Ohio Shakespeare Festival will become a company that operates year-round by Oct. 1, once it takes over the theater space at Greystone Hall that was previously the home of Actors’ Summit.
The professional OSF, which has produced Shakespearean plays outdoors at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens for 15 summer seasons, will continue to operate there in the summer months. Expanding the company to Greystone Hall will allow OSF to produce plays indoors the remaining nine months of the year.
It will focus on works by Shakespeare as well as broader programming, including family theater; non-Shakespearean classics by the likes of Shaw, Moliere and Eugene O’Neill; lesser-known classics; and theatrical interpretations of literary works, adapted by company members.
Co-artistic directors Terry Burgler and Nancy Cates will remain at the helm of OSF, with daughter and son-in-law Tess Burgler, 29, and Joe Pine, 28, both actors and OSF associate producers, taking charge of the day-to-day Greystone operation.
“We want to do uplifting theater, inspiring theater,” Tess Burgler said. “I’m so excited to be able to do more classics than Shakespeare.”
Terry Burgler, 68, and Cates, 58, will continue to run Coach House Theatre, the 93-seat community theater affiliated with the Akron Woman’s City Club that produces plays from September through May.
Tess Burgler, who stepped down in the spring as a language arts and drama teacher at Hudson Montessori School, will now work full time to run the Greystone theater with her husband. Pine will graduate from Kent State University in December with a degree in American Sign Language.
“I’ve been saying this is everything I’ve wanted for a decade,” Tess Burgler said of a full-time theater career.
The Burglers said this was the right opportunity to expand OSF. “We consider this an exciting challenge and we’re a 15-year-old arts organization with producers that have been producing for decades,” Terry Burgler said.
OSF and the Akron/Summit Convention and Visitors Bureau, which manages the city-owned Greystone Hall, signed a letter of intent for a one-year lease on Wednesday. The deal means Akron will continue to have a professional theater presence downtown.
“We’re thrilled that an organization that does such professional-quality performances, has a tremendous reputation and a tremendous following will be the next act on stage at Greystone Hall,” said bureau President and CEO Gregg Mervis. “I think that that space deserves and is positioned perfectly to have an arts-based production organization continuing to help arts and culture thrive in this town.”
At Greystone, OSF plans to build an education program, reaching out to schools, holding theater classes and applying for educational grants. “The educational element has been something that we’ve been trying to jump start for a couple of years now,” said Cates.
They stressed that in Shakespeare’s time, his plays were written to be seen, not read. OSF wants to provide high-quality live Shakespearean experiences for students, dovetailing with the free student nights they already offer at Stan Hywet. At Greystone, the theater plans to tailor shorter productions and include teaching points for student performances.
“If you just come see Shakespeare, students will like it,’’ Tess Burgler said.
OSF is planning an inaugural production for this calendar year and will launch a Kickstarter campaign. The theater plans to host educational events and readings in the space before the New Year, and hold a gala fundraiser.
All actors performing at OSF’s Greystone space will receive a stipend or salary. OSF also employs union actors through guest Equity contracts.
OSF plans to tap into the company that has grown over the years at its Stan Hywet festival, where actors also specialize in carpentry, costume design, composing, playwriting, stage combat, choreography, stage managing and directing.
OSF will continue to use the three-quarter thrust stage that Actors’ Summit built in Greystone Hall’s sixth-floor theater, and also will have use of the seventh-floor balcony level. Discussions are occurring with Actors’ Summit’s Neil Thackaberry and MaryJo Alexander about purchasing some of the previous theater’s equipment.
Actors’ Summit, which had produced at Greystone Hall since 2010, also was a family-run nonprofit: husband-wife co-founders Neil Thackaberry and MaryJo Alexander, daughters Constance and Sasha Thackaberry and sons-in-law Keith Stevens and Peter Voinovich. Neil Thackaberry retired as co-artistic director last year, followed by Alexander in late June. The Actors’ Summit nonprofit will dissolve and the theater will vacate Greystone Hall by the end of this month.
Arts writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com. Like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kclawsonabj or follow her on Twitter @KerryClawsonABJ.