Dreams come true: Tree Fort Productions Projects opens with Tony-winning play ‘Red’

Katherine Michelle Tanner’s career in the arts has been all about taking risks and leaps of faith to explore the world and delve into human truths as an actress, director, writer, dancer, teacher and filmmaker.

She’s ready for her latest challenge, opening a new Sarasota theater company with a play that is all about the creative process and the line between artistic honesty and commercialism.

Tanner is directing John Logan’s Tony Award-winning play “Red” to open her new non-profit professional theater Tree Fort Productions Projects, an extension of her ongoing Tree Fort Productions, her home base for introducing young people to the arts and presenting a variety of work for the public.

The play is about the artist Mark Rothko, who is challenged to do more by a young assistant after he was commissioned in 1958 to create a series of murals for a new Four Seasons restaurant in New York inside the Seagram Building. But as the work progressed, he changed his mind, thinking that the pieces were not appropriate for a restaurant setting.

“There are so many lessons to be learned in this play about art, not just as a painter, but life lessons, and this play perfectly sums up the risk you have to take,” Tanner said before a recent rehearsal. “And nothing is more exciting than starting a company with that thought, that risk. I like that it’s about art and I also think it lent well to this space.”

The theater is set up in a storefront inside the Crossings at Siesta Key shopping center, where both The Sarasota Players and Rise Above Arts have spaces. It’s a flexible room that can be set up in different ways depending on the production.

“Red” is the first of a series of four shows that Tanner has planned for the first season, and she describes Tree Fort as a company with a group of actors who will be featured over the years. The season also includes a performance of Natalie Symons’ “Lark Eden” (Nov. 10); Tanner’s collaboration with William Shakespeare on “Shakespeare’s Lovers” (Dec. 1-17); a return of the one-woman play “The Amish Project” by Jessica Dickey (Jan. 12-Feb. 11) and “The Women of Broadway Cabaret” (March 8-17).

Lee Gundersheimer, who plays Rothko, said “I feel so moved to keep his spirit alive. He cared so deeply about art. I know there are lots of people like that who would give their whole world, their whole being to be able to create.”

Rothko was also a teacher, who spent 30 years working with children in Brooklyn. “When he’d have a gallery show, he would hang his kids’ paintings next to his to give them that thrill of the experience,” Gundersheimer.

He stars with Alex Teicheira as Ken, a young artist who he said feels he has achieved something just making it to New York from his small town in Iowa. “He gets a job with a master and is proud to have this really rare chance to be hands-on with someone like Rothko. He wants to prove himself. He has respect for the past, but realizes it’s a creative process and he’s ready to create things.”

Gndersheimer said it’s “really cool that the mentee, who comes in wanting to learn so much, ends up challenging the mentor, teaching him something profound and important. Ken tells him things that no one else had the guts to tell him about the work he’s creating.”

Rothko realizes that Ken is “really an artist and I think he keeps him around because he’s a young me in a lot of ways,” Gundershwimer said.

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He describes the artist as someone who “lives and breathes for the desire to create humanity in his work, or what he believes will make you see how it feels to be human. He doesn’t care how much a painting will sell for. He cares about paying the bills, of course, but he literally wants to give you a religious experience or an epiphany. Every time you look at something it should shake you.”

Tanner, who grew up in Minnesota but has made her home in Sarasota since graduating from the FSU/Asolo Conservatory, said she has dreamed about starting her own theater company for years. But it was never the right time.

“The pandemic in some ways was a gift because I got to meet more people and I got excited by them and how they responded to this idea and now it seemed like it was time to take that leap of faith.”

‘Red’

By John Logan. Directed by Katherine Michelle Tanner. Runs Oct. 13-29, Tree Fort Productions Projects, 3501 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $40. treefortproductionsprojects.com

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: New theater debuts with play about artist Mark Rothko and creative