Theatre Charlotte Brings Thespians to the Movies with ‘The Flick’

When was the last time you saw a play performed in a movie theater? And did it take place among the cinema’s seats? If you answered those two questions with “never” and “no … because never,” you’re not alone.

Theatre Charlotte’s Queen City premiere of The Flick, which runs from Feb. 12-21, will stage part of the 2014 Pulitzer-Prize winning drama’s run in a venue that usually presents movies, not plays: The Independent Picture House (IPH).

Theatre Charlotte’s novel approach to the production makes sense since playwright Annie Baker’s drama is set in a dilapidated second-run movie theater. There, sarcastic, outspoken projectionist Rose, film-buff college student Avery and long-time employee Sam, clean up the popcorn, spilled soda, sneakers and far more disgusting items that they find in the seats and aisles between screenings. While carrying out their menial tasks, the three characters discuss movies and awkwardly grapple with their hopes and fears.

The first weekend run will play in the more familiar confines of Theatre Charlotte’s accustomed venue, The Barn on Queens Road, from Feb. 12-15 before moving to IPH for the second weekend, Feb. 19-21. The staging will be innovative but unique in each theater.

“It’s going to be two different shows,” says Kyle J. Britt, the play’s director.

Reviews from 2013, when The Flick premiered Off-Broadway, indicate that audiences sat in the auditorium, while the action played out among fake rows of theater seats onstage. Theatre Charlotte aims to make things more immersive.

The company plans to flip the script, putting the audience on stage and the actors in the auditorium’s seating area.

“It’s something we’ve never done,” says Theatre Charlotte’s artistic director Chris Timmons.

This approach accommodates the company’s need to meet a tight schedule but it also provides audiences a new experience, Timmons maintains. They’re not watching actors performing for them on a proscenium stage, and that adds veracity to the characters and their concerns.

“We’re putting [the actors] in an environment that feels exactly like the one they would be in in the real world,” Timmons says.

At IPH, the audience will be sitting behind the actors in the back half of the seating area while the actors perform in the front rows facing the screen.

Placing the actors among the audience has presented problems when it comes to blocking and presenting the show to paying patrons, Britt notes, but he feels the challenge has been worth it.

“It takes us back to the earliest days of theatre, where theatre didn’t necessarily have to happen in a particular building at a particular place and time,” Britt maintains. “It shows our audience and the community that theatre is the storytelling that we share. It’s not the building that you come to necessarily.”

Theatre Charlotte picks ‘The Flick’

Timmons has been Theatre Charlotte’s artistic director since 2021, but he’s worked for the community theatre troupe since 2007 in various roles, including as acting executive director, associate artistic director and technical director as well as doing scenic and lighting design for numerous productions. Timmons decided to stage The Flick about two years ago when he was flipping through catalogs from theatrical licensing agents, looking for shows for the company’s 98th and current season.

“I got a copy of the script and immediately was thinking, ‘This would be a great piece to do in a movie theater,’” Timmons says.

He immediately thought of IPH. Previous to the opening of the indie movie theater in June 2022, Theatre Charlotte had a longstanding relationship with Charlotte Film Society president and IPH executive director Brad Ritter. Theatre Charlotte hosted the organization’s Saturday Night Cine Club film screening events once a month. That history (and the lack of any other independent art house cinemas in the city) made IPH a natural fit for The Flick.

The production also fits perfectly with Theatre Charlotte’s TC Plus series, which presents shows that contain content, themes or language more challenging than what the company normally presents on its main stage. TC Plus productions are designed to grow Theatre Charlotte’s audience and connect it with people who don’t normally attend theatre, and The Flick will be the fourth such production.

The company’s previous TC Plus productions included Picasso at the Lapine Agile, presented in 2023 at Divine Barrel Brewing, the Mint Museum Uptown and Theatre Charlotte’s lobby; The Mountaintop, staged in 2024 as an immersive experience in Theatre Charlotte’s lobby; and Every Brilliant Thing, mounted in spring 2025 at Free Range Brewing, Divine Barrel Brewing and the Theatre Charlotte lobby.

A photographer and marketing professional, Britt became house photographer for Theatre Charlotte in 2022. He also took his first foray into acting with the company’s 2022 production of A Christmas Carol. Though Britt had directed stage shows in the 2000s while attending the University of Central Florida, he first directed for Theatre Charlotte with the 2024 presentation of Dickens’ same perennial holiday favorite.

Britt recalls Timmons approaching him about directing the The Flick that December as he worked on A Christmas Carol. In an instance of serendipitous timing, Britt had gone to New York the previous week, where he visited a theatrical book store and picked up a copy of the script.

“It was on my list, partially because I love movies,” says Britt, who studied film directing at UCF and worked at a movie theater when he was in high school.

“My time working there was never as dramatic as some of the folks’ stories that we’re going to be telling on stage for The Flick,” he continues. “[But] I was interested in merging different elements of things I had seen and experienced myself into a show that would be cool to produce in a unique way.”

Realistic language and pertinent pauses

Playwright Baker’s writing was another factor in choosing to produce The Flick, particularly her natural dialogue conveying honesty, humanity and integrity.

“Baker’s writing is just so real,” Timmons says. “This is really a slice of life; we’re just observers of what’s happening in that room.”

Just as powerful as the play’s use of recognizable dialogue to captivate audiences is its mastery of silence. The Flick is (in)famous for its long, uncomfortable pauses. Much of the performers’ acting takes place in these surprisingly meaningful and active pauses.

