On Aug. 1, just before the season’s final performance of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” members of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival will get together to hold a brief, public groundbreaking ceremony for their new $1.6 million outdoor theater.
The next day, the bulldozers will move in, and the festival’s 360-seat “temporary” structure, erected in 1978, will be torn down to make way for the new 425-seat facility.
As before, the theater will be on the spacious grounds of Ewing Manor, an estate owned by Illinois State University Foundation. And also as before, the Tudor-style stone-and-timbered facade of the theater will reflect the stone in the nearby Manor house. But this time, instead of metal folding chairs, the theater will have more comfortable stadium-style seats for its customers; and there will be improved dressing rooms and up-to-speed sound and lighting equipment for the theater’s actors, designers and technicians.
The new theater marks another step forward in the ISF’s progress toward professionalism. Since its inception, it has been both a prime training ground for ISU theater students and a prominent attraction for residents of the Bloomington-Normal area; but with the arrival of Calvin MacLean as artistic director in 1995 and Fergus G. “Tad” Currie as managing director two years ago, the emphasis has been on boosting the festival to state-wide and eventually national recognition.
ISU, which is the alma mater of several members of Steppenwolf Theater, has the largest theater program of any state university in Illinois. The festival was started by university staff members, and it still has close ties to ISU. It receives financial support from the university; and its two chief executives have important teaching jobs at ISU. Currie, former Central Regional Director of Actors’ Equity Association in Chicago, is chairman of the theater department, and MacLean, whose work with Famous Door Theatre in Chicago has won him several awards, is head of the department’s directing program.
This season’s company of 25 actors includes several theater students; but MacLean, who says he spends several months each year scouting talent from around the country, in recent years has added Equity (professional) actors to the mix. This year there are seven such actors, most of them drawn from the Chicago theater community MacLean knows well. In the broadly comic “Merry Wives,” for example, Michael McAlister, a hearty Sir John Falstaff, and Frank Nall, the maddeningly jealous husband Mr. Ford, are actors with extensive Chicago credits.
MacLean, who usually directs one of the summer’s three productions in rotating repertory and whose wife Rebecca is a featured festival actress, this year is staging John O’Keeffe’s 18th Century comedy “Wild Oats.” Karen Sheridan, “Wives”‘ director, is a former Chicago actress now teaching in Michigan; and Patrick O’Gara, director of a brisk, compelling “Richard III,” is a former artistic director of the Oak Park Theatre Festival.
The mix of students with more mature, professional actors is a tricky business. Union rehearsal rules have to be applied for Equity actors, which means juggling a complex rehearsal schedule. The quality of performances also ranges from eager immaturity to solid professionalism.
Still, the combination seems to work. “Wives” speeds along as a fast-paced comic adventure, with Nall in high gear as the furious, frustrated Ford; and O’Gara’s “Richard III,” cast well in depth, has a fascinating portrayal of the title character by the young actor Jay Whittaker. Fairly quivering with feral energy, Whittaker, a smirk on his white face, plays the famous hunchback as a darkly comic villain, rather like Jim Carrey up to deadly tricks.
Beyond the action on its outdoor thrust stage, the festival offers a pre-curtain green show with musicians and madrigal singers, plus a comic mini-play attuned to the evening’s play. On “Richard III” nights, for example, student actors offer a hilarious, interactive 10-minute survey of English history, from Richard II to Richard III, written and directed by William Jenkins, a recent graduate of the MFA directing program at ISU.
In the manor courtyard are concession stands, a gift shop and a small museum showing costumes, props and photos from past productions. On Sunday nights, MacLean leads audience “talk-back” discussions after the performance; and on Mondays, an off night for theater, there are concerts presented by the ISU music department. The gardens of the manor have a smooth greensward suitable for picnic dining before the show.
It’s a pleasant outdoor theater experience, interrupted only by the occasional rainy evening, when performances have to be moved from the Ewing Manor site to a nearby indoor theater.
Illinois Shakespeare Festival is not yet a major league operation. It produces its June and July schedule of three plays on a modest budget of $500,000, with help from ISU, the Illinois Arts Council and individual donors, as well as a grant from State Farm Insurance, the area’s biggest employer. It’s considerably more than a training ground and an amateur operation, however. Its costume designers produce an array of richly detailed costumes for each show, and the scenic designers expertly move the scene on the thrust stage from the airy courtyard of “Merry Wives” to the dark castle of “Richard III.”
MacLean looks forward to the day when the festival will attract larger audiences from a wider geographical area. The new theater, which Currie hopes will be ready for the summer of 2000, is part of that plan.
Otherwise, MacLean’s goal is simple: “I just hope to present plays I like to do, using people I want to work with.”
GETTING TO THE FESTIVAL
The Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Bloomington is about 140 miles from Chicago, roughly a 2 1/2-hour drive straight down on Interstate 55, not counting delays caused by this summer’s construction work on the highway. Amtrak (1-800-872-7245) also runs daily trains between Chicago and Bloomington, and there are plane and bus services as well. The Bloomington-Normal area has several motels for overnight stays.
The season of three plays, presented in rotating repertory, runs through Aug. 1. Evening performances are Tuesday through Sunday, with a matinee on Saturday. Schedules are arranged so that visitors can see all three plays on a weekend visit. Single ticket prices range from $9 to $24.
Tickets can be ordered by mail (Illinois Shakespeare Festival Box Office, Campus Box 5700, Normal, IL. 61790-5700), by fax (309-438-7214; include credit card information) or by e-mail (shake@oratmail.cfa.ilstu.edu).
The festival maintains an excellent website — orathost.cfa.ilstu.edu/isf.html — which gives detailed information, including performance times, transportation options and directions on how to reach the theater.
