Part II
The usual lifetime of a community theater group is about 20 years,” observes Sue Lindberg. “But Village Players has more than doubled that projected lifespan.”
By the late 1960s Village Players began looking for their own space. They rented the storefront (now a Tai-Chi school) at 441 South Blvd., completely adapting and renovating the premises. Members created the box office and dressing room “out of nothing.” Washrooms were installed. The next season, they rented an additional storefront next door. The seating capacity was limited to 100 by the fire department inspectors.
“It was always interesting to work around the two poles that were on stage,” notes Patti Roeder. “It was truly a design challenge. If it were an outdoor scene you could have a couple of trees, of course. But if the set was a sleek Manhattan apartment that was a little bit harder to work around. You’d have to direct and choreograph with those poles in the middle of your concept.”
“Once in a while somebody would comment, ‘I love the intimate set. But why did you have those two trees right there?'” recalls Mercita DeMuynck, who joined Village Players in 1962, its second year of existence. “Well, those trees had to be right there to hold up the roof! We also had no air-conditioning, so shows in August were often hotter than hell. But in many ways lots of us look back on that period on South Boulevard in the Studio space as our ‘golden age,’ when we didn’t have quite so much
financial responsibility.”
“The whole family often got involved,” DeMuynck adds. “My children appeared in Ebenezer, our annual holiday show based on Dickens’ Christmas Carol. There was so much talent in the group. There were so many professional-type people, especially in the tech areas.”
Then suddenly in 1983, the Village Players were given notice that the building at 441 South Blvd. was being sold out from under them. “This was especially difficult after so much work, time and money had been put into that space,” Erber remembers. Fiddler on the Roof was the last production in their “old theater.”
“That musical was about the wandering Jews displaced at the turn of the last century,” recalls Roeder, “and the plot mirrored our own situation, as we were all leaving and going to a ‘new world.'”
But rather than risk the continuing insecurity of moving into yet another rental property, the members made some far-reaching decisions.
The current Village Players property at 1010 Madison St., an old 1920s tile warehouse, was purchased for $95,000 in August 1983. A massive renovation project ensued. Errol Kirsch, a member of the theatre group and a well-known local architect, whose wife, Lynn, was an avid performer, created the floor plan and the overall design for the new facility. The interior had to be gutted and the entire building had to be altered structurally. Plaster was stripped, sections of the concrete floor were removed, and the room partitions had to be removed. Over 70 members of the Village Players were actively involved in the project.
“The renovation and refurbishing of the 1010 building was an incredible undertaking,” says John Roeder. “The project began in the late summer and went on for five months. We had one of the coldest Decembers on record while we were finishing up. We opened on the bitterly cold night of Friday the 13th in January, 1984.”
“Most of the work of the demolition and construction was done by our members. We all put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into it,” explains Nardulli. “We wore hardhats and functioned like construction workers. Everyone was there all the time-it was truly a group effort. Phil and I actually spent our first anniversary digging out the center stage area.”
The show must go on
“The work seemed to go on forever,” remembers Patti Roeder. “We had torpedo heaters from construction sites going all over the building. We postponed opening several times. We built the set for our show the very day we opened. We were finally ‘cleared’ and approved by the Fire Department about 15 minutes before curtain time.”
“It was a very thrilling time, watching the new theater coming together in our very own space,” says DeMuynck. “Back then we had an incredibly high renewal rate for our patrons-90%-which was second only to the Chicago Symphony.”
There were over 2,000 subscriptions sold annually by the early 1990s. Every Village Players show was 70 percent pre-sold before its opening night.
“Village Players was a really exciting group,” observes Michael Termine. “It was intense, great fun because we did it all. And the friendships have continued over the years. The bond is still strong; many of us are still connected. But the new group at V.P. is perhaps smarter than we were in lots of ways. We had artists and actors on our board-people who are not known for their solid money sense. These new guys have business community people on board.”
“It’s so different now,” observes Nardulli. “There was nothing else going on theatrically in this community when Village Players was young. Now kids have so many more acting options. There are new companies all the time.”
Many of the players met their spouses while working on a production, such as Jaime and Maura Sandoval, Peter and Bonnie Dolson, John and Patti Roeder, Ron and Marie Henry, and Gary and Miriam Petzke, among others.
“I met Gary while we were both doing Cole Porter’s Anything Goes in 1973,” explains Miriam Petzke. “Gary had tap-danced on Bozo’s Circus on TV and was a ballroom instructor at the Fred Astaire Studios on Marion Street.”
“Patti and I met while doing the musical 1776,” remembers John Roeder. “That show was mounted at the start of the Bicentennial.”
Bouncing back
For a number of decades the company was the pride and joy of the local arts community. But the history of the Village Players is not without its downside or “hard times,” too. During the late 1990s, a number of the older, long-term members dropped away, a natural phenomenon. Dwindling attendance, a string of weak productions, misguided leadership, and financial problems also plagued the group at this time.
“For a while the Village Players was operating at a significant loss,” explains artistic director Carl Occhipinti. “But lately things are really moving on up. In 2004 Village Players was the recipient of the Oak Park Area Arts Council’s award for ‘Best Comeback by an Arts Organization.’ Our audience increased by 30 percent last season. We’re offering some very exciting fresh, untried works, we’ve expanded our season into five shows, and we’re tapping into a new audience we’ve not had until now, thanks to La Traviata, and the passion for opera of Jack Crowe. We’ve raised the bar in terms of the people we’re attracting both on stage and off.”
“We’re now drawing people who might never have thought of coming to see a show in Oak Park,” says Occhipinti. “We’ve got a new marquee, we’re upgrading everything, we’ve repainted the front and will be opening up some windows on the Madison Street side so the building looks less claustrophobic and more inviting.
“But making the outside more attractive alone won’t do it. We’re also raising the bar on the quality of our shows, and we are dedicated to providing our own exciting new niche of theater. For a while, perhaps, we’d lost this capacity. We were simply surviving. But there are a number of exciting developments, like our Play Ground Theater where guest artists can try out new works.
“The children’s classes have always been a wonderful cash cow, but frankly I wasn’t terribly thrilled by the product,” Occhipinti admits. “So we’ve retooled our children’s programs. We’re offering state-of-the-art stuff like digital filmmaking and commercial acting.”
“We’re thrilled that the new Village Players group has a sense of pride in their heritage,” says one of the early members, inactive for nearly a decade. “It’s good to see that these guys appreciate the roots and struggles of us old-timers. We may be too tired to do shows any more but we appreciate feeling we’re still part of the excitement-being welcome and included once more. We’re all looking forward to the Founders event in September. Our community is so lucky that the Players not only survived all these years, but once more they’re doing well.”
