When the Ritz Theatre Company raises the curtain on Trolls and Men on Friday, October 9, the audience will be watching something no one has seen before: a world premiere about a small Norwegian theatre company that refused to be silenced during the Nazi occupation. The play’s director, Lori Aleixo-Howard, is also the Ritz’s full-time Director of Development, and she wears both hats with evident pleasure. “I am the director of development full-time here at the Ritz Theatre Company,” she told CreARTivity Magazine, “but I am also the director of our new play, Trolls and Men.”

A story found on vacation

Playwright Alex Wilkie brought the script to the Ritz about three years ago. The theatre has worked with him many times, and the idea for this play came from a trip to Norway, where he and his wife, Janet, an actor who is in the cast, stumbled on a museum of the Norwegian resistance. “Alex didn’t realize that Norway played much of a significant role in the Nazi resistance,” Lori said.

Inside the museum he found the story of Henry Gleditsch and his small theatre company. When the occupiers tried to force them to stage a German propaganda piece, the company gave the German director the runaround. At one point they sold tickets to a performance and told the buyers not to come, so that the house would look sold out. Only seven people showed up. “There are all these different things that this director and actors tried to do to stand up and say, no, this is our theater,” Lori said. “We can tell the stories we want to tell, and you’re not going to take that from us.”

The play is based on a true story, and the true story does not end happily. The real Henry paid with his life: he was captured and executed, along with other artists, editors and teachers who stood up to the regime. For Lori, that is exactly why it should be told now. “We as artists say, no, everyone’s stories deserve to be heard and told,” she said. She had directed a couple of Wilkie’s earlier plays, sat in on readings of this one over three years, and even read one of the roles aloud as his edits came in. “I think it’s a great story to be heard right now.”

Built in the room

Lori took part in about four readings of the play over the years, and at each one she asked the actors around the table for honest feedback. “Was it clunky to read through and pronounce? Did anything sound unnatural?” Some scenes ran long and were trimmed. Others needed a quicker pace to match the urgency and higher stakes. A father-daughter relationship drives much of the action, and the actors drew on their own lives to deepen it, down to remembering a conversation with their own daughters and suggesting the playwright include it. “We all sort of bring our individual experiences to these characters,” she said, and the playwright decides which suggestions to keep.

Staging adds a final layer of discovery. “Hearing it in the room and seeing people move and walk and bring the story to life is definitely helpful,” she said, as the team looks for the strongest version of every scene.

Theatre as resistance

Asked what she hopes audiences will feel, Lori turns to the moment we live in. “Sometimes it’s easy to feel powerless,” she said. “Sometimes you watch the news or you see what’s happening and you feel small. What can I possibly do? What can I say? And that’s exactly their point. They’re trying to make people feel small.” Her answer is the one the play itself gives. “Everyone has power to put up their own resistance. It’s just a question of whether or not you’re brave enough to do so.”

Why the Ritz keeps betting on new plays

The Ritz building opened in September 1927 and is about to turn one hundred, and the company that fills it was started about forty years ago by Bruce Curless. Many local theatres steer clear of new plays because they are a financial risk, and Lori understands why: the doors have to stay open, and audiences must be persuaded to buy a ticket to a story they have never heard. The Ritz still programs big musicals, Shakespeare and Agatha Christie, but it also sets room aside for its New Works Initiative. “That’s one of the things that’s most dear to me about the Ritz,” she said. “We always strive to make room for new things because we might be lucky enough to discover the next Streetcar Named Desire or Annie, because all of those plays were seen for the first time at one point.” Building a play from the ground up, she added, “is very exciting.”

Her own double role gives her a rare view of the whole operation. A lifelong theatre artist who started performing as a child, she handles fundraising, special events and the annual appeal while also acting and directing. “Usually you have to pick one or the other in order to make a living,” she said. For her, theatre is “a place where artists and people can come together and just be entertained and forget about reality, but also see it as a mirror.”

A family that spans generations

The Ritz tries to offer something for every age. Its Ritz Kids series stages familiar fairy tales such as Cinderella, The Ugly Duckling and The Jungle Book for children from preschool to about second grade, and young audience members are pulled up on stage to play animals or help Cinderella clean the palace. The Stage Stars program, for grades one through twelve, runs spring and fall after-school shows, summer camps that each build a full production, and workshops in choreography, vocal training and acting for the camera. Teen shows give older students a chance to perform plays they might not otherwise get to do, especially if their schools have no theatre program. The Main Stage series, home to Trolls and Men, presents about six productions a season: musicals, comedies, classics and new works.

Many Stage Stars graduates go on to the main stage, and a few have gone further. Lori counts among the Ritz’s best-known alumni the actress Kristen Milioti, who began on its stage as a teenager and grew up in Cherry Hill. The aim, she said, is to encourage a love of theatre “from when they’re young through when they’re 102.” Two of the seven actors in Trolls and Men are making their Ritz debuts, while others have been appearing on its stage for forty years. “It really is a family that we are trying to grow and maintain here,” she said. And the building itself? “We hope this building is here as a theater for another 100 years if we can help it.”

What to know before you go

New audiences are welcome, and Lori hopes some of the people who come for the musicals will take a chance on something different. “If you open yourself up and allow yourself to see something you might not otherwise see, it could be a whole different experience for you.” First-time visitors will find a bar and concessions in the building, so there is no need to go anywhere beforehand. And because this is a world premiere, “you can say, I was among the first to see this world premiere play.”

On opening night, Friday, October 9, tickets are pay-what-you-can, with a minimum of five dollars, for anyone who brings a donation of a canned or nonperishable food item. All of the food goes to the Food Bank of South Jersey. That offer is available only in person at the box office, as are the student and senior discounts. Tickets for specific dates can be bought in advance on the Ritz’s website.

After Trolls and Men, the Ritz turns to its holiday musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, with a cast of about thirty. Lori has heard the company in rehearsal and says the voices are powerful. She expects “a fun, colorful, flashy show for the whole family during the holidays.”