Theatre Company Thrives Thanks to Brooklyn College Alumni Network

Nearly ten years ago, four Brooklyn College theater students were frustrated. They wanted to work on plays that spoke to the kinds of issues they cared about and most important, says Francisco Solorzano, '00, they wanted to work in front of an audience.

"I never got cast in any of Brooklyn College's Main Stage productions, so I started thinking about ways to create my own work," Solorzano says.

Together with his future wife, Victoria Malvagno, and friends Michael LoPorto and Nicole Haran—all Brooklyn College theater students—they founded the Barefoot Theatre Company.

They hooked up with a Brooklyn College theater management student, Eric Nightengale, who is now a member of the theater company’s board. He had connections with the 78th Street Theatre Lab, where the company staged many of its early productions. The company’s name was actually inspired by Nightengale, a free spirit who would always walk around barefoot.

"The name also speaks to the bareness of our resources when we started because we had no money," says Malvagno, who graduated from the M.F.A. program in 1999.

But who needs money when you’ve got a long list of alumni you can work with? The company pulled in Stephen Gracia, who completed his M.F.A. in 2002 and now works in the College’s Scholarship Office, to pen plays, and many of the actors (including LoPorto’s wife) have been alumni.

Tom Bullard, chairperson of the graduate theater program, says he has always encouraged his students to draw on each other. "I’ve always tried to instill in them the importance of working with and supporting each other, and I think that what they are doing with Barefoot is a very important model for other students to see," he says, adding that he’s been impressed by the longevity of the company. "Many students try to get something like that started after they graduate, but for them to still be around ten years later is impressive."

In that decade, Barefoot has put on more than thirty stage productions and has received gushing reviews from critics, including those at the New York Times and the Boston Globe, which called it "a company to notice in New York."

As for their future, the group is very clear about where they want to go.

"We started out just looking to create work for ourselves," says Solorzano. "And we’ve experienced a lot of individual growth. Our next step is to try to support new work. We don’t want to just produce stuff that has already been done."

LoPorto, who also currently works in the College’s Academic Advisement Office, adds that "a big part of our mission now is working with emerging playwrights and offering our support."