Las Vegas Little Theatre’s Niejadlik discusses ‘the scene’

Exhilaration and exasperation.

Run a theater, be buds with both.

"I have permanent agida," says Las Vegas Little Theatre President Walter Niejadlik, invoking pithy Italian slang for heartburn and aggravation. "Some months we make the $10,000-plus, some we don't even come close. We count on a mainstage show to pay a month's rent. It gets more difficult year after year."

Community theater companies: Some come and go, arriving with grand pronouncements of artistic intent, then folding the tents. Others stick, producing a handful of mainstream shows each season, with long gaps in between. Still others specialize, confining themselves to offbeat, fringe and out-there theater.

Then there's LVLT -- presided over by Niejadlik since 2003 -- the city's longest-running nonprofit theater, born in 1978 and approaching its 35th season next year.

Doing it all in three performance spaces, LVLT goes mainstream on its 150-seat mainstage, edgier in its Black Box and experimental in its studio, rarely out of production with some show up and running somewhere.

Think Lou Gehrig: LVLT is the "Iron Horse" of Las Vegas community theater.

As its latest production, the classic George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner," prepares to go curtain-up Friday, Niejadlik discusses LVLT and "the scene":

Question: You came to Las Vegas in 2000 from San Francisco. How did you get involved with LVLT?

Answer: It took me living here six months to find this place. It didn't seem like there was any theater here. I stumbled onto the LVLT audition page (online) and they were doing auditions. ... I got cast in this three-line role and dutifully came to rehearsals. Then the assistant director dropped out so I was helping out with that. ... Then I just hung around and they couldn't get rid of me and a few months later I got elected to the board.

Q: Is LVLT a leader in local theater?

A: I'd like to think we're a leader. What helped a lot was that we had a home. Signature (Productions) and other folks were using the library or the stage at Spring Mountain Ranch or the college, but you didn't have an Onyx or an Insurgo. There are all these little performance spaces that seem to be popping up now. But we've got a pretty impressive little facility here. We've gone from being a community theater to what I would call a nonprofessional theater.

Q: In a city known for world-class entertainment in our own backyard, why is it important to nurture local theater?

A: I know we have the Smith Center going up, and I think that's great. But from what I can see, the Smith Center is going to be a roadhouse for Broadway shows. I'm sure they'll have other shows as well. But this is the place your next-door neighbor comes and you have them onstage and you're amazed at the talent that's out there in the community. That's special. And it's run by a board of volunteers that does everything from emptying the trash and cleaning the toilets to making sure the shows go up and running the box office.

Q: After 34 years, why is it still a challenge to get people through the doors?

A: I still to this day have people walk in the door and say, "I've lived in this town for X number of years and I never knew you existed. Why don't you tell people about the theater?" Well, we do try.

I hate to harp on this, but the Smith Center comes to town and they're on TV all the time and they have the advertising budget. I was watching one of the news shows and they're interviewing someone and they're like, "We've raised 80 bazillion dollars and we just need to be able to raise $5 million more," and I'm thinking, $5 million would keep us in business literally for the next 15 years without anybody sweatin' nothin'. Give us even half a mil, that would be good.

Q: What's your favorite memory of all the LVLT shows?

A: "A Streetcar Named Desire." It was a sold-out Sunday afternoon, pouring down rain. Right as we started the last scene of the second act, a transformer blew up and the lights went out. The audience asked us to do the last scene by candlelight. So we reset and we had volunteers standing with flashlights pointed at the stage and we put some candles on the stage and we did the last scene of the show. We got a standing ovation, then we escorted the audience out by flashlight.

That will always stick with me, that a hundred and some odd people didn't get up and leave. We have a great patron base that really supports us.

Q: This year, your mainstage season is all comedies? Why?

A: Our patrons said (dramas) were too depressing; they want the comedies. And the financial part of it was the last couple of dramas we did, we couldn't give away tickets. "Rabbit Hole" was a really great show and every night they were playing to 30 people in a 150-seat theater, which is like being there by yourself. "Doubt" got creamed at the box office. Beautiful show and it didn't make a dime.

Q: Yet there's no play on the comedy schedule by Neil Simon, whose plays are the bible of local and regional theater?

A: We have a moratorium on Neil Simon plays right now. They just don't perform the way they used to. The audience sensibilities have changed.

Q: Why does LVLT endure?

A: I honestly don't know. Considering that the grant money we get (from the Nevada Arts Council) is not even a percent of our operating budget, most of what keeps the lights on is ticket sales, which is pretty amazing.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.