Play Group Theatre Celebrates 30 Years With a Waterfall on Stage

Article by Michelle Falkenstein for ArtsNews

December 12, 2024

Steven Abusch, executive director of the Play Group Theatre (PGT) in White Plains, says he sometimes has ideas that get him into trouble. For example, through December 15, PGT is staging performances of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, a play based on the poem by Ovid in which Gods and mortals co-exist. The staging calls for a pool filled with water, and in a burst of enthusiasm, Abusch suggested to his stage crew that in addition to a pool, they should also create a waterfall.

On further reflection, he decided a waterfall would be challenging. Then his crew reminded him that for PGT’s production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, they had built an ersatz hot tub. “What is the comparison between a full-sized pool with a waterfall and a bucket of water in a fake hot tub?” he recalled telling them.

Abusch eventually came around to his own idea, and PGT’s Metamorphoses has both a pool and a waterfall that cascades over a doorframe. “The waterfall makes it feel like there’s an abundance of water,” Abusch explains.

Play Group Theatre was founded by Abusch and his wife Jill, now PGT’s artistic director, in a similar burst of enthusiasm in 1995. Now celebrating its 30th anniversary, PGT is the longest-running non-profit educational theater in Westchester. Young people from four to 18 participate in classes, school residencies, technical internships, a full summer program, and a continual performance calendar. PGT has also fulfilled its commitment to providing access to the arts for all children by awarding $1 million in needs-based scholarships over the past 10 years in addition to offering two sensory-friendly productions annually.

The Abusches met in a production of Guys and Dolls at a local Y on Long Island when she was 15 and he was 17. Jill later attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied acting and directing, and Steven majored in fine art and set design at Binghamton University. In the early years of PGT, the couple worked in local preschools, teaching and driving a bus. After their day jobs, they worked for PGT, teaching, directing, choreographing, designing sets and managing the business. Rehearsals sometimes took place in their living room.

For the first 15 years of its existence, the organization performed nomadically at venues all over Westchester, including Irvington Theatre, Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck, the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, and the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester. In 2010, after four months of renovations on a former NY Sports Club, PGT moved to its current home at One North Broadway in White Plains.

PGT has an active alumni network that turns for its quinquennial galas to perform scenes from the shows in which they have appeared. “This year, the challenge is how to get highlights from 30 years into 90 minutes,” Abusch says with a laugh. “The shows are delightful, such a stroll down memory lane—but also for their parents, because it touches on those memories from back in the day.” PGT’s 30th anniversary gala will take place on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025.

Abusch says future plans for PGT include expanding their programming and their relationship with local schools. “We’re always trying to create new, innovative arts education,” he explains.

Theater training, he says, is great for everyone: “It builds confidence, helps you present your ideas, and teaches collaboration. The people who rise to the top of companies are not the techies, according to a Google study. They are the ones with the soft skills, like confidence, public speaking and collaborating.”"

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