PORTLAND, Oregon -- It's the second day of tech week, and director Adam Rosko is standing in Cathedral Park, watching half a dozen actors go through the paces of a carefully choreographed fight scene. Dress rehearsals begin later this week, so most of the cast is in t-shirts and jeans (and one kilt), although a few actors have tugged on their costume boots and trousers. They're preparing to perform a classic, but it's not Shakespeare--instead, for the last four summers, the Atomic Arts theater company has specialized in free, open-air performances of original-series *Star Trek *episodes.
Over that time,* *Trek in the Park has moved from performing in the round and tiny Woodlawn park to the larger Cathedral Park amphitheater (where the walls are now painted with the Enterprise's serial number, NCC-1701), inspired a city mayor to declare July as *Star Trek *Month, appeared in an episode of Portlandia, and been profiled everywhere from NPR to CBS. These days, the audience camps out for hours before shows, and getting a really good spot on Cathedral Park's sloping lawn requires a day-long commitment.
Trek in the Park is the brainchild of siblings and Atomic Arts co-founders Adam and Amy Rosko; Adam not only directs but plays Captain Kirk, while Amy produces and handles the technical end of things: props, costumes, permits. "We wanted to do a show that we wanted to see," Adam told WIRED. "Jesse [Graff], who plays Spock, and I had [performed] in Shakespeare in the Park, and had a lot of fun doing it. So [Amy and I] decided we wanted to do something outdoors, and we wanted it to be free to the public and all-ages appropriate."
The hard part was figuring out what. Musicals would be too expensive and technically demanding, and Shakespeare, while reliable, wasn't really the new-and-different approach they had in mind. Finally, they hit on the idea of adapting original-series Star Trek episodes. "We pulled up the scene [from 'Amok Time'] where Kirk and Spock fight on YouTube," said Adam. "And we were like, 'Oh my God, this is perfect.'"
Both Roskos were already involved in the local theater community and quickly tapped friends to act and build sets. Their mom sewed the Starfleet uniforms; Amy scrounged prop components from the dollar store, said Adam. Actors double as crew, carrying their chairs and consoles on and off the stage with them; more cinematic effects like the transporter are bypassed with clever staging--a minimalist aesthetic that felt in line with other outdoor productions.
After their "Amok Time" debut in 2009, Atomic Arts returned the following year with a performance of the episode "Space Seed," which introduced the villain Khan Noonien Singh, then the universe-hopping "Mirror, Mirror," and last year, the murder mystery "Journey to Babel." Now, they're ending their actual five-year mission with one of the most iconic and beloved episodes: "The Trouble with Tribbles."
It's been a long time coming. The plan was always to end with this episode, says Adam, and the cast and crew--along with friends, family, and a legion of dedicated fans--have spent the last year building sets, sewing costumes, and sewing thousands and thousands of tribble props for their big finale.
"We've always tried to have a very restrained, analog approach. We try not to overcomplicate the props--they're big, but they're not complicated ... There's been live Star Trek theater [before], but never with this approach--never outside, never for free, and never doing it absolutely straight. I haven't encountered a single other live Star Trek event that didn't add things to make it hokey, or at least point at how silly it is. Ours is, I think, one of the first to really just try to present it as any other play that you would go see. I think that's what the audience really responds to ... looking at it as very matter-of-fact."
It's an approach that works, if the audience is any measure. The show has attracted a mix of people who range from hardcore Trekkies that love nitpicking details to casual fans and even young kids who have never seen an episode of Star Trek. "Sometimes, this is their first exposure to the whole thing, and through that, they've become fans of the franchise," said Adam.
The popularity of the franchise--and its characters and actors--is one of the biggest challenges for the cast. "As an actor, you don't often get to play a character who's so well-known and so beloved," said Graff. "There are so many different ways to do Shakespeare. One person's Hamlet, one person's Macbeth can be so wildly different, and there's not really one version we have in their heads. But Spock--everyone knows who Spock is. Even non-Trekkies mostly know who Spock is."
For Graff, the key lies in finding a balance between the performance audiences expect and the one he wants to give: "It's exciting, humbling, and always a challenge to do it [so] the fans are still going to like it, and to respect what Nimoy did. But at the same time, not just to imitate him, and to make it so my Spock is somehow his own thing."
Graff started out as a casual Trek fan--he watched occasional Next Generation reruns as a kid, but not much more--but that's changed over the course of Trek in the Park. "In the last five years, I've definitely gone off the deep end as far as being a nerd goes," Graff told WIRED. Now, he sports a tattoo of Leonard Nimoy's signature on one arm; he's saving the other, he says, for Zachary Quinto.
Trek in the Park was always intended as a five-year mission, and it's hard to imagine another production filling its Starfleet-regulation boots. As for what's next for Atomic Arts, Adam Rosko is reluctant to commit. "We're not fools," he told WIRED. "Everyone wants us to come back with something right away, but after something like Trek in the Park, and how big it's gotten, we know we have to deliver something as special if not more. We want to give people what they're not expecting. We want to make something of our own creation and design, and that takes time, but it will come. In the programs, there's a promise that Atomic Arts will return, and I'm not going to break it."
