The Gospel According to Cockroach
Las Vegas Citylife's David McKee sat down with Artistic Director Erik Amblad to chat about Cockroach, new Resident Playwright Erica Griffin, and the future.

Talking with new Artistic Director Erik Amblad about the future of the durable troupe

by DAVID MCKEE
During the past two seasons, local producer/director/actor Erik Amblad has staged one Cockroach Theatre production (Danny and the Deep Blue Sea) and appeared in another (The Flu Season). Mainly for the want of a home base, Cockroach has been more spoken of than seen lately. But that’s changing with a dramatic confluence of events. This spring, Cockroach launched an online fundraising campaign to help bankroll the ongoing conversion of a barrel-vaulted space next to Artifice Urban Bar, in the arts district, into a new, 96-seat theater. It adopted the Sin City New Play Contest, orphaned when Sirc Michaels was ousted from Onyx Theatre, signed Erica Griffin (Spearminted) as playwright in residence and tapped Amblad as artistic director. CityLife sat down with him last Sunday, at The Arts Factory’s Bar + Bistro, to learn more. Cockroach had just hit the halfway mark on its $20,000 fundraising campaign, which ends June 15.

What will be the scope of the first Cockroach season?

We’re going to start it in September. We’ll be doing five in-season shows. We’ll end our season in May, and then we’ll do the winner of the Sin City New Play Contest. The [subscription] shows themselves continue the trend of the last 10 years of Cockroach: We get to explore a full point of view, rather than just going show to show, ad hoc. We’ll be able to connect things thematically. Sin City New Play Contest needed a new home, so I approached Original Works Publishing and said that we’d love to offer Arts Square Theater. This last contest had over 400 playwrights from across the nation participate, and the winner, Nurture by Johnna Adams, will be our first production in the space — we just had our first read-through — and Johnna is actually going to Skype into rehearsals [from Queens, N.Y.] so that she can be part of the development process.

What are your responsibilities?

I’m crafting the season and also helping to drive all the Cockroach-produced programming in the space, whether it’s the late-night programming that we’ll do with Erica, trying to bring back some of the original-playwright material that she and I were doing at the [Katherine Gianaclis Park for the Arts], to bring back that ethos to late-night programming. But we’re also going to be driving education. We’re going to do playwright workshops, acting workshops and right now we’re in discussion with a few community groups to do education outreach for youth. That puts a lot on the plate. Day to day, I’ll manage the space with Levi Fackrell, our managing director, and just spread the gospel of Cockroach Theatre.

What was the attraction of getting involved?

I was born and raised here and, when I left, I thought I was leaving for good. I’d go off and do my art elsewhere. But when 9/11 hit, I came back because I wanted to be closer to my family. I thought at the time that I’d be making this sacrifice: no more acting for me. But two years later, I’d just done a show at Las Vegas Little Theatre and came down to this strange place called the Arts Factory in the arts district. I thought, “What is this? This is the town I grew up in?” It changed my perspective, and then I went to a play inside the Arts Factory, produced by this tiny company called Cockroach. It was [Camus'] Caligula. When I walked out of that, it changed everything for me. I realized you can do the theater I hoped to do in this town and, since then it’s just been full-bore for me. Cut to eight years later, and suddenly I’m the artistic director of a theater across from the Arts Factory — and that is Cockroach Theatre. There’s a kind of symmetry there that I can’t ignore.

Why is it important to have a playwright in residence, and why was Erica Griffin the right choice?

Theater in this town can be taken seriously as a discipline, not simply that something people do in their spare time. Part of the way is showing a commitment to someone like Erica, who has shown that discipline in this town for the last five, 10 years. She was in Caligula when I first met her. Erica Griffin is one of the most interesting, compelling and compassionate voices that I’ve encountered. She lives in Las Vegas, cares about Las Vegas and wants to tell Las Vegas stories. We share that passion. So it is an exciting moment.