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People On The Move - SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas
03/04/2010 - By Teja Anderson
CENTER STAGE IN LONG BRANCH
It was love at first sight when Gabor Barabas spotted SuzAnne at a high school Halloween party in Brooklyn. Now married for over forty years with two grown children, the couple have settled comfortably into their current roles at the New Jersey Repertory Company (NJ Rep). He as the Executive Producer and she as the Artistic Director. This non-profit, professional theater, which they founded in 1997, is a small gem of a venue wedged into the heart of the Long Branch community right on the main street of Broadway.
Although SuzAnne’s first love was always the theater, studying with Lee Strasberg in New York City as a teenager and graduating from Brooklyn College with a degree in drama (she is a member of AEA, BMI, Dramatists Guild, & SSDC), Gabor’s first calling was medicine. He received his BA from NYU and his MD from the University of Cincinnati, becoming a Pediatric Neurologist. But regardless of where Gabor’s career or schooling took them the Barabas’s always put down roots and worked diligently to become part of or even establish a theatrical community.
When Gabor attended med school in Ohio, they founded the Cincinnati Repertory Company. When Gabor’s internship and residency took them to Philadelphia, they founded the American Repertory Theater of Philadelphia - where SuzAnne began to branch out from acting into directing, all the while attending graduate school.
They lived in Hillsborough, NJ when Gabor helped establish the Pediatric Neurology Department at Rutgers Medical School. But they eventually landed in Long Branch some 25 years ago. Gabor headed up the Pediatric Neurological Department at Monmouth Medical, a job that took up most of his time. SuzAnne and a business partner started a touring children’s theatrical group called “The Peanut Butter Theater” traveling to schools and parties in a little bus.
“I’m not sure why that ended when my business partner moved on…” SuzAnne muses. But Gabor interjects laughing; “We always know why we stopped producing, we just never know why we start it up again. It’s a painful process.” It seemed that the real dilemma for the couple was that they were not motivated to simply reproduce well known and established plays. “The long and the short of it was that about 15 years ago we got the idea to start a theater that would just produce new plays. We had both started writing and we saw that there was a real need for an outlet for new writers and new plays out there,” Gabor explains.
They looked first at locations in Red Bank and Asbury Park but when they heard that a local couple, David and Margaret Lumia, were looking to donate a building to a non-profit in Long Branch they set up a meeting. Although the space was not ideal it was just the sort of intimate setting they had imagined to showcase new material (the two performance spaces seat just 67 & 60 people each). The Barabas’s received the building on New Years Eve, 1997 and after raising $250,000 for renovations they staged their first full production in March of 1999.
They now receive almost a thousand scripts a year from all over the world and in the last 12 seasons have produced 75 plays (6-8 a year), most of them premiers! They also stage about 20 readings of new works each year. Interestingly, 60% of their audience comes from over 45 minutes away which means that many locals are not yet taking advantage of this neighborhood opportunity. The “Deal of the Century” allows the subscriber to attend any and all productions as often as seats are available. It’s just $15 a month and should not be missed.
Upcoming performances are: “Exposure Time” by Kim Merrill, a comic drama based on the relationships between Lewis Carroll, his muse for “Alice” and the photographer Julia Cameron (Feb 11-March 21, 2010); “Yankee Tavern” by Steven Dietz, a thriller set in a New York City bar whose characters are caught up in possible conspiracy theories (April 15-May23, 2010); and “Sunlight” by Sharr White, a drama set on a college campus where power and loyalty collide (July 8- August 15, 2010).
For more in formation got to www.NJRep.org or call 732-229-3166. The New jersey Repertory Company is located at 179 Broadway in Long Branch and there is free, on-site parking.
STATS
FAVORITE RESTAURANTS
Avenue (Gabor) Rooney’s (SuzAnne)
FAVORITE MUSIC(IAN)
Chopin (Gabor) Big Band (SuzAnne)
FAVORITE MOVIES
“True Romance” (Gabor)>
“Citizen Kane” (SuzAnne)
PET PEEVE
Cell phones ringing during a performance! (Both)
THREE PEOPLE YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH
John Keats, Percy Shelley & Lord Byron (Gabor) David Merrick, Joseph Papp & Eva LeGallienne (SuzAnne)
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