Breaking Ground in the Underground

Two people stand on a wooden staircase, both wearing blazers; the woman on the left wears a green blazer and blue pants, the man on the right wears a gray blazer and jeans.

A Conversation about The Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families with Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Christopher Moses

When asked about the new Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Christopher Moses is quick to continue to reference something he’s been saying for years – that the new theater space will advance his vision for theater being a “birthright” for every Atlanta resident.

“The promise of the Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families is to become a consistent resource for young people and educators in our community. For far too long, we have asked the busiest people in our community to bend their schedules to fit our production calendar. Now we are upending how we produce. … We are trying to make it as easy as possible for people to experience this work because we now empirically know the benefits. And now that we know that theater can help create more inspired, thoughtful, hopeful, and connected human beings – it’s up to us to scale those benefits as far and wide.”

– Chris Moses, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director

The Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families (GSYF) officially broke ground on August 6, 2024, but the idea was conceptualized long before. The vision for the GSYF was always to be a transformative space for the Alliance’s youngest patrons, featuring thoughtfully curated, year-round programming by the Alliance and Symphony Orchestra. The programming will be supported by the Imagine Endowment, a capital campaign that was launched in tandem with the groundbreaking.

“That’s what allows us to have such low-ticket prices for these shows,” Moses explains about the Imagine Endowment, “which are less than a third of the national average.” Moses also acknowledges that transportation is also a factor that sometimes inhibits school groups from attending shows, which is why the Alliance began offering bus reimbursement for qualified schools. “It’s about relying on us,” Moses continues.

“We know how important this art form can be on a young person’s development and now we’ve got to do all we can to make sure that as many kids as possible are experiencing it.”

– Chris Moses, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director

The project was designed with young people in mind, conceptualized in tandem with the architects on the project, Perkins and Will. In addition to utilizing information the Alliance’s Education Department has gathered over years of research, key stakeholders met with Dr. Walter Gilliam, a leading child psychologist, to ensure that the creativity of youth was respected and kept in mind at every stage of the design. “Even the way you enter the theater rewards curiosity,” Moses continues, “and invites you [to enter] in a way that you might not expect. It’s sophisticated. It’s not a condescending design. … It also communicates to the world that young people are not just welcome here, but that we actually built this place with them in mind. The fact that it’s on the front of our building on Peachtree, our city’s main thoroughfare, is such a fantastic statement to the rest of this city and to the rest of the world. My sincerest hope is that it inspires other large cultural organizations to go and do the same.”

One of the observations Dr. Gilliam made that was integrated into the design of the space is the fact that younger children like to be “close to the action” — closer to the stage than seats are often placed. “That’s what prompted us to have these scissor lift seats,” Moses says. “Each row can depress into the floor, and we can put cushions on top so that the youngest ones can be up close and less hindered by traditional theater seats. That’s also why we went with the bench seating as well; it can accommodate young people who may want to sprawl out or sit up next to their parent or caregiver.”

Another observation that Dr. Gilliam brought to the ideation phase is that young people love to see their older selves to get a feel for what they might expect as they begin to grow up. This led to the construction of the PNC PlaySpace on the front of the building, which offers a unique space for unstructured play that also contains space for rotating art installations. “I love that image of a one- or two-year-old in the Play Space, which is open for free six days a week,” Moses explains. “Through encouraging this unstructured play and rewarding curiosity, creativity, and [those children] can see a five-, six-, or seven-year-old walking into the theater, knowing that’s their trajectory. Really starting to build this culture of growing up here at the Alliance from the moment you were born. You’re there playing in this cool, creative Amazon rainforest installation, and then, a few years down the road, you’re regularly coming into the GSYF. And then, twenty years down the road, who knows? Maybe you’re going to the Hertz or the Coca-Cola Stage. It’s starting to build this ownership over both the art form of theater and this arts center where it really does feel like it belongs to you simply by growing up in Atlanta.”

When asked about the programming for the GSYF, Moses gets excited, eager to explain the inspiration behind the three shows opening the space. Two have been produced on Alliance stages before — Into the Burrow: A Peter Rabbit™ Tale and Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience. The former was produced in the round on the Hertz Stage in 2023 and ran for three months (a sort of case study of what an extended run could look like on the GSYF) and the latter opened in early 2020 and had just four performances before it closed due to the pandemic. The third show, The Great Ant Sleepover, is based on a book that was commissioned as part of the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club and was distributed to over 20,000 kids in Atlanta. When it clicked that all three stories took place underground, the idea of The Underground Rep almost wrote itself.

“We knew we wanted to try something new and different because that’s what this moment called for,” Moses explains. “We had these three stories that all could share similar real estate and then we started dreaming about the whole notion of [how we are] digging up and getting to the foundation of who we are and we thought about how fun it would be to create this conceit that while we were digging and constructing this new theater, we happened across this whole underground world — these three different stories that are sharing the same ecosystem. … To reinforce that notion that families could come back again and again — to come for a weekend and see three different shows in the new theater.”

The idea of creating a repertory of actors — six actors who would all play different roles in each show — came soon after, which responded to the need of the local acting community and to provide Atlanta actors consistent work for seven months. At least two actors are able to join Actors Equity due to the long-term nature of the contract and finally get all of the benefits that come with membership, including health insurance.

At the end of it all, this space is just a beginning — a beginning for the Atlanta community of actors, a beginning for the next generation, and a beginning for what theater for youth and families could look like.