Start of new season is not the only good news for North Fork Community Theater

The North Fork Community Theatre has a lot to celebrate these days.

The company opens its 52nd season with the award-winning “Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire on Friday. The naturalistic drama is a step in the edgy direction for the troupe. So is moving boldly into the future by signing a contract to buy the Mattituck building where nearly all of their productions have been staged.

There’s just one little catch: they still need to raise around $750,000 before they close the deal. If optimism were funds, the NFCT could start resting easy.

“It’s a treasure and it cannot close,” said Mary Motto Kalich, the NFCT fund-raising committee chair. “We have a passion to make sure the NFCT is here for future generations like it’s been in the past. Energy and enthusiasm—we’ve got it here. What a difference just believing and having faith has made.”

Boosting hope for the campaign to secure a permanent home was the news the church-landlord was willing to sell the building to the theater company. Having the option to buy the venue the company has called home for many years—instead of finding, or building, another theater space—reduced the NFCT’s fund-raising goal from around $2 million to $750,000 a few months ago.

Fund-raising began after the theater company was told they needed to vacate the building by their landlord, the Mattituck Presbyterian Church. The church had decided to sell the building when the theater company’s lease expires in August 2012. NFCT set an initial fund-raising goal of about $2 million to buy a new home. After a year, they had raised around $100,000, Ms. Kalich said, and they went back to the church and asked again to buy the building.

This time the landlord was receptive. A contract was signed this summer and the news helped bring around $30,000 to NFCT coffers. Another $720,000 must be raised by the time the lease expires in order to buy the building and parking lot and make repairs.

Discovering the company doesn’t have to find a new home isn’t the only reason the NFCT is celebrating, said Ms. Kalich. Last season was a successful one, she said, with additional productions, extended play runs and new actors welcomed into the fold. An aggressive audience outreach campaign mirrored the economic initiatives and reaped success in terms of ticket sales and geographic diversity of theatergoers, Ms. Kalich said.

“We’re ‘Building on Tradition’ by expanding our theater company and our audiences,” Ms. Kalich said, quoting the company’s new fund-raising motto. “It’s working. We’ve grown our members and our audience … We’ve having great success—which means the community sees the value of what we do and is turning out to support us.”

Part of the NFCT’s new attitude is presenting a diverse slate of plays. The summer musical for youths remains. So does traditional community theater fare like farces and proven winners. And now, contemporary dramas have been added to the lineup. Last year, the award-winning contemporary drama, “Proof” by David Auburn, drew big audiences for NFCT.

This year, the NFCT season opens with “Rabbit Hole,” another award-winning contemporary drama. Written by David Lindsay-Abaire, the deeply emotional play proffers one answer to the question: What’s your worst nightmare? For Mr. Lindsay-Abaire, it was the death of a child. The Broadway play won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize and is set to become a movie starring Nicole Kidman.

“Rabbit Hole” doesn’t lead to tragedy but begins with it. The accidental death of a preschooler has already occurred. How the family moves on is what the play portrays. The characters are overwhelmed by sadness, but hope, faith and resiliency are the real subjects.

The play captures the surprising mix of laughter with the tears that follow in the aftermath of tragedy, according to lead actor Kyle Cranston of Southampton. Mostly, it’s about hope and regaining faith that the future will be brighter, lead actress Patrice Keitt of Manhattan and the North Fork said separately.

“The play is surprisingly funny,” Ms. Keitt said. “It’s really a story about hope and how people move on with their lives after tragedy. They are trying to help each other while helping themselves.”

To create his award-winning play, Mr. Lindsay-Abaire relied on quiet understatement instead of over-the-top posturing, said director Michael Manuelian of Manhattan and Orient. The playwright’s instructions warn not to over-portray emotions, he said. To help the actors get into the right space, Mr. Manuelian led them in sense memory exercises. The goal was to tap into the agony of tragedy so that residual emotionality can be brought to the play.

Mr. Manuelian directed NFCT’s production of “Proof” last year. He is a produced playwright and a composer-lyricist who has directed and performed in theater productions across the United States.

Mounting a production of “Rabbit Hole” to launch NFCT’s season seemed an appropriate choice, as it mirrors the theater company’s optimism in rallying to meet the challenges that the future holds.

“How telling that NFCT opens its season with the East End premiere of this contemporary new play by one of our country’s most important young playwrights,” Mr. Manuelian said. “And—when ticket sales are so vital to the NFCT’s efforts to buy its ‘home’—how brave to continue expanding its more recent repertoire of wonderful musical comedies and lighter works.”

“Rabbit Hole” opens Friday, November 6, at 8 p.m. A free opening night reception and fund-raising kickoff begins at 7 p.m. Performances continue weekends through November 22. Shows begin at 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and at 2:30 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $15. For reservations, to make donations or for more information, visit www.nfct.com. Tickets can also be purchased by calling 631-298-NFCT.