The Sarasota Theatre That Rehearses on the Bayfront

The company is called Tidewater, and it rehearses, weather permitting, on a stretch of grass just south of the Van Wezel. There are no walls, no wings, and no stage manager in the traditional sense; the stage manager is a woman named Ines Ferro who carries a folding chair and a whistle. The whistle is used, mostly, to negotiate with the seagulls.

The seagulls are, at this point in the company's history, a permanent feature of every performance. They cry, they interrupt, they occasionally settle on the shoulder of an actor who is trying to deliver a monologue. Tidewater's artistic director, a man named Curtis Lark, has decided that this is not a bug but a feature. 'The seagulls,' he told me, 'have as much right to the bayfront as we do. If they have notes on the scene, we listen.'