Temple Repertory Theater combines students with professionals

In metropolitan Philadelphia, the 35-year-old People's Light & Theatre Company in Malvern has been a repertory house from its inception. The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre produces its two-play season in repertory. Six-year-old BCKSEET Productions, which produces professionally in the Red Room of Society Hill Playhouse, has been a repertory company for the past two seasons, and a new professional repertory troupe, Quintessence, premiered this spring at the Sedgwick Theater in Mount Airy. Several other local companies, among them 1812 Productions, adopt some of the trappings of repertory by working often with a core group of artists.

Many theater artists who have worked in repertory cherish the experience, particularly for its stability. Others, whose careers are more usual show-by-show pastiches, enjoy forming a new family of artists each time.

Wager, the Temple directing program's head, spent two decades in repertory at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. "Theater is a collaborative art form," he says. "And working with a group of artists over time is the best way to make theater."

Wager's Measure for Measure originally was to have been the 1936 Moss Hart-George S. Kaufman comedy You Can't Take It with You, for which rights had been secured; they then were withdrawn when a team of producers decided to revive it on Broadway this fall - "a last-minute blow," Kern says.

But the show must . . . well, you know, and Kern says that Wager is directing Measure for Measure with a new, modernist spin. And at a new company whose makeup has a decidedly traditional spin, in a modernist way.

Temple Rep's Inaugural Shows

Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters began previews Saturday and runs through Aug. 1.

Shakespeare's Measure for Measure begins previews Tuesday and runs through July 30.

Tomlinson Theater, 1301 W. Norris St.

Tickets: $15-$25. Information: 215-204-1334 or www.temple.edu/theater.

Contact staff writer Howard Shapiro at 215-854-5727 or hshapiro@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/howardshapiro. Follow him on Twitter at #philastage.