Horizon’s Adler Celebrates 40 Years of Theater Magic
Adler came to Atlanta fresh out of college in the 1980s and never left.
Lisa Adler was fresh out of the University of Illinois’ theater program and looking for a future when she and her husband first came to Atlanta 42 years ago. They wanted to start a theater, but Chicago, their first choice, was not a good choice. There were too many theaters in Chicago and too much competition for young producers with little professional experience.
So, they went to the public library to find a second choice. They leafed through the collection of telephone directories and found that Atlanta had a promising number of theaters that might be willing to work with a couple of ambitious actors just beginning their career.
What they found when they first came here was a friendly, welcoming theatrical community that was just beginning to take off. They decided to take a chance on a play called “Bonjour de Bonjour,” financed by the only real money they had at the time.
“We had about $2,000 in money from our wedding gifts, Lisa Adler recalls, “and we used about half of it to fund the play. It was very successful. And then we said, well, you know, do we want to do it again? So, the next time we did, and we raised money.”
Forty years later, they’re still at it. The Horizon Theatre in Inman Park, near Little Five Points, is a big success. It counts the National Endowment for The Arts, New York’s Shubert Foundation and Arthur Blank among its many supporters. They’re about halfway through the six productions they’re presenting during this year’s season.
They’ve just launched their holiday production, “Madelaine’s Christmas,” a musical production based on one of the popular children’s books written by Ludwig Bemelmans. For the past 13 years, it’s been packing in young audiences who come to see a warm, inspiring tale of children just like themselves. Two casts of a dozen young performers, helped along with several adult professionals, create 40 performances through the end of December.
The secret to her success after all these years is simple, a consistent devotion to creating quality theater.
“We tried to build a reputation,” Adler says, “based on the premise that you may not like the play, but you’re going to like the production. We’re going to have great actors, great design, and … the play will not be depressing in a way that’s going to make you want to slit your wrist when you walk out. We are looking for hope and positive change. You will be left with something when you leave.”
The production that follows the holiday season schedule is a good example of Lisa Adler’s commitment to stunning production values combined with great performances and great writing.
In January, they’re bringing back last year’s successful staging of “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” a musical adaptation of a small sliver of “War and Peace,” the epic Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy.
The two-and-a-half-hour musical, which was celebrated during its Broadway run seven years ago, concerns a sweet and simple young woman who’s involved in an intricate plot that soon goes awry in a swirl of 19th century pomp and pageantry.
At last year’s Horizon Theatre production, one local critic wrote that it was a “theater-going experience that feels like riding a party bus.” The critic went on to write that “people were stomping in their seat, clapping, laughing and even singing along. It’s a rare thrill to feel breathless when you’ve hardly been moving at all — but that’s thankfully the very experience that an audience is in for.”
If it sounds like such an exuberant show is designed to move even the most sluggish couch potato off his favorite well-padded seat, then you get some idea what Lisa Adler has been thinking lately.
In post-COVID America, it takes real razzmatazz to lure people away from their flickering computer screens and iPads. And for great live theater, that costs money.
“We came back from the pandemic, we just knew that we had to program things that we thought would be somehow enough,” Adler says. “Enough to get people out of the house. And that’s why we invested a lot of resources in ‘Natasha,’ because it was a unique experience you could not have sitting in front of a screen.”
So, after 40 years she has come to realize that even with all her talent and experience, there is no formula for creating magic in front of people’s eyes. Just like as it was in that first production, there is always a risk, though today Adler is comforted by the bond she’s created with her audience and the thought that she doesn’t have to bet her wedding money, anymore.
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