Staged right

OUT OF THE SHADOWS Adam Belcuore steps into the spotlight.

Amanda Delheimer likes to think of the bar as her living room—in the best sense possible.

“We feel that the best stories are told sitting around a bottle of wine with our friends,” says Delheimer, director of the monthly reading series 2nd Story and a member of Serendipity Theatre. “And that’s the atmosphere we are trying to create on a larger scale.”

2nd Story began as a two-week festival in May 2002, when Serendipity artistic director Adam Belcuore, then a Webster’s Wine Bar employee, was granted use of the bar’s spacious second floor. Serendipity, a young theater company specializing in producing new works by local playwrights, initially planned to stage a cabaret series featuring one-person shows and short performance pieces, but the space dictated another use.

“As a kickoff for the cabaret series, I organized a party that featured a number of storytellers and musicians,” Belcuore says. “The event worked so well in the space that it became apparent we should be designing the programming around the venue, rather than trying to re-create theater in a bar.”

They’ve developed a unique format: Audience members fill the second-floor tables and bar stools, just as they do on any other night. Suddenly, the lights go down and a spotlight singles out someone who proceeds to tell a story.

Music, too—ranging from live singers to improvised or recorded songs, often provided by music director DJ White Russian—is woven into the story. At the end of each performance, the lights go up and the bartenders begin pouring glasses and flights of wine, provided by sponsoring vintners.

Such production values—treating stories as theater—distinguish 2nd Story from other reading series, and contribute to its enduring popularity. After the May festival this year, there was enough demand to go monthly.

“We decided it would be better for us if we were producing new work year-round, all meant to feed into the festival in the spring,” Delheimer says. Initial performances of stories at the monthlies provide a laboratory for the readers to hear their pieces, then go back and improve them for the festival. It also means the company has had to cultivate a collective to constantly generate new work.

“We have one big meeting for idea generation,” says Megan Stielstra, Serendipity’s director of story development. “We have three smaller writing groups where the real meat of development happens. We have four editors to cut everything down. Each teller has a sit-down with Amanda to work on performance. Each teller reads for the music directors. We’re aiming for an ongoing collaborative process: Lots of voices giving their two cents on each story will make it stronger in the long run.”

But it’s not just close attention to content that makes 2nd Story unique. Because the 2nd Story development team comprises both writers and actors, the two groups have been able to draw on their respective strengths to create memorable performances. The writers help the actors get the best possible story onto the page; the actors help the writers give their best delivery.

“2nd Story is able to help writers present their work more dramatically,” Delheimer says, “while [the writing process] deepens the understanding of the actors’ experience.”

The tales spun by the actors and writers performing at 2nd Story are most often nonfiction, and mostly of the deeply personal variety. That doesn’t mean they’re always serious. Company member Matt Miller’s fan favorite recounts his time at Boy Scout camp, when a fellow Scout used his training in a failed attempt to carve a giant wooden penis.

“While we strive to have all the voice, energy, gesture and passion on the page, it’s the performance direction that really distinguishes us,” Stielstra says. “There’s an intimacy, a direct address.”

The next edition of 2nd Story is Sunday 19.