Ann Arbor theater company celebrates 10 years of elevating new plays and playwrights

This story is part of a series about arts and culture in Washtenaw County. It is made possible by the Ann Arbor Art Center, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Destination Ann Arbor, Larry and Lucie Nisson, and the University Musical Society.

Theatre Nova, the nonprofit theater company located at 410 W. Huron St. in Ann Arbor, is celebrating its 10^th-anniversary season.
 
Despite that milestone, Theatre Nova Artistic Director and founding member Carla Milarch says she still feels like the theater is “a fledgling company.” That comes as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced Theatre Nova to take an intermission early in its first act.
 
“There was this giant chunk right in the middle of everything that stopped our progress,” Milarch says.
 
Still, Theatre Nova has managed not only to survive but to thrive. Milarch says the company has turned out 15 to 20 world premieres – Theatre Nova’s specialty – in the last decade.
 
She says she wants audiences to “get that experience of being in the room with a play as it’s coming to life, as opposed to a play that is either touring through or has been produced on Broadway and then comes here,” because “it’s a uniquely thrilling experience to see a play on its way up.”
 
Asked about particularly memorable moments in the theater’s history, Milarch remembers the 2016 world premiere of “Irrational,” a musical about the ancient Greek philosopher/mathematician Pythagoras. Milarch directed the play, written by David Wells and R. MacKenzie Lewis.

At the beginning of each performance of “Irrational,” the house manager would take a Rubik’s cube out onstage, hand it to an audience member, and ask them to scramble it up, Milarch says. Then, in the middle of the opening number, actor Elliott Styles, who played Pythagoras, would sit “crisscross applesauce” and solve the puzzle before the end of the song. Milarch says Styles had an uncanny ability to solve the Rubik’s cube “super-fast … no matter how messed up it was,” leaving the audience “so blown away.”
 
“It was just such a phenomenal show,” she says.
 
Milarch says she’s looking forward to Theatre Nova’s new season, which opens Oct. 11 with “In Search of the Mothman,” a play about two sisters navigating life after a tragedy strikes their hometown. The play, written by Amber Palmer, is yet another world premiere.
 
“Our mission is to promote the value of new plays and new playwrights to our audiences, but it’s also to nurture and foster the growth and development of new plays and new playwrights in our community,” Milarch says.

For tickets to “In Search of the Mothman” and more info on Theatre Nova, click here.

Natalia Holtzman is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and others.