It could be argued that it was against all (or most) odds that a
professional-quality Shakespeare festival could blossom in a community
midway between Chicago and St. Louis. But a few bold dreamers from Illinois
State University and the Bloomington-Normal community put the pieces
together, and the 30th anniversary season of the Illinois Shakespeare
Festival will begin June 27 at the Theatre at Ewing Manor in Bloomington.
Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V and Love s Labour s Lost will be performed in revolving repertory through Aug. 12.
Tickets are available at the festival box office in the Center for the Performing Arts on campus from noon to 5 p.m. weekdays, by phone at (309) 438-2535 or on line at www.thefestival.org Beginning June 25, the box office will be open seven days a week. The performance evening box office, located off the Ewing Manor courtyard, will be open at 6:30 on performance evenings.
Directing this summer s productions are new ISF artistic director Alec Wild ( Henry V ), ISU Associate Professor Debbie Alley ( Much Ado About Nothing ) and Stephen Fried ( Love s Labour s Lost ), resident assistant director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.
Some advertisers in the festival s first year program are gone. The Brack Shop, Thornton Motors, Paintin Place and The Lorient restaurant are no more. Some of the first-festival actors, however, are still thriving. Alumni Gary Cole and Tom Irwin, Tim Russ and William Peterson continue to work in television and motion pictures. First-festival director Dennis Zacek is artistic director of the acclaimed Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago.
Only three of this year s 21-member acting company have performed here before. The festival veteran of the trio, ironically, is also the youngest company member. Nathan Stark, a senior at Normal Community High School West, will be in his fourth Illinois Shakespeare Festival. His debut, at age 4, was in A Midsummer Night s Dream. Two years ago he played Macduff s son in Macbeth, a production whose cast also included his mother, acting faculty member Lori Adams. Nathan s father, scenic design professor John Stark, designed this season s Much Ado About Nothing.
ISU senior Ross Frawley of Elgin and University of Illinois theatre professor Henson Keys return this summer after Frawley s first season last summer and Keys in 2003. Frawley has acted in six Illinois State theatre productions and directed two. Keys, chair of acting at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, has been an actor or director in more than 120 productions in New York and in regional companies throughout the country. Going into this summer s festival, Keys has appeared in 29 Shakespearean productions.
Among the newcomers to this summer s acting company is Eddie Collins, a San Antonio, Texas native who grew up in New Orleans, and the festival s second annual John Stevens Equity Actor. Stevens, a Bloomington attorney who died in 2000, and his wife, Nancy, were among the festival s early and enthusiastic supporters. The John Stevens Memorial Golf Outing, established in 2001, has raised funds in support of the festival, and last year the decision was made to use those proceeds to fund a festival Equity actor.
Collins is a graduate of the University of Virginia and of Wayne State University s Hilberry Theatre. This summer he will play the title role in King Henry V, Don John in Much Ado About Nothing and Berowne in Love s Labour s Lost.
He is a native of San Antonio, Texas, and most recently has been working in American Players Theatre and Milwaukee Repertory Theatre in Wisconsin.
Other newcomers to the Shakespeare festival are Elizabeth Audley of Philadelphia, a recent master of fine arts degree graduate of Ohio University s Professional Actor Training Program; Hannah Wolfe of Baton Rouge, La., who received her bachelor of fine arts degree in acting from Webster Conservatory in St. Louis; Chicagoan Jeremy Van Meter, an MFA graduate of the University of Iowa; and actor-director and teacher Matt Daniels, a 1996 Juilliard School drama graduate.
Mark Hines of San Jose, Calif., Ed Swidey of Newark, Del., and Kelsey Nash, each of whom just received their MFA degrees from the Professional Theatre Training Program at the University of Delaware.
Crystal Finn of Grass Valley, Calif. And Emily Young, both of whom just received their MFA degrees from Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium in Providence, R.I.; Elizabeth Larson of Kansas City, Mo., a third-year MFA student at Brown/Trinity; and New York actor Christopher Oden, an MFA graduate of the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.
Christopher Hirsh of Corvallis, Ore., is entering his third year as an MFA student at the University of Connecticut; Evan Fuller has a B.A. degree in theatre from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Shawn Wilson of Quincy, Ill., studied at Millikin, Western Illinois and at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Melanie Kibbler, a junior theatre major at Illinois State from Vernon Hills; senior ISU theatre major Shannon Reilly of Western Springs; and University of Illinois senior BFA student Adam Shalzi of Park Ridge round out the acting company.
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