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.
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.
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.
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.
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