The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
College’s theater program growing
Classic plays, new spaces in progress
Oberlin is having a theater season of comedy and tragedy, history and farce, and lots of rehearsal and construction.
The Oberlin Summer Theater Festival is entering its 10th round of free stage plays, featuring American classics, family friendly shows and the works of William Shakespeare, at Hall Auditorium, 67 N. Main St. in Oberlin.
It’s the middle act of a three-part plan to refresh an established Oberlin College Theater Department and continue making shows accessible for everyone.
The renovated Little Theater was finished earlier this year and a new arts annex will be completed in the fall.
“It’s going to be a busy year and fun year,” said Caroline Jackson Smith, professor of theater and Africana studies and chairwoman of the college Theater Department. “It’s nice that the Summer Theater Festival gets to launch us into the next season.”
Building an audience
The Oberlin Summer Theater Festival will have its 10th season on stage with three plays in summer repertory.
The shows started June 22 with “Little Women,” an adaptation by Marisha Chamberlain of the classic novel by Louisa May Alcott.
Actors will perform “Romeo and Juliet,” by William Shakespeare, and “Picnic,” a prize-winning 1953 drama by William Inge.
Starting in the 1990s, college Theater Professor Paul Moser guided summer theater in Oberlin, but put the seasonal scripts on the shelf while serving as chairman of the college’s Theater Department.
Former Oberlin College resident Marvin Krislov was “very excited about theater” and supported the revival of stage plays in summer rep starting in 2009, Moser said.
“Now, what’s unique about it is, the shows are all free, we don’t charge admission,” said Moser, who is producing artistic director of the summer festival. “And there’s a lot of philosophy behind that.
“We want theater to be accessible to everybody in the area, not just people who can afford a $30, $50, $100 ticket.”
At those prices, “clearly middle income families with kids aren’t taking their kids to those shows,” Moser said.
“Now, who would have the money for that?” he asked.
The plays are meant to be meaningful presentations of dramatic works that people should see sometime in their lives, Moser said.
At least one play is accessible to young viewers, if not based on children’s literature.
Examples from past seasons include stage adaptations of “Anne of Green Gables” and “Treasure Island.”
“We want families to bring their kids to the theater and see that it’s exciting and that it’s something that they’re not plugged into a TV to do,” Moster said. “There’s something they can do together and really enjoy and then talk about later.”
Getting applause
The formula is working. The audience of the Oberlin Summer Theater Festival has grown every year, with 2017 total attendance topping 12,500 people from across northern Ohio.
Along with support of the city of Oberlin, the College and local foundations, audience donations helped the summer theater program break even financially last year, Moser said.
The theater festival uses union and nonunion actors, returning Oberlin College alumni and local and visiting college students in ageappropriate roles.
“It’s a great professional opportunity for lots of different kinds of people,” Smith said.
Oberlin College theater and history student Casey Labbate is a chief assistant for her second year working with the Oberlin Summer Theater Festival.
A native of Little Rock, Ark., Labbate oversees people with duties ranging from the box office to publicity to day-to-day administration.
“It’s not overtly a training program, but there are a lot of young people in jobs with a lot of responsibility, which is a good structure,” Labbate said.
On June 20, two days before opening night, crews were building and painting sets and preparing costumes for all three shows.
There were three different rehearsals scheduled the same day.
In the festival’s sevenweek run, there will be more than 40 performances this summer.
“We’ve got 50 employees, so we’re a pretty busy bunch,” Moser said.
“And the tickets are still free,” Labbate said.
Building theaters
Just south of Hall Auditorium, the work area is not a set.
The fence around it is not a prop and the builders wearing hard hats are not actors.
They are the crew framing up the new Eric Baker Nord Performing Arts Annex.
Oberlin College broke ground for the arts annex last fall and it is scheduled for completion this year.
The new theater fills a need for a mid-sized space, Smith said.
With its white, wavy façade, Hall Auditorium seats 500 people.
This year, Oberlin College dedicated another theater space.
The 75-seat Little Theater was renovated to become the John Kander Little Theater, named for the 1951 Oberlin College alumnus who may be best known for his work composing for the musicals “Cabaret” and “Chicago.”
The new Nord Arts Annex will be a modular space with capacity for 250 to 300 people.
The construction has become visible from the street and could make it look like Hall Auditorium is closed.
But Hall Auditorium will remain open for the Oberlin Summer Theater Festival.
“Some people in the area kind of worried that Hall Auditorium was going away,” Smith said. “We’ll still have the familiar Hall Auditorium, our 500-seat proscenium.
“We’ll still have our small theater, but now it’s
renovated, which is about 75 seats. But now we’ll have that mid-sized theater we’ve always been wanting that gives us a lot more flexibility in the types of shows we can have.”
There is a full slate of shows scheduled for fall through Oberlin’s Theater Department.
Smith encouraged the summer patrons to look for dates for the upcoming fall and winter shows.
“I think what’s great about the summer theater festival, is that it gets so many people here who would normally never come here,” Smith said. “And we always hope that some of them will come back during the season in the school year.”