Thursday, April 4, 2024

Shakespearean theater in Garfield Park
goes back to at least 1981

In the recent Photo Potpourri series "Garfield Park ... in Pictures," I made a last-minute decision to not bog down Chapter 36A with what some might have perceived to be a verbose, unnecessary history of Shakespearean theater in the park. Instead, I elected to come back to that information -- some of which has long been forgotten by even people in the neighborhood -- in today's post, which is designed for those who appreciate such history. 

And to help convey that story, I've sprinkled some more photos of the Garfield Shakespeare Company plays I took in the park from 2010 to 2016. If you have a sharp eye, you'll recognize the collection of photos here as being one from each play, in chronological order of the dates they were presented during the 2010-16 time span. 

I close the post with a shot from the table of creative cookies for visitors to enjoy at the theater troupe's May 2014 Open House at the Garfield Park Arts Center. 

In the 34 years I lived in the Garfield Park-South neighborhood of Indianapolis, there were two waves of Shakespeare performances staged in nearby Garfield Park. 

I’m chagrined to say that I didn’t look in on these productions until the second wave was into its third season, so images you see here are from just the 13 shows I was fortunate to photograph from 2010 to 2016.

The first wave, the longest of which by far operated under the name Indianapolis Shakespeare Festival, had a run of 13 seasons. Its debut production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by ISF founder and artistic director (and Marian College theater faculty member and theater department chairman) David Edgecombe, opened on July 9, 1981.

Edgecombe and his wife, Elizabeth Ware, came to Indianapolis after both had worked three years for the California Shakespeare Festival in Visalia, which is between Fresno and Bakersfield in central California. 

ISF shows were presented on Thursdays through Sundays at the Garfield Park Amphitheater (which at the time did not bear the MacAllister name) for four consecutive weeks. The troupe charged no admission to attend performances but openly encouraged donations, a tactic used again 25 years later by organizers of the second wave of Shakespeare in the park.

For the majority of the next decade after ISF launched, the troupe presented two Shakespeare plays on alternating days in repertory every summer in July. Edgecombe’s wife, Elizabeth Ware, appeared in the cast of 13 ISF productions (including the role of Titania in the debut production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and handled much of the company’s costuming and choreography and did considerable clerical work for the organization through the years.

From the beginning, ISF also offered half-hour post-show symposiums on subjects related to theater at the site (or nearby) and/or the performances. In the mid-1980s, ISF also started to take its show on the road, traveling to various locations (such as Conner Prairie in Noblesville) as well as to communities across the state and even did a tour in Kentucky.

ISF picked up financial backing and attendance as shows grew exponentially in the early years and continued through the late 1980s. This would be one windfall resource the ISF enjoyed that Garfield Shakespeare Company, the troupe driving the second wave, did not. 

In 1982, ISF announced it had established a 17-member Board of Directors that featured such local celebrities – and clout – as noted author Kurt Vonnegut, U.S. Rep. Julia Carson and Josie Orr, wife of Indiana Gov. Robert Orr. 

How important was that “clout”? It was apparently impactful enough to sway the city’s major newspaper arts critics – Corbin Patrick of The Indianapolis Star and Charles Staff of The Indianapolis News – to cover ISF’s happenings and write reviews of all the theater company’s annual series through the 1980s and into the next decade.

Also in 1982, ISF began presenting two shows each summer, alternating performances on the four nights of each week in July. ISF considered its headquarters at 1941 E. Hanna Ave. (today the site of Southside Park) and held auditions there. In its last couple of years, it moved to an abandoned church at 16th and Delaware streets on the Old Northside of Indianapolis. 

The community theater company started experiencing a reversal of fortune in the late 1980s. Revenues and attendance began to decline, but the decisive blow appeared to be – or at least coincided with – the mid-1990 resignation of Edgecombe as ISF artistic director. He, Ware and their family departed Indianapolis to join the theater faculty at the University of Alaska. 

1990’s The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear were the last of 13 productions Edgecombe had directed for ISF. The theater company performing at the Garfield Park Amphitheater operated under three different names in its final years, 1991, ’92 and ’93. 

ISF used a guest director in 1991 then ceased to exit. Handling the shows the final two years were Friends of Shakespeare in the Park (1992) and Greater Indianapolis Shakespeare Festival (1993).

