PURE Theatre: Episode 1 from Dan Conover on Vimeo.

I met the founders of PURE Theatre about four years ago through a newspaper assignment and I’ve been an admirer of their work ever since. They’ve got four plays in this year’s Piccolo Festival (Eurydice, Vaud Rats, The Tragedian, and Cloud Tectonics), and that’s a lot for any small company, but there’s one thing that makes that number even more remarkable: PURE Theatre no longer has a theater.

I bumped into Rodney Lee Rogers outside the Gaillard a week ago and asked him how they were handling the logistics of running a homeless theater company with a busy schedule… on top of running an enormous family (Rogers is married to PURE co-founder Sharon Graci, and they have two young children in addition to her three teenagers from a previous marriage). One thing led to another, and on Tuesday I showed up on James Island a little after 8:30 to begin following Rodney and Sharon through their day.

It’s a glimpse of what it means to make demanding professional theater work in a small market, but it’s also a fairly funny glimpse at a talented family that’s adapted to an unusual life on the run.