“When the prolific composer Stephen Sondheim passed away in the fall of 2021, I took it really hard. I was pretty depressed about it because I felt like we’d had this huge loss in our industry,” says Danae DeShazer. “I was listening to his song Finishing the Hat from the musical Sunday in the Park with George, and in the song the painter Georges Seurat is describing the process of creating art and how it’s all-encompassing and you pour your entire soul into something and look you made a hat, where there never was a hat. It felt akin to producing live theater–you put all of this work in behind the scenes, months and months of creation and meetings and post-it notes stuck on the wall for someone to come to the production, watch for 75 minutes, and leave.” For a creative like DeShazer, a veteran of the theater industry, with credits as an actor, director and choreographer, all it takes is a spark. In her case, Sondheim’s song is what led to the creation of The Hat Theater Collective, a new theatrical arts organization with a distinct placemaking point of view. 

In a region renowned for its sheer size and scale of performing arts organizations, where theater companies become cultural institutions, The Hat stands out for what it’s not trying to be: the archetype of a professional theater company, a brick-and-mortar colossus like the Asolo Repertory Theatre or Florida Studio Theatre. Instead, The Hat is an ensemble, made up of creatives from around the area, not looking to create strictly theater, but instead theatrical experiences. “We’re a collective, an ensemble, we don’t want a brick-and-mortar so to speak theater. We want to partner with other community organizations to either create original or site-specific work,” says DeShazer. “I want to be inspired by a place and then pick a piece based on that place. So we could do a modern retelling of a Greek tragedy at a Greek restaurant, or just have a unique experience at an actual location.”

Building out that idea, however, took some time. Although DeShazer had spoken about a theater collective called The Hat, with her partner, playwright Derek Brookens, she had no idea where to begin. “Around that time, I saw a posting for a program called The Startup Circle which is a program for entrepreneurs put on by Realize Bradenton and the Manatee Chamber of Commerce,” says DeShazer. “I was accepted into the program and after a nine-week course, The Hat was born.” Soon after completing the course, DeShazer was approached by the Manatee Village Historical Commission about creating a theatrical production for the park. “Spirit Voices from Old Manatee,” a living history presentation that took place in the park’s cemetery had ended in 2017—the commission was looking for a new kind of immersive experience that could help raise funding for the preservation of the park’s historical buildings. DeShazer’s new company seemed like a perfect match. “I had a meeting with Andrea Knies, who’s with the commission and also a co-owner of the Compass Rose History Company. She knew I was opening a theater company and asked if I was interested in coming up with something new for them,” says DeShazer. “So I pulled in my partner, Derek Brookens, who is an actor, playwright, multi-hat-wearing person just like myself and we really wanted to find a story to tell. Theater to me is about conflict and dialogue so Derek and I both agreed that if we were going to create a new piece inspired by local history we wanted to find the right story that had enough mystery and intrigue.”

That project gradually evolved into The Ballad of Old Manatee, a southern gothic love story based on the lives of real people. The production, which moves through Manatee Village Historical Park with each scene, tells the story of James C. Vanderripe and the lonesome grave: an intense love story based upon the real-life characters of James C. Vanderripe, his wife Sarah Lee and a conflict between James and Sarah’s father, the Reverend Edmund Lee. “If you would’ve asked me when I was going through the business program that a historical piece would’ve been the first production I did with this company, I would’ve said you’re crazy.  But the opportunity fell in my lap and I’m very much a believer of what’s meant to be will be,” says DeShazer. “I think people are craving something that’s unique, and different and immersive. They want to be immersed in something different while also being entertained and challenged and creating conversation around what’s going on in the world.”