In fact, Baker’s scripted stage directions include instructions like, “A happy pause in which they realize they’ve broken the tension, and then an awkward pause following that happy pause.”

All these pregnant pauses plus the play’s natural pace means The Flick is a fairly long show. Theatre Charlotte’s production will run approximately two and a half hours long with an intermission in the middle.

James Wolcott, who reviewed the show in 2015 for Vanity Fair, noted that the play’s glacial approach and beyond Pinter-esque pauses caused a significant segment of the audience to walk out. Britt, however, believes Charlotte audiences will stay put.

“As much as there are pauses and these awkward moments, the story progresses,” Britt says. “There is something compelling happening in every scene.”

Relationships form among the three main characters and an interesting dynamic develops. The play may feel casual but it tackles relatable and sometimes heavy topics.

One theme The Flick deals with is work relationships in which people interact in spaces where they’re economically forced to be, and forge connections with people they would not normally meet or befriend. How often do people connect with work friends and then never see them again after they leave a job?

“[The Flick] allows you to sit in the uncomfortableness of what it’s like to make new friends,” Britt offers, noting that the play authentically deals with mental health issues.

“My family, like many other families, has dealt with mental health struggles throughout our lives,” he says. “It’s compelling to see not just how a character deals with it but how and when a character chooses to share their mental health journey with people around them — because often, so much of mental health is carried in silence.”

Timmons adds, “A big thing that we hear from mental health professionals is that it’s important to talk about it. We’re showing here that it’s okay to do that.”

He believes theatre has been a catalyst for change, so conveying relatable messages and highlighting meaningful themes has always been part of its brief.

“As theatre producers, I think it’s important that we are challenging ourselves and our audiences,” Timmons says.

A large part of the play’s power derives from the fact that it doesn’t moralize about its themes.

“Oftentimes, plays will wrap things up in a nice bow,” Britt says. “They’ve got a ‘This is the moral of the story’ moment from the protagonist. This show doesn’t have that.”

The crew that cleans the seats

The Flick is a play about movie theater employees that holds part of its run in an actual cinema, so it’s fitting that Britt employs film terms to describe its plot.

“There’s an A plot and a B plot,” he says. The A plot follows new employee Avery as he interacts with the theater’s staff and begins to build relationships. The B plot underscores these relationships because the theater the characters clean is one of the last houses screening movies on 35-mm film. The business is soon switching to digital and, when that happens, they’ll all be out of a job.

With a show that relies so much on the real people it portrays, casting is crucial. Theatre Charlotte held several auditions for this show and briefly considered casting it twice, with a different set of players for each venue.
Britt says the process was more like casting a film than a stage show.

“When I was watching auditions, I spent a lot more time watching people’s eyes than watching their mannerisms,” Britt says. “[I was] trying to see what they were feeling, because I think that’s what we’re trying to capture in this show.”

At the end of the day, the actors that jumped out, the ones eventually cast for the show, were those that felt the most realistic.

“It felt like we were watching them not as characters but as people,” Timmons says. “They weren’t actors performing a scene from a show.”

John Felipe plays Avery, the newbie film geek who struggles with his mental health. Destiney Wolfe, named Best Actress in Queen City Nerve’s 2025 Best in the Nest issue, portrays the prickly Rose, an unattainable projectionist who unapologetically speaks her mind. Aedan Coughlin plays Sam, a 35-year-old man unhappy with what he’s done with his life. Grayson Nauta plays a fourth character in the show named Skylar.

Britt has enjoyed watching the actors casually talking between scenes in rehearsal, finding themselves in their characters.

“Each of them has found something true about the character by themselves,” Britt says. “Obviously, every actor finds something real about a character they’re playing. But this isn’t a Shakespearean show with a villain, a hero and a love interest. Instead, these are real people with some real flaws.”

The Flick can also be seen as an ode to movie lovers and film culture. The joys of watching a film on the big screen, seated among an audience, come up in The Flick in response to Avery’s revelation that he’s only seen his favorite movie on a laptop.

It’s a sign of the times in the era of Netflix that irks true cinephiles like Avery’s coworkers.

Despite their love for the movies, Timmons and Britt prefer live theatre.

“[Theatre] is something you can’t replicate; anything can happen,” Timmons says “There’s that energy you get from being around people in the audience next to you [and] from the raw emotions that people bring out on stage. There’s no second take. They don’t get to film that scene again.”

“I think the best theatrical movie experiences are great, because they remind you of live theater experiences — moments when you hear a collective cry or gasp from the audience,” Britt says.

He believes our wish to experience those moments is the reason people go to movies, but it’s also the reason to go see theatrical productions like The Flick.

“[The Flick] doesn’t feel like you’re watching somebody present a play to you,” Britt maintains. “It feels like you’re watching somebody live their life in front of you. The way this play is written and staged makes it feel true and real.”

Like its other TC Plus productions, The Flick is being mounted to bring a different audience to Theatre Charlotte. Staging half the play’s run at IPH could bring in a movie-loving crowd that normally don’t patronize plays.

Read more: Theatre Charlotte’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ Is a Clue-ful Poirot Treat (2025)

If so, Timmons hopes The Flick will spark discussions among those who come to catch it at either of its venues.

“I hope this stirs up conversations on the way home and opens up people to experience theatre,” he says. “Maybe it isn’t what they expected or what they would normally go see; I hope this is an opportunity to break down that barrier.”

Britt hopes audience members walk away with recognition and appreciation for people with lives like their own — three flawed and vulnerable people, each trying to clean up their act as they clean up the messes that others leave behind.