When it comes to trumpeting Karen Wilberg’s successes, plenty of people in Des Plaines are willing to toot her horn. As artistic director of Stage One Productions, music director at the Willows Academy in Des Plaines and member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Chorus, Wilberg wears multiple hats and receives many accolades.
Students and parents with whom she has worked call her, “a gem,” “our treasure” and “an amazing person from everybody’s standpoint.”
Since 1989, Wilberg has been sharing her talents with the area and has made noteworthy differences in children’s lives. And that’s noteworthy, as in musical notes, as well as in life-changing transformations.
But Wilberg herself is far less effusive. Stage One Productions, which Wilberg founded 11 years ago, has introduced hundreds of children and teens to the performing arts.
But looking back, she said, “It was just a whim. Really. Such a fluke.”
And trumpeting her own horn? Forget it. Wilberg’s trumpet has been idle for quite some time. Literally: Trumpet was Wilberg’s first college major at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Her early career plans were to be a trumpet player and band director. But Wilberg had a change of heart. To avoid having to sing in front of people for a required college course, Wilberg instead auditioned for private voice lessons. But the art of singing, it turned out, sang out to her.
“Pretty soon, I decided that directing bands might not be all that I thought it would be,” Wilberg said. “And that directing choirs might be really fun!”
Wilberg’s undergraduate study quickly switched to vocal performance and music education. Later she earned master’s degrees in choral conducting and voice from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Wilberg became a choir director. And that’s the part where lives have been changed.
Wilberg brought her love of music to young people, while at the same time bringing a few other things too, agree the students with whom she has worked; things like trust and respect.
According to Mara Healy, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, Wilberg’s encouragement made her a leader. As an incoming 6th-grader in 1997, Healy earned a role in “Guys and Dolls” during Stage One Production’s annual summer camp. But her performance was admittedly less than stellar.
“Everyone was kind of shocked, because I was very dramatic at home but when I was on stage, I was just blank,” Mara said, laughing. “I had no stage expression at all.”
The next performance, “The Wizard of Oz,” was done through the Willows Academy, a private school for girls in grades 6-12, where Healy was a pupil and Wilberg the musical director. Auditions were competitive, and when Wilberg suggested Healy consider working on the stage crew instead of vying for a role, she not only tried it — she loved it!
“I felt really important and had lots of things to do,” Healy said. By 8th-grade Healy earned the job of stage manager, a position where even the high school cast and crew had to listen to her.
“I was really shy but I got a lot of encouragement from Karen,” said Healy, who participated in about 20 shows under Wilberg’s direction before graduating from the Willows last spring. “She really helped me, not just to be a good stage manager, but to open up. She has a unique talent.
“It’s really awesome to watch the way she picks out things about people that they didn’t know they could do.”
Healy’s mother, Peggy, of Chicago, said the changes in her daughter were astounding.
“She just blossomed,” Peggy Healy said. “It totally changed Mara’s life. She was nurtured and allowed to find her niche.”
Glenview’s Barb Sunko saw similar changes in her daughter, Cammy, who became Wilberg’s lighting director.
“Karen just pulls those strengths and talents out of these girls just unbelievably,” said Sunko, principal of the Willows Academy. “Thanks to Karen, Cammy [now a DePaul University freshman] felt confident in herself, and it helped her learn about commitment and follow-through and working with other kids.
“Not to mention what Karen does in terms of the talent; what she does with the girls through theater or through the choirs she leads.”
Wilberg’s local presence dates back more than a dozen years. Wilberg arrived in Chicago nearly 14 years ago and found a job at the Willows Academy. About three years later, after talking with some students and parents, an idea was hatched.
“The kids don’t have a lot of time in the school year to do a musical, so we thought we’d offer this summer camp and see what would happen,” Wilberg said. “It was called Stage One, and we had maybe 20 kids at that camp.”
The group consisted of both boys and girls and represented eight schools. That the program still operates floors Wilberg.
“It wasn’t like, `Let’s start this theater thing, and it will go for the next 10 years,'” Wilberg said. “It was just a summer thing!”
Launching the program required resourcefulness.
“The first year we crawled around in Dumpsters finding lumber. The second year we got very lucky because there was a construction site across the street with lots of cardboard,” recalled Gay Miezin, Stage One’s director of development and set designer. “So our entire set was built from scrap lumber and cardboard and nobody knew it. We even sewed our own curtains, borrowed lights from people’s garages and built a homemade dimmer box.”
Stage One Productions began in Prospect Heights, then moved to Evanston, then to Des Plaines — first to a recreational facility, and then to its current home, a 235-seat theater, at 620 Lee St. A big step came in May 2001, when a group of investors purchased the theater building with the understanding that Stage One Productions would be one of the anchor tenants.
Miezin said, “The idea was that they would give us reasonable rent so that we could afford to stay here.”
Money is raised through ad sales for show programs, camp tuition, theater tickets and through generous donors and matching grants. Over the years, the children’s theater company has done shows like “Annie,” “The Boyfriend,” “The Sound of Music” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” But now Stage One Productions is branching into opera for kids as well. Traveling operas based on “Green Eggs and Ham,” “Bremen Town Musicians” and “Hansel and Gretel,” are currently offered for school audiences and have mostly adult casts of singers from the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
“Right now we’re working on filling out our repertoire,” said Wilberg. “I’d like that [opera] program to really expand.”
Wilberg said she is also seeking opportunities to put her young performers out in public — perhaps by doing scenes at community events or by visiting nursing and retirement homes. In addition, she has begun offering after-school workshops to help Brownie and Girl Scout groups work on projects with help from her theater students. Although months away, Wilberg is also looking ahead to next summer’s Stage One summer camp; now only in the planning stages.
But whatever Wilberg accomplishes with her students in the years ahead, she said she will stick with a personal philosophy that has worked so far.
“My objective is not to be one of those theaters where it’s all about perfection,” Wilberg said. “We want our shows to be the best that they can be, of course, but the process and what they learn is very important.”
“It’s not that we want to give an absolutely Broadway product at all costs. We really want to teach kids to feel like he or she had a good experience along the way.”
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Name: Karen Wilberg.
Title: Artistic director, Stage One Productions, Des Plaines; also, fine arts department chair, the Willows Academy, Des Plaines; and member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Chorus.
Years in field: 17.
Education: Bachelor’s in vocal performance and music, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; master’s in choral conducting, Cleveland Institute of Music; master’s in vocal performance, Cleveland Institute of Music.
Recent accomplishment: Winner of 2003 Community Enhancement Recognition Award, presented by the Des Plaines Chamber of Commerce and Industry, for Wilberg’s not-for-profit children’s theater and the group’s expansion into opera.
Reflections on winning: “We’re fortunate to have all of my colleagues so enthusiastic about this program, which has allowed it to take off in such a big hurry.”
