes@statesman.com.
“Unexpected joy”
When: 2nd-19th December.
Where: Ground Floor Theater, 979 Springdale Road (park at the rear of the building).
Costs: $ 25 to $ 40.
Information and tickets: Erdgeschosstheater.org.
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