Chyro Art's 'theater people' pull it together at last minute

Less than three weeks before its grand opening, the Chyro Arts Venue in south Scottsdale was in disarray bordering on disaster.

The 2,200-square-foot space had been gutted: electrical wiring hanging from the ceiling, chunks of drywall mounded in a corner, concrete underfoot still sticky from the flooring that had been pulled up. A dirty crowbar propped open the door.

“We’re still in the demolition phase,” said Michael Peck, 26, the actor and technical director who’s been doing much of the deconstruction in the Papago Park strip mall storefront.

With Friday evening’s grand opening looming, any other business owners — say, the people who ran the acupuncture clinic whose sign still hangs above the storefront — would have reason to be worried.

But not the foursome behind Chyro. They’re theater people. They’re used to pulling things together at the last minute.

Come opening night, when performing musicians, slam poets and visual artists will christen the space, Chyro should have all the amenities of a working theater: stage, lighting and sound, and seating for 50 to 60 people on an array of mismatched sofas.

And the venue’s organizers — a group largely culled from the ashes of the ragtag but award-winning Is What It Is Theatre — will have made a dream come true, of finally having their own performance space, a place for other artists to perform, where, hopefully, new audiences could be introduced to compelling work. (In other words, they will have built a smaller, down-market version of the many arts centers sprouting up in cities across the Valley.)

It’s the kind of dream artsy kids tend to concoct in high school drama class, imagining running a place where bands and artists, poets and actors, filmmakers — you name it — could legitimately ply their trade.

And there was a youthful energy as Peck, along with fellow Chyro organizers Tom Leveen, 32, and wife Joy Leveen, 25, guided a visitor through the space still under construction; here’s where the stage will be, the green room for the actors, a kitchen where they want to serve espresso and snacks.

But the trio, along with actress Amanda Nichols-Rose, 28, hatched its plan less out of youthful brio than a jaded past.

Tom Leveen launched Is What It Is Theatre 12 years ago, with a stage in his parents’ back yard in Scottsdale. Over subsequent seasons, while staging often solid work, the company jumped from a museum to a dance studio to a charter school; they were inadvertently evicted from the last two rented venues. An eviction last year — on the eve of a production of the play “Proof,” starring Nichols-Rose — uprooted the company and forced it to play its show just one weekend at Fountain Hills Community Theater. (It was a wonderfully moving show, critically applauded, but it was still a financial loser for the troupe.)

That’s when Leveen decided it was time to call it quits.

“We were fairly certain that we were just done,” Peck said.

But then, sitting in the back of Leveen’s pickup truck, they all got to talking. High school dreaming. Theater nerds, for the uninitiated, are hard to keep down.

“What the hell else are we going to do?” Peck said, laughing.

According to organizers, the difference between Is What It Is and Chyro — the latter a misspelling of the Greek letters “chi” and “rho,” a reference to Jesus Christ that Leveen says has the added benefit of being “infinitely more Google-able than 'Is What It Is’ — is nonprofit status.

Is What It Is was unable to get 501(c)(3) status; it had existed for far too long without keeping good financial records. Chyro, meanwhile, made not-for-profit status one of its first priorities. Thanks to the tax-deductable contributions that followed, Chyro was able to raise enough money to lease the strip mall space.

The Chyro organizers are looking forward to a season that includes slam poetry by the Mesa-based Anthology, Inc. slam poetry organization (which itself endured venue-juggling when several Valley coffeehouses closed their doors) and a theatrical lineup that includes the Leonard Gershe play “Butterflies Are Free” (Oct. 18-Nov. 10) and Patrick Marber’s “Closer” (March 6-29).

Up first, though, is a stage adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451.” Leveen had been promising that show to Is What It Is audiences, then postponing it, for the company’s lifespan.

Finally getting to produce it, Leveen said, would mean a lot.

Glancing around the gutted venue, he smiled.

“I think it’ll work,” he said.

Chyro Arts Venue

What: Grand opening, with music by Obadiah Parker and slam poetry by Anthology Inc.

When: 7 p.m. Friday, June 29

Where: 1330 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale

Cost: Free

Details: chyro.org