As Forest Theatre Company wraps up this season in August with free outdoor Shakespeare at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Nathan G. Moore House in Oak Park, next season the theater group is expanding by adding Executive Director Lisa Green.
Formerly managing director at Oak Park’s Madison Street Theater, Green will help Forest Theatre Company with its bookkeeping, administration, fundraising and local partnerships, “really trying to build our presence in this community,” Green said.
Green decided to take the part-time executive director role since she’s nearing retirement but still wants to be a part of developing a sustainable foundation for the company to grow as the only year-round professional theater in the western suburbs.
“They’ve got the production part down, but we’re really building the organization itself from the ground up,” Green said of Forest Theatre Company. Being a part of something that’s formalizing is one of the things she’s most excited about in this new role.
Forest Theatre Company started as Forest Park Theatre, under the umbrella of the Forest Park Arts Alliance. Last year, the company achieved nonprofit status, and with it, created a board of directors. Green has been tasked with much of the administrative work that comes with establishing a nonprofit.
Richard Corley founded Forest Theatre Company in 2021 and has grown it from an annual free outdoor Shakespeare performance to, last year, its first year-round indoor season of three plays at Madison Street Theater. With Green’s addition to the team, Corley can put more time into developing the company’s artistic direction.
“I can really focus on growing the art. We have a lot more work to make connections with significant artists in the Chicagoland community,” Corley said.
After hiring Green, Corley is looking to further expand Forest Theatre Company with a new director this season, so that actors get to experience working with someone besides himself.
“Any kind of an arts organization is a three-legged stool. You’ve got to have great art, great management, and community buy-in,” Corley said. As he works to develop the art and management, Corley said Green will move the company forward when it comes to garnering more of an audience.
“We have a huge arts audience here, but let’s get them trained to stay here. Your community becomes what you invest in,” Green said. The company’s annual free outdoor Shakespeare performance is positioned to lower barriers to entry for people to come see local theater. “Come take a chance on experiencing professional theater right here, and it’s free, and it’s in this stunning location.”
Green, along with Corley, also aims to grow relationships with other community organizations.
“There’s a lot of things that I need to be doing as an artist in terms of connecting to people and widening our reach into the community,” Corley said. “I would like to see Lisa focus her attention on building relationships within the community that can be, not only financially beneficial to the company, but also that can deepen our roots in the community.”
In her new role, Green is excited to find other local organizations which might be able to share staff, ideas and assets, or collaborate on a project so they can apply for grants together.
“We’re all small, we’re all understaffed, we’re all underfunded. How do we work together in helping each other build audiences?” Green said. “Each of us are doing a lot of the same things, so how do we make each one of our organizations sustainable without burning people out?”
As a lifelong Oak Park resident, Green is eager to “continue to build relationships from my lifetime experience in this community and pull people into something that I’m really excited about.”
As the next season of Forest Theatre Company starts in October, Corley is looking back on the last year of plays — the company’s first full indoor season and first offering season subscriptions to locals. He said he’s proud of producing three “vastly different kinds of plays with really unique challenges, and we were able to pull them off, not only artistically, but we were able to pay our bills. All of that’s really quite an extraordinary feat.”
Corley previously told the Forest Park Review that each play that Forest Theatre Company produces costs about $30,000, including funds to pay all actors and crew members. He’s hoping that, in the upcoming season, the company can sell more subscriptions to help pay for the productions.
“It’s so helpful to have subscribers because you have a base of support on which to build, an understanding of who’s coming and who’s going to be there for you,” Corley said. “That’s a really great thing for a company to have. It builds trust between you and the audience and emphasizes a foundation of solidarity.”