The first wave of Shakespearean shows presented in Garfield Park, all handled by ISF unless otherwise noted, were as follows:

1981 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1982 – Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew

1983 – Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure

1984 – Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing

1985 – Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor

1986 – Merchant of Venice and Comedy of Errors

1987 – The Tempest and Richard III

1988 – As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale

1989 – All’s Well That Ends Well and Two Gentlemen of Verona

1990 – The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear

1991 – Much Ado About Nothing (guest director Ron Spencer, last regular-season production of Indianapolis Shakespeare Festival)

1992 – Romeo and Juliet (produced by Friends of Shakespeare in the Park)

1993 – Henry IV, Part I and Comedy of Errors (produced by Greater Indianapolis Festival Theatre)

After a 15-year lull, live theater in Garfield Park experienced a revival in 2008. Leading the effort was Joe Cook, who had moved into the neighborhood in 2004 and had previously established community theater troupes elsewhere – Hendricks Civic Theater in Danville, Ind., and Spotlight Players, which has had many homes and now operates out of Beech Grove, Ind.

Cook and his assistant artistic director, Bradley Jones, also GSC’s chief costumer, presented their first production as Garfield Shakespeare Company with The Taming of the Shrew in 2008. Jones received a local Encore Award for his costuming of that production. They followed that year with Romeo and Juliet, then continued to present two shows a year – one indoors in March at the Garfield Park Arts Center, the other outdoors in late summer or early fall in the amphitheater, newly renamed MacAllister Amphitheater of the Performing Arts after Indianapolis entrepreneur and philanthropist P.E. MacAllister..

All shows were free of charge, although audience members were encouraged to drop donations of their choosing into containers conveniently situated at the access points at all shows. 

Early on, Cook sought to integrate a non-Shakespearean show into the annual series whenever possible … and when the cost of any royalties was manageable within the troupe’s thin budget. The troupe's first such production came in spring 2011 with Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion

The company struggled financially, however, as it did not have the community backing enjoyed by the previous troupe. So in spring 2014, as GSC launched its first full-season of non-Shakespearean productions -- including its first musical (Camelot) -- it held an open house. The company hoped the open house would significantly boost community awareness of the troupe and spark interest in financial support through contributions, donations and/or corporate sponsorship. Enough funds were raised through the open house to help with, but not entirely support, staging of Camelot later that year.

As early as 2013, Garfield Shakespeare Company had applied for certification as a 503 (c)(3) non-profit organization, enabling donors to deduct contributions to GSC as charitable donations. But that certification did not become official until 2015. 

Cook and Jones resigned their positions following Romeo and Juliet in 2016. Artistic directors since have included Chris Burton, Ashley Chase Elliott and Mallory Ward.

Productions directed by Joe Cook and costumed by Brad Davis, unless otherwise indicated, were as follows:

2008 – The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet

2009 – Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night

2010 – As You Like It and Macbeth (guest director Thomas Cardwell)

2011 – Pygmalion (Bernard Shaw) and Hamlet

2012 – The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream

2013 – The Matchmaker (Thornton Wilder) and The Tempest (directed by Chris Burton)

2014 – Antigone (Jean Anouilh, directed by Chris Burton) and Camelot (Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe), the latter the troupe’s first and only – so far – musical

2015 – The Merry Wives of Windsor and Othello * (GSC also presented Othello for the first annual Bard Fest in Carmel that autumn)

2016 – The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde, directed by Chris Burton) and Romeo and Juliet.

Shows produced in the post-Cook/Jones era are as follows;

2016 – Twelfth Night (for October 2016 Bard Fest) and Waverly Gallery (September, Garfield Park Arts Center)

2017 – Julius Caesar (March, arts center), Antony and Cleopatra (August, MacAllister), Cymbeline (October, 2017 IndyFringe/Bard Fest)

2018 – Richard II (March, arts center), The Three Musketeers (August, MacAllister)

2019 – Henry IV, Parts I & II (March, arts center), As You Like It (August, MacAllister)

2020 – Dear Brutus (March, radio play – COVID) and Shakesfear (October, Virtual – COVID)

2021 – Tartuffe (March, filmed performance – COVID) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (October, MacAllister)

2022 – A Comedy of Errors (March, arts center), Romeo and Juliet (July, Rebekah Park in Greensburg) and The Tempest (October, MacAllister)

2023 – Pericles, Prince of Tyre (March, arts center) and Much Ado About Nothing (October, MacAllister)

Planned for 2024 – Trojan Women (Euripides) (March, arts center), Beyond the Horizon (Eugene O’Neill) (site to be determined) and Twelfth Night (October, MacAllister)

So why or how did I get involved with photographing GSC shows when I did? On March 3, 2010, I had photographed a series of one-act vignettes, grouped under the title Love Bites, by a fledgling Northside Indy troupe, The Collective, as part of an outing by a photography club to which I belonged. I enjoyed that so much that I decided to seek photographing other theatrical opportunities when I had the chance. 

