For the sixth year, Forest Theatre Company is hosting an outdoor production of a Shakespeare play. But for the first time, the performance will take place at the Moore-Dugal House in Oak Park, instead of at the Altenheim in Forest Park.
Starting Aug. 7, the company will put on three free weekend productions of “All’s Well That Ends Well” on the front lawn of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed private residence at 333 Forest Ave.
Though the Moore-Dugal House had been vacant for years, last spring Michael Roush moved in. Roush is the stepson of Jim Dugal, whose parents bought the home in 1962. Now, Roush is working to restore the house to its state in 1923, when Wright designed it.
History of homeowners
The Moore-Dugal House was first built in 1895. After a fire in 1922, Frank Lloyd Wright redesigned the home for his client Nathan Moore, a local attorney. Wright was inspired by traditional English architecture, with the upper stories designed in the Tudor style with steeply pitched roofs.
After the Moore family, the Summervilles moved into the home. The Dugals bought it in the ‘60s and lived there the longest of any of the owners.
The Dugals had seven children, including Robert Dugal, who died in 2020. Before the house’s current resident, Michael Roush — stepson of Robert’s brother, Jim — Robert was the last person who lived in the house. Roush said the home is one of the only Frank Lloyd Wright houses that is wheelchair accessible. Three of the Dugal children, including Robert, had Friedrich’s Ataxia, a genetic disorder that damages the spinal cord and caused them to be wheelchair-bound.
Roush said Robert Dugal “was very passionate about making things handicap accessible. A lot of the curb cuts around here in Oak Park are a result of his direct efforts.”
When Roush moved to Oak Park from California, he reached out to Richard Corley, who founded Forest Theatre Company as Forest Park Theatre in 2021. Though Corley said his goal from the start was to develop a year-round professional theater company with performances by a variety of playwrights, last year was its first year-round season. In 2021, the company launched with a free, outdoor Shakespeare play in the summertime.
Forest Theatre Company’s outdoor Shakespeare is performed without any microphones or lighting, “the way Shakespeare wrote these plays,” Corley said. “You can’t make a moment by lighting. … If the actor doesn’t do it, it isn’t happening. I consider that radical in a way theater isn’t anymore.”
Roush himself is a fan of Shakespeare and Corley’s work.
“Rick and I go way back,” Roush told the Review. Roush studied classical theater at the University of Minnesota. After he graduated, he connected with Corley in Arizona, where he casted Roush in multiple shows, including as Romeo and Hamlet in Shakespeare performances.
“I really trust him as a director and storyteller,” Roush said. “The way Rick directs is, especially with the classics and Shakespeare, to find the clarity of the story and communicate it as clearly as possible. A lot of the time, I feel like things get layered on to modernize it, but he really focuses on bringing clarity to the words to bring the story through.”
Corley said “All’s Well That Ends Well” is the lone work by Shakespeare that opens with a speech by a woman. He added, “It’s the only Shakespeare play that has a woman’s desire for a man at the center of the story, in a situation where the man is the one being pursued.”
To emphasize the woman-centered story, Forest Theatre Company’s performance of “All’s Well That Ends Well” has a predominantly female cast — with CC Meade playing the heroine Helen and Megan Wells playing the Countess.
Mead’s character often takes on the role of a man — one of the reasons Corley said the play, in the Victorian era, was so rarely produced, because people thought Helen was “distasteful, very forward and doesn’t act like a woman should.”
Corley said he chose “All’s Well That Ends Well” for this year’s outdoor Shakespeare because of how it asks relevant questions about women’s agency in today’s society, “placing the mystery of power in the center of the play and challenging the notion that power is always centered in male authority,” Corley said. “Right now, we’re in a reactionary patriarchal mode where the progress we felt like we’ve been making over the last 50 years has been basically suffocated. I think we need stories of female empowerment to challenge this notion.”
The name of the play — a common phrase during Shakespeare’s time — also poses the question about whether the ending is actually a resolution.
“He’s asking you to think about what that means. When stories end well, does it always end well for everyone? Who gets left out of the story? Who is denied the good ending?” Corley said.
Partnership in plays
Corley said something he’s looking forward to when performing outdoor Shakespeare at a new venue is the acoustics. The Moore-Dugal House faces another Frank Lloyd Wright home, built so residents of both properties could hear each other from their balconies.
“I think there’s going to be an intimacy because you’re surrounded by a neighborhood, rather than in a field,” Corley said, comparing the location to the Altenheim in Forest Park. He added that Forest Theatre Company changed venues because he knows there are eventual plans for Forest Park to develop the village-owned portion of the property where the company has performed and “We are wanting to be a theater company that is serving all of these villages around the near western suburbs,” including Oak Park.
Both Corley and Roush said outdoor Shakespeare at the Moore-Dugal House will be an annual event. Roush said Jackie Dugal, the mother of the Dugal family, “was always a real lover of the arts. This is such an artistic, iconic, historic house for the neighborhood, and we always felt that we really needed to try and open it up and share it with everyone.”
Though the house was open for public tours until the ‘80s, Roush said it won’t be available for tours or private events until after rehabilitation efforts are completed. He hopes the first floor will be finished by next summer.
“A lot of this structure is so old, you want to match the paints correctly and you don’t want to damage it by trying to rehab it. Finding the right people to help is sometimes time consuming,” Roush said. “We want to share this with people, so I’m really looking forward to doing that and making it a place of art,” starting with outdoor Shakespeare performances.
“We hope that everybody around the neighborhood will walk by, see this incredible thing and join us,” Corley said. “It’s free, so just walk in.”
Free performances of “All’s Well That Ends Well” on August 7–9, 14–16 & 21–23 at 5 p.m. at 333 Forest Avenue, Oak Park. Reserve your ticket at https://www.forest-theatre.org/plays.