Today we’d like to introduce you to Nichole Palmietto.
Nichole, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
For a long time, I joked that I had “accidentally started a theater company.” For playwright Neeley Gossett and I, it was a really natural thing, born from a desire to create our own work, our own opportunities. After our first project, we realized that we loved working together, we loved making opportunities for other artists, and we loved the kind of work we were making.
Found Stages is unique in that we do only original plays and all our plays are site-specific and immersive. At the crux of it, that means that we don’t produce plays in a traditional theater. This is both exciting and challenging. We get to work in amazing spaces and meet really cool people. But at the same time, we don’t have a theatrical lighting grid or a built-in sound system. There’s a lot that you take for granted in a traditional theater that you really miss when it’s gone. The trade-offs are worth it though!
Through Found Stages, I’ve had the chance to make anything I can dream up. Our audience is very adventurous and they love being part of the story. Because all of our work is original, we get the chance to build the audience into the story at the script level. This means that their actions further the narrative in a way that simply watching a play in a dark theater doesn’t. Even compared to other immersive theater experiences, our work goes further when it comes to involving the audience in the narrative.
In some ways, I think my whole life has been building to where I am now. Even though it’s a vastly different field, I grew up watching my dad run his own company. I learned a lot about business and managing people at our family dinner table. Then, in college, I went to UT-Austin. I trained as a director, but always had an interest in producing as well. There was this festival called The Cohen New Works Festival. I got involved as a Freshman and by my Sophomore year, I was put in charge of the PR/Marketing Committee. In addition to running the PR and marketing, I also helped select the applications that would become part of the festival and helped determine their funding. Because the festival had 50+ projects happening over the course of a week, site-specific projects were popular out of necessity. There were only so many traditional theater spaces to go around. The projects that embraced nontraditional spaces and conventions were some of the most creative, and they have stuck with me the most!
That’s what we found in starting Found Stages. We chose Dunwoody Nature Center for our first play, “Beulah Creek,” because it made sense for the play and fit our budget. Instead of having to rent a theater, then build a creek, we took our play out to a real creek. Our audience carried candles to help light their way and sat together on picnic blankets. The space added a whole new dimension to the play. It turned the story into an experience.
Now, we continue to seek out nontraditional spaces because the experience is what we’re craving. Personally, I love when our spaces allow us to be outside or see outside. Whenever I work in a traditional theater now, I find myself craving windows. Nontraditional spaces have windows. It makes it harder to control for lighting – you can never have a true blackout – but it ties the story to the real world.
It took me a long time to recognize that site-specific and immersive theater were my calling. Even in college, when I would drive by an interesting space and think how I’d like to do a play there, it didn’t occur to me that one day I’d start Found Stages. Obviously though, the seeds were always there. Luckily, I met Neeley Gossett – through another series of happy accidents – and she became my partner in making innovative theater.
Neeley and I kept seeing each other at plays around Atlanta. We were both there alone, so we’d sit together and afterwards we’d talk about the plays we’d seen. We found we had the same aesthetics. We didn’t know each other that well when we applied for the first round of the Alliance Theatre Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab with a play she’d written. We didn’t get into the Artists Lab but decided to do the play anyway. That play was “Beulah Creek,” Found Stages’ first show. One year later, we got into the second round of the Artist Lab, and that pushed us to continue growing our company and our own unique style and creative process.
When we were on Neeley’s back porch in 2014 deciding what to call our new theater, we decided on Found Stages because that’s what we had done. I was really inspired at the time (and still) by the National Theatre of Scotland. Their motto is “A Theatre Without Walls.” Ours is “New Plays, No Walls.” We take plays out of the theater and into real world spaces. We take plays directly to audiences where they live and work. We connect people with plays where they are most likely to resonate with them. We bring non-theater people into the “theater.”
If there’s a moral to share, I think it’s, take the leap and see where you land. The journey will always be worth it, even if you don’t know where you’re going when you start out.
Has it been a smooth road?
The road has been rewarding, but not always smooth. The most rewarding part is creating opportunities for other artists and making the kind of work that fulfills us all artistically. In leading Found Stages, I wear lots of hats: director, producer, location scout, concept creator, writer, casting director, HR manager, development director, executive director. It’s a lot at times, and I find myself waking up at 3am sure that I’ve forgotten to do something. Having a job you’re passionate about means that all your energy goes into making it a reality. That’s rewarding, but it can also be exhausting. When Neeley Gossett and I started Found Stages five years ago, we just wanted to create a way that we could produce our own work and work with exciting, talented people. It’s always wonderfully humbling to realize just how talented the people who choose to work with us are. It makes us want to grow an even better company for them. One that can support them financially as well as artistically. That’s where the bumps come in the road. Georgia ranks 49th in the nation in terms of public funding for the arts. That means that every arts-focused nonprofit is operating from a notion of scarcity. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be or how it has to be. We’re lucky in Atlanta that we have individuals and corporations that support the arts – we even have city and county funding. But Georgia is a big state with big artistic ambitions. More public funding for the arts would benefit every nonprofit arts organization.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Found Stages – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
Found Stages’ mission is to build community through innovative storytelling. We create original, site-specific, immersive theater. We’re the only theater company in Atlanta doing what we do. We work with a cache of top-notch, Atlanta-based playwrights and other theater artists who create original stories that involve the audience in meaningful ways that advance the narrative. Audiences who come to see our shows might find themselves throwing darts at a portrait of the host outside his New Year’s Eve ball, traversing rooms among the sacred grounds of a Gothic church, or enjoying nature while sipping wine. In all the work we do, our goal is to bring audience members closer to the story and each other.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
What I like best is that, in terms of art and being an artist, Atlanta is a very accessible city. The people here are open and willing to share what they know – all you have to do is ask.
What I like least is how segmented it can feel. It’s far too easy to stay in one portion of town without journeying out to see the full thing or engage meaningfully in a different neighborhood. Of course, traffic is a big culprit with this issue. Reliable, accessible public transit could help take Atlanta from a collection of neighborhoods to the unified city that it has the potential to be.
Pricing:
- Our upcoming production, “Frankenstein’s Funeral,” starts at $45. For Tickets & Info: www.foundstages.org/tickets
Contact Info:
- Website: www.foundstages.org
- Email: hello@foundstages.org
- Instagram: @foundstages
- Facebook: @foundstages
- Twitter: @foundstages
Image Credit:
June Kwon, Gaslight Picturehouse, Hannah Lake Photography, Katie Cathell, Chelsea Steverson
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