Having ignored the first wave of Shakespeare in the Park, I picked up my camera gear one evening in October 2010 and headed over to the amphitheater to photograph Macbeth, a production that I learned was being staged by a troupe called Garfield Shakespeare Company.

Guest director Thomas Cardwell, who in short order would found Eclectic Pond Theater Company in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis, set the storyline in pre-Revolutionary War America. The official play title, Macbeth: A Colonial Tragedy, underscored and reflected that endeavor.

As I left the venue after the show, a gentleman with gray hair and beard seated at the south entry point saw me with my camera gear and asked me about my photography. He introduced himself as Bradley Jones, said he was the troupe’s chief costume designer and then waved over another gray-haired and bearded gentleman, Joe Cook, who I learned was the troupe’s artistic director.

The three of us chatted briefly. They told me GSC was an all-volunteer company and explained that they put on two shows a year, one in the spring inside the nearby Garfield Park Arts Center, and the other in the amphitheater. One of the men – I forget now which – asked me if I would be willing to share my photos with them. Since GSC was an all-volunteer operation, I had no qualms making and providing them a copy of my best pictures.

That began a relationship that would last six years and 12 more GSC productions. When I contacted Joe the following spring to see if it would be OK to photograph GSC’s spring 2011 show, Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, he enthusiastically responded in the affirmative.

I would eventually photograph every GSC production staged in the park from that point on until the fall show in 2016. From summer 2013 to summer 2014, I also served on the GSC Board of Directors and handled various degrees of publicity for the productions for a brief period before, during and after my time on the board.

The highlight of my experience with GSC came in summer 2012, when my son Ben auditioned for and made the cast of GSC’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, playing King Theseus.

I have varying degrees of memories of each production, most of which are fond. Because GSC is all-volunteer, a few of its productions were imperiled by cast members who quit at various points in the rehearsal process. 

The Tempest in 2013 was particularly snake-bitten by cast abandonments. A father and son left together early on, and Joe scrambled to cover the father's role of Gonzalo himself. The son's role was so small it was simply written out of the production. Joe handed over the director reins to assistant director Chris Burton.

Then, three weeks before opening night, the man who had been cast in the lead role of Prospero abandoned. Miraculously, Joe found Eduardo Torres, a faculty member at nearby Decatur Township Public Schools, who was willing to fill the role. But Prospero has so many lines that Torres couldn’t commit them all to memory in such a short amount of time. So Joe figured out a way to attach a copy of the script to the end of a costume rope around Prospero’s waist, enabling Torres to glance at the script during on-stage lulls for help remembering his upcoming lines.

Antigone probably is next most vivid to me because I was present to photograph several of the rehearsals and one of the painstaking makeup application sessions. The show’s director, Chris Burton, had decided to use silver splotches on cast member faces to help convey that the characters had been statues who came to life to reveal the story.

Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker was memorable as well, certainly because of the comedic elements in the show, but also because of the ensuing opportunities to catch something different in photos.

Also up there on my memory list was Camelot, the troupe’s first attempt at staging a musical, and the May 2014 Open House, which required extensive planning and execution. One of the board members found a baker who was able to re-create certain pictures onto shortbread cookies, an example of which is shown below, from a scene featuring Laura Kelley as Dolly Levi from The Matchmaker.


Joe Cook and Bradley Davis stepped away from GSC at the conclusion of the 2016 season. Romeo and Juliet was their swan song, and I felt that was an appropriate time for me to step away, too, because at that point, my workload had mounted through paid gigs from First Folio Productions and Phoenix Theatre, and I was struggling to keep up.

On April 1, 2018, Cook passed away following a fight with cancer that surfaced at some point after leaving GSC. It was less than a year after I’d moved from Indy to Raleigh, N.C.

No comments:

Post a Comment