Sarasota’s Urbanite announces its first full-length season

The instant success of Urbanite Theatre took even Summer Dawn Wallace and Brendan Ragan by surprise.

“Brendan and I were both overwhelmed by how fast it took off with the community,” Wallace said. She and Reagan are the co-artistic directors of the new-ish black box theater in downtown Sarasota.

Before Urbanite opened last year, the prevailing opinion in the theater community was that Sarasota audiences preferred proven shows, or at least shows by familiar playwrights, staged with big budgets. Most people thought black-box theater, specializing in obscure works by emerging playwrights, wouldn’t fly.

But Urbanite was crowded right from the start. Extra seats were squeezed in to accommodate demand. Some shows had to be extended even before opening night because the original runs were sold out. The three most recent shows — “Drowning Girls,” Stupid (Expletive) Bird” and “Lungs” — each set attendance records.

“I think that the community has continued to surprise us in terms of the hunger they have for the kind of work we do,” Ragan said. “One of the things that we’re proud of is connecting with the die-hard theater enthusiasts, but we’re also getting people who say this is the first play they’ve ever been to.”

Urbanite has previously announced mini-seasons of three shows at a time, with each show running a few weeks.

Now, with a little more confidence in their hearts and a little more money in the bank, Wallace and Ragan have just announced an actual year-long season, opening in late June and running through the end of April, 2017. Each of the shows will run for at least a month, and one runs for seven weeks.

“All of the runs are longer,” Ragan said. “And some are much longer.”

Other than the length of the season and the length of the run of the run of each show, the 2016-17 season doesn’t stray from the Urbanite formula. You’re unlikely to know the titles or the writers, but Ragan and Wallace say they’re the kind of works that Urbanite audiences love. “Edgy” is the hackneyed word that’s usually used to describe this kind of plays. “Challenging” is probably a more appropriate adjective.

Wallace noted that this marks the first time that Urbanite has secured the rights to every one of its first-choice plays.

Urbanite has made one big change this season. The theater had used a ticketing service that was inexpensive for the theater but clumsy for ticket-buyers. After hearing negative comments, the theater has switched to a streamlined service that ticket-buyers ought to find a lot easier.

“We used the ticket service we could afford,” Wallace said.

It’s still the same phone number and website for tickets — 941-321-1397, urbanitetheatre.com — and season subscriptions and individual tickets for the first show are on sale now. Urbanite is at 1487 Second St., Sarasota.

Here’s the five-show season.

▪  “Dry Land” by Ruby Rae Spiegel, June 24-July 24.

▪  “Breadcrumbs” by Jennifer Haley, Aug. 12-Sept. 18.

▪  “My Barking Dog” by Eric Coble, Nov. 11-Dec. 18.

▪  “Ideation” by Aaron Loeb,” Jan. 27-March 12.

▪  “Bo-Nita” by Elizabeth Heffron, March 31-April 30.

This story was originally published May 20, 2016 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Sarasota’s Urbanite announces its first full-length season."