(dramatic music) - Capitol Rep is a professional theater that does an eclectic mix of plays and musicals throughout the season.

We also do a full range of educational kinds of productions that we do out in the community and schools in about the 14 counties around Albany.

And on our main stage, we probably will have between 35 and 40,000 people through our doors in any one year.

A professional theater is one that has a relationship with unions, and so we have union actors on our stage who are members of Actors Equity Association.

We work with designers who are members of USA, United Scenic Artists, and we have directors who are part of SDC, the Stage Directors and Choreographers union.

So it means that the people who work at Capital Rep make a living wage.

This is the new Capital Rep. We built the building that we are sitting in during Covid.

We were in a theater that was in downtown Albany and that was our home for 35 years.

But we needed to grow and we found this building.

They used to make Nabisco cookies here in the basement.

Over 300 kinds of cookies and crackers were made in this building.

We had a lot of friends who came forward.

The Housing Authority said, we could help you get started if you would move to this corner of North Pearl and Livingston.

And that was really the beginning of our turning this building into a brand new theater, which is beautiful.

And every day I walk into this place that has a 300 seat thrust stage theater downstairs.

It has this studio theater that we're talking in right now.

It has a costume shop right across the hallway and a prop shop and beautiful dressing rooms.

I say to myself, I'm lucky.

And I feel very fortunate because the community came forward and helped us build this facility.

I think that this season is gonna be a really good one, starting with the show called Seared by Theresa Rebeck.

Margaret Hall is the associate artistic director here at the theater.

She's directing Seared, but the reason that she's directing Seared and she'll do such a great job is she's 100% a foodie.

- Oh, Seared is a really funny, little bit dark maybe, comedy about a small park slope Brooklyn restaurant.

It's very real.

So we really cook on stage and I mean really cook, salmon dishes, gnocchi dishes, pasta dishes, salads, all different kinds of things are actually being cooked on the stage.

(dramatic music) I don't think I ever want a restaurant for myself, but I do very much like cooking and cooking for others.

So being able to direct a piece with four really wonderful actors who give all of themselves over to this and Theresa Rebeck's really brilliant dialogue and then getting to mix in the food aspect of it.

I'm like, well, this is just like great.

How come every show isn't like this?

Every set person and all of the designers and the entire production crew just shivered when I said that out loud, I'm sure.

That is actually another challenge.

And it was figuring out how to make all the things in the real working kitchen feasible, budgetarily feasible in a small thrust theater where audience is on three sides of you.

- I mean, there's a real stove down there and we had to vent the stove.

And there's a whole lot of things that are going on on the stage so that when people sit in the seats, they're going to smell the onions and garlic cooking.

(gentle music) Well, we're really very lucky because Gabby Bisnet is our food designer and safety manager for all the food.

And she designed the food for the New York production.

So she knows all the secrets of which I am not going to tell you.

- Gabby and I sat down and talked about the different recipes and what we wanted, the smells in the house to be based on Rebeck's words and where else we could be creative, the colors of things.

So what foods would be being cooked so that different colors pop up.

And then she has been instrumental in getting not only our chef, but our waiter comfortable using a knife the way a trained chef would use a knife.

Learning how to, you know, maintain a stove, check the tickets as they're coming in, listen to the orders as they're coming in, going back and forth from the stove to the plating station.

And so she's designed not just the recipes, but also what the dishes look like when they're put on the plate and then sent out into the dining room.

- I think everybody should go to the theater.

I think everybody should go to something where there's a live human on stage.

I love to binge watch series on TV.

I love it.

But there is nothing like being in a theater where you're gonna really smell the onions and the garlic and the butter and you're doing it with other human beings.

I think it's really important.

I hope everybody will just take a little adventure and go see something this year.