48.0°,
Light Rain Lancelot Theobald debuts ‘Relationships’ on Broadway
Despite being moody and depressed during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, Lancelot Theobald Jr., of Brooklyn, found a productive way to stay busy.
“It’s my best production, and my best work so far,” Theobald said of the play “Relationships,” which debuted at the Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center on Broadway on Nov. 18.
Theobald is an actor, athlete, producer, and a winner Man of Distinction Humanitarian Award of CBS Radio People of Distinction from Brooklyn who now lives on the border of Hempstead and Baldwin. He produced “Relationships,” three one-act plays about the funny, sad and powerful moments people experience while dating, falling in love, sharing lives with others who still surprise them after years of being together, and breaking up.
Theobald collaborated on the play with his cousin Marc Theobald, a writer for the TBS series “The Last O.G.”
Marc, a stand-up comedian as well as a writer, said that Lancelot had been watching his writing career since they were young, and asked Marc to advise him in the creation of “Relationships” which would star Lancelot and Angela Rostick, a fellow actress for the film “Eddie,” currently showing on Amazon Prime.
Marc said that Lancelot was impressed by his directing skills, and asked him to direct his play in early 2020.
“At the time, we were coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, and I had nothing else to do,” Marc recalled.
“So I said, yeah, let’s do it.”
Marc said he accepted the gig because he felt it would be a fun challenge to direct a live production, where cuts and edits can’t be made on stage, and to work with the script.
Lancelot began working on the play with actress Angela Rostick on Zoom twice a week. Rostick, a member of Open End Repertory Theatre, formerly known as the American Ensemble Theatre, had appeared in Eugene O’Neill’s “Before Breakfast” and “Poof,” by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and screenwriter Lynn Nottage.
The pair quickly adjusted to the new way of communicating and rehearsing, eventually creating a collection of moments shared between men and woman.
Theobald describes himself as an athlete first and foremost.
He said he played football in the Brooklyn Hurricanes youth football program and for the University of Maine, but discovered a love for the arts, first as a dancer.
He auditioned at the Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center in Queens in 1997, and was accepted with a full scholarship to study ballet, jazz, modern, and tap dancing.
After he graduated in 2001, he acted in plays including Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Anna Christie” and David Ives’s “The Philadelphia.” Theobald also created Momz-N-Da Hood, a globally know group of break-dancing mothers in their 40s and 50s. He is a director and choreographer for the group.
“I was depressed, I wasn’t sleeping a lot, because I was locked down,” Theobald recalled of the pandemic, adding, of Rostick and other acting friends, “So we got on Zoom and started picking plays out of books and reading to each other.”
And he noticed a theme: All the plays he read were about relationships.
This sparked an idea for a production of three one-act plays about the different stages of relationships. The first act is about meeting someone, and all the feelings and wonders that entails.
The second act is about a couple that suffers from drug addiction but is still in love, and learning to accept each other’s struggles and flaws. The third act details the tribulations of a long and unstable marriage.
“Everybody has met someone for the first time, everybody knows somebody with a drug issue, and everyone has known someone for a long time or couples that are married,” Theobald said.
He said he found it “beautiful” that during the negativity of the pandemic, he was able to create “Relationships.” “We can’t control being locked in the house, or the pandemic,” he said. “But we can get on Zoom and read plays, for the sake of reading them, and produce something great.”
He took on other pandemic accomplishments while producing his play. He did 75,000 pushups in a year, from May 31, 2020, to June 4, 2021, and raised over $14,000 for Bethany House and raised $10,800 the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending mass incarceration.
He is a member of Bethany House's board of directors, a homeless shelter for women and women with children.
Since “Relationships” debuted, Theobald said he is considering future performances of the play after receiving feedback and support on his current show.
He said he would speak with his cast and crew about the possibility of a future performance.
