These are the fertile grounds for the first three ensemble companies in White Pines' residency program. Each has a week of room, board, and space to create, and each week will culminate in . . . who knows what?
It could be a full-blown public performance. It could be an in-progress demonstration of what the artists have been doing. These public grab-bag events - like the workshops, concerts, and other events White Pines is sponsoring through the summer - are free.
White Pines is the brainchild of longtime Philadelphia-based actor Ben Lloyd, who's lately been specializing in comedy - the title role in Moliere's Scapin two seasons back at Lantern Theater, and Bottom in that company's A Midsummer Night's Dream this spring. He established the residency with a $75,000 grant from the Wyncote Foundation, a Haas family philanthropy whose leaders include another local actor, Leonard C. Haas.
When Lloyd, his wife - actress Susan McKey, a longtime member of the People's Light & Theatre Company - and two children moved from Havertown to Elkins Park two years ago, "I began to think of this desire to create an artistic home for myself and also invite other people into it," he says. "What would it be? A conventional theater? Would I find a little storefront in Jenkintown and call it Jenkintown Rep?"
He discussed this with others, and was directed to David Dobson, who had founded the Land Conservancy of Elkins Park to save the Elkins Estate, which the nuns had considered prime land for sale to developers, who would inevitably carve it up.
