In Norristown, 60 local residents perform ‘Town,’ a theatrical love letter to a diverse community

In Norristown, everybody’s got an opinion.

Where are the best tacos? What’s the best thing to order at Sisters Mini Market? Who makes the best zeps — the Norristown version of hoagies?

Wisely, Michael John Garcés, the Los Angeles playwright who wrote Town, Theatre Horizon’s community-based production about Norristown that stars 60 Norristown residents, learned to stay above the fray.

“I’m definitely going to be neutral on the best taqueria,” joked Garcés, who admits that despite his pro-L.A. bias, he is impressed overall by the local taco offerings.

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Instead, he chose to listen. As part of his playwriting process Garcés and others interviewed 135 local people ; as he wrote scenes, he held readings in the community. If his audiences thought a line didn’t ring true, he’d change it.

The result is Town, which, in three acts, addresses the past, present, and future of Norristown — an economically stressed former factory town. Once populated by Irish and Italian immigrants, it saw waves of Black transplants arrive during the Great Migration.

In Malvern, Kennett Square’s mushroom-growing community is the focus of People’s Light’s bilingual production of Mushroom, written by Brooklyn playwright Eisa Davis who spent nine years interviewing immigrant workers, farmers, and community organizations to develop the plot.

Both Town and Mushroom open this week — part of a growing trend here and around the nation to build theater audiences and connections by telling the stories of the people who live nearby and finding new ways to attract diverse audiences to the theater.

“How do we involve people not only as audience members, but as art makers?” said Nell Bang-Jensen, who, as executive artistic director of Theatre Horizon spearheaded the Town project in late 2019. The Philadelphia music group Ill Doots has also partnered on Town.

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These kinds of efforts are attracting funders, such as the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage which gave $360,000 to support Mushroom and $331,560 to Theatre Horizon for Town.

Earlier this month, InterAct Theatre Co. announced that the William Penn Foundation had awarded it $652,500 to fund productions by three local playwrights as they reach into the neighborhoods to create Philadelphia-centric works about underrepresented communities.

There’s a lot of talk in the arts circles these days about community engagement, Bang-Jensen said. “To me, it’s become such a buzzword that I challenge myself and others to be really specific about what it means.”

In theater, it can mean a lot. On the continuum are small-town theater groups such as Narberth Community Theater, assembling a cast of talented amateurs to stage crowd-pleasers like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for an enthusiastic audience of friends and relatives. At the other end are major productions like those mounted at People’s Light and Theatre Horizon.

In between are works like Theatre in the X’s production of Dreamgirls, acted by professionals and presented free in Malcolm X Park in West Philadelphia.

For the OK Trenton Project staged in February, Passages Theatre Co. staffers interviewed 35 Trenton young people, officials, artists, and former gang members to create a show exploring the controversy over a sculpture created by teenagers at a summer arts camp in 2017.

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In May 2024, Temple University’s theater department, in collaboration with Power Street Theatre, will present Siluetas by Reading playwright Erlina Ortiz. In the lead-up, Power Street will host 12 community conversations in senior centers and other non-arts spaces to hear people’s stories about the play’s themes of immigration and the refugee experience. Facilitators will lead discussions in English, Spanish, and Arabic.

Growing up in Norristown, homemaker and mother of two Karen Salinas loved being in high school plays.

In Town, Salinas plays Taco Aficionado #1 in the second act, where debates about the best taqueria bump up against conflicting stories about different races’ experiences, all set against a backdrop of gentrification.

She says it was an eye-opening experience. Growing up in Norristown’s Latino community, she witnessed the gnawing anxiety ever-present among her Latino neighbors who lived in fear of deportation. But through her participation in the play, where she acted alongside professional actor Melanye Finister, aka Taco Aficionado #2, Salinas learned more about the experience of Black Americans. Before the show, she said she was “completely blinded to the African American struggle in America,” she said. “Now I’ve seen what it was to be a person of color in America.”

Timotheus “Moe” Peay, a Black filmmaker, had a similar experience. Peay, his wife, Fallon, and their three children, Brooklyn, Cassidy, and Prince, all have roles. Cassidy, who is 10, plays Town’s oldest character.

“I only have my own small perspective of Norristown,” said Peay, who grew up in the borough. But the show had introduced him to more.

“The old, the young, the Black, the white, the Spanish — we’re all coming together. Even if we don’t become best friends, we’ll notice each other now in passing.”

“Town,” Sept. 15-18, rain date Sept. 19, Theatre Horizon at Eisenhower Science and Technology Leadership Academy, 1601 Markley St., Norristown. Outdoors, free, bring chairs. Spanish translation available at all performances. 610-283-2230, theatrehorizon.org and “Mushroom,” Sept. 14-Oct. 16, People’s Light, 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, Spanish, and English translations at all performances, 610-644-3500, peopleslight.org