I had to share this great article by Erick Trickey from “Experience” magazine – “The New Life of a Dying Mall.”

In his article, Mr. Trickey wrote about various attempts to resurrect failing malls across America. He highlights Best Medicine Rep Theater Company as a creative example of a company that is finding new ways to inject life into the (staid) mall scene through the introduction of live theater.

Best Medicine Rep is a Maryland-based theater company that recently produced my historical farce “Philosophus” at their storefront venue in Lakeforest Mall in Gaithersburg, Maryland (February, 2019). Mr. Trickey happened to be researching his piece while “Philosophus” was being performed by Best Medicine and he mentions the show a few times in his article.

Below are some excerpts from the article that mention “Philosophus”:

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John Morogiello has seen his plays staged off-Broadway in New York, in Los Angeles, in Louisville, even in Vienna. But he rarely got to debut his own work in his home state of Maryland, until he opened a theater space in an ailing shopping mall.

Now, Morogiello’s all-comedy theater company, Best Medicine Rep, stages several productions and readings a year — his own plays and many others’ — at Lakeforest Mall in Gaithersburg, Maryland, 16 miles northwest of Washington, D.C. Best Medicine’s storefront is on Lakeforest’s second floor, next to the Sears. “Performance in Progress: Please be quiet,” reads a sign on a stand — meant to warn the driver of the kiddie train, which carries children and parents past the theater, not to blow the whistle.

One Saturday afternoon, beyond a flame-retardant curtain that absorbs some of the mall noise, 45 people fill the seats around a small stage. A blue-eyed actor with impish comic timing is playing the French philosopher Voltaire, in an historical play that one audience member later calls a “Voltairean sex farce.”

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Since it started staging plays at Lakeforest Mall, Best Medicine Rep’s audience has grown from Gaithersburg locals to new fans from around the Washington, D.C. region. Newcomers often cite a D.C. theater critic’s favorable review of Morogiello’s play “Engaging Shaw” this past fall. The play about Voltaire, “Philosophus,” by Connecticut writer Colin Speer Crowley, has likewise been well-reviewed. Best Medicine is a professional theater company — it pays its actors, directors, and playwrights — and attracts talent from around the region. The lead actor in “Philosophus,” Terence Aselford, is a 30-year veteran of the D.C. theater scene.

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Meanwhile, Best Medicine is bringing new traffic to Lakeforest. Ruby Tuesday, the last remaining restaurant at the mall, does great business on theater nights, Morogiello says. Actors not only drink at the mall; they shop before and after rehearsals. “A lot of shopping centers would do well to add something like this,” Morogiello says. He’s happy to bring traffic, and a new gathering place, to his hometown mall.

“What I love about malls is that they always were community centers,” says Morogiello. “It was always a place where you would see your friends, in the old days. You would see your parents and other people from the community hanging out and shopping.” It’s a good fit for Best Medicine Rep, he says, since it aims to build a community through shared laughter. “I feel that we feed into that old-school mall mentality of bringing joy to people,” he says. “It’s just a matter of getting other people to buy into the joy.”

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You can read the full article here – it’s a great read!