So Long, 'SHREW (or) The Wind Down After a Show

Well, Shakespeare in the Park (Season 4) “The Taming of the Shrew” is now over.

What to do, what to do…?  Oh yeah, pay the final invoices (gotta make sure everyone is taken care of), update the website, hold our wrap-up meetings with the creative team, report to the board of directors, send out thank you notes to our sponsor BMO Harris Bank of McHenry, the McHenry chamber, the City of McHenry and the mayor’s office, the city’s park department staff, the Starline Gallery (See how I’m also utilizing this blog as my “to do” list? Clever, huh?)….and, somehow try and remember what I used to do with my free evenings. 

Riverview Theatre Company’s 4th year of doing Shakespeare in the Park was by all accounts a runaway hit!  We scheduled seven shows (thinking that it would rain and we’d get to do five…maybe six total shows) but, Mother Nature and I were tight this summer and we were able to perform all seven shows.  Moreover, the audience size was stellar!  We had higher numbers in attendance than ever before.  One particularly lovely group from one of our Saturday night shows boasted that they heard about us through the Crystal Lake Patch – THANK YOU, CL PATCH! 

So marketing worked. Social media (Facebook) helped a great deal. And online sources like the Patch had our back.  We saw ways where we could cut corners and save money, while still promoting and presenting the best production possible.  Our goal was to not only do a great show this year, but to look to the future and build an audience, expand our mailing list, and establish relationships while gathering resources for next year.  With the economy as tight as it is, creativity is key in building a business – especially a low budget (or “no budget”) entertainment business like community theatre. 

I have to give credit to our amazing creative team.  Director Roger Zawacki and his people expertly steered this ship and we really changed his mind about summer theatre.  Yes, we had some hot shows and there were a few mosquitoes, but production-wise, we had a lot of balls in the air and yet, we kept hitting them out of the park.  So much was going for us this year.  Not only was “Shrew” under the leadership of a new director, but we also worked with lots of new actors and lots of new behind-the-scene faces.  22 people were in the cast.  Working with an incredibly small budget, we were able to have the biggest wardrobe ever for a Riverview show – lots of costumes and costume changes. Not to mention lots of props, large set pieces and lots of help and support from the City of McHenry and Assistant City Administrator, Bill Hobson.  A big show like “Taming of the Shrew” does not go up by itself.  Many hands help to get a production like this off the ground.  It’s thrilling to see so many folks pitch in and get excited about a show in the park…not just our cast, crew and creative team, but the people in the audience as well.  Our shows are free, but we pass the hat at intermission and the donations collected told us that the audience was mighty pleased with the entertainment we provided.

So now we have costumes to sort, clean, dry clean and pack away for next year; props to categorize and store; set pieces to load out and truck over to our storage unit; while at the same time, ideas flourish for next year’s production. And, of course, the obligatory question that eager actors and audiences always ask us at the close of every show: “When is your next production?”  Well, keep watching the Riverview website at www.wix.com/kellsangie/riverview and you’ll see our latest news and audition announcements happening very soon. 

That is, once I pick up the last of our costumes from the dry cleaners!