The Real Cost of Free
By Ashley Puderbaugh
Published June 2010
Heart of America Shakespeare Festival program book
Each year, thousands of people converge upon Southmoreland Park in Kansas City, Mo., to see professional theatre performed in a beautiful open-air venue. They gather with family and friends in front of the stage built from scratch, settling into their lawn chairs and blankets with picnics, and wait in anticipation for that year’s high-quality theatre production the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival is known for. Some of these people have never before seen a Shakespeare performance, and some are seeing live theatre for the first time.
This season, more than 30,000 people are expected to see King Richard III, a production that will have taken the whole year to produce, featuring original costumes, music and set. And each person will be able to see this show for free.
The birth of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival
“We believe that excellent theatre should be for everyone, and if it’s for everyone, it should be free, just like the library and schools,” says founder Marilyn Strauss. Strauss was active in New York theatre and had been recognized with live theatre’s highest honor — a Tony Award — for the play, Da. In 1990, Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, convinced her to return to her native Kansas City to create an admission-free festival accessible by public transportation.
She devoted herself full time to laying the groundwork in numerous meetings with local arts supporters, while honorary co-founder Felicia Hardison Londré continually redrafted the written proposal to suit the immediate need, according to Shakespeare Companies and Festivals: An International Guide, by Ron Engle, Daniel Watermeier and Londré.
“A Shakespeare club was formed, and then I held over 100 meetings with city fathers, city government and agencies and countless businesses and individuals,” Strauss says. “The hope and dream had to be sold.”
On May 1, 1991, Strauss signed incorporation papers for what was then called the Missouri Shakespeare Festival. As support for the festival grew on both sides of the state line, it became evident that a “Missouri” festival would not fairly represent Kansas Citizens, so the name was changed to the Shakespeare Festival of Greater Kansas City, according to Shakespeare Companies and Festivals: An International Guide.
After nearly two years of fundraising, Kansas City’s first outdoor Shakespeare festival took place in June 1993. Approximately 15,000 people — seniors, couples and families with children — came to see The Tempest, bringing with them blankets and picnic dinners.
“Together they experienced the glorious work of the world’s greatest playwright, and in casual and friendly surroundings,” says Strauss. “I realized what I had created when we had a massive traffic jam afterwards. That really came home to me — you don’t see that at most theatres. Traffic was held up three blocks each way, and that’s when I realized what it was going to become.”
Free Shakespeare as our birthright
The Heart of America Shakespeare Festival has since presented 23 productions in its 18-year history, reaching more than 470,000 audience members. In addition, the Festival has expanded its reach throughout the year by offering learning programs presented in the park during the Festival’s summer production, camp programs, a city-wide sonnet and poster contest for students, year-round Shakespeare theatre training and workshops, performances and residencies presented in schools throughout the city. The Festival’s signature Camp Shakespeare program offers an introduction to the works of Shakespeare and theatre for school-aged children.
“It’s meant to be walked and talked, not read straight from the book,” explains producing artistic director Sidonie Garrett. “We’re bringing excitement to the kids in class and showing them the fun of classical theatre. They learn it on their feet and do a shortened version of the play at the end of camp.”
Strauss says the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival relies on Camp Shakespeare fees and other various year-round training courses; major fundraising efforts like the Valentine Gala, Shakespeare ALOUD! and a costume trunk show being held after the close of the season; and monetary or in-kind goods and services from foundations, corporations and individuals 365 days a year.
Of the budget, 67 percent goes directly to fulfill the Festival’s mission and provide everything necessary to create and deliver theatre and education programs. The organization continues to maintain a low administrative overhead and ensure that the funding ends up on its stage or in the many classrooms where its students go to learn and create.
Because the organization is dedicated to offering professional theatre, “there is a cost to free. We have to pay our professional actors. All the designers get paid. Fabric isn’t free. It’s a lot of bang for the buck at the end of the day. It’s electricity, port-a-potties, set materials,” Garrett says.
The Festival Board of Directors and staff believe that everyone is entitled to see great, classic theatre — the economic divide shouldn’t be a factor in keeping anyone from seeing a Shakespeare performance. Families can bring their children and not worry about a babysitter, audiences can bring food into the park and they see high-quality interpretations of Shakespearean works.
“You have to think about it as the cost of it not being free,” says this year’s lead in the play, Bruce Roach. “It reaches out to an audience that might not be coming to theatre at all, especially Shakespeare. It’s unthinkable that it would not be free, because that’s what defines it. The mission was to make it free, make it professional and put it outdoors, and I think it would be a shame if any one of those three elements went away.”
Behind-the-scenes look at King Richard III
As soon as The Merry Wives of Windsor opened last June, Garrett was already considering which play she would propose to the Board for this year. In October, she got approval to perform King Richard III, and started working on conceptual ideas and putting people under contract for design, lights, choreography and music composition.
Her production and design team members have worked together for many years, and now the team works like a well-oiled machine. Though the production and design staff has just six months from conception of the design to the moment the play opens, each team member is efficient in their work.
“When you’ve been doing it for as long as we have, you don’t have anxiety anymore,” says lighting and production manager Ward Everhart. “We all know we work well with each other. We know it’s going to work.”
Garrett gets started on editing the script after she’s finalized her team. She says that in its entirety, King Richard III would be too long and prohibitive. Plays at the festival usually run about two hours and 15 minutes, but the unabridged version of the play runs more than three hours, so she cuts ancillary characters and trims the script for clarity.
In December, the entire design and production staff gathers for a conceptual meeting. In total, they’ll have four team meetings before the show, and Garrett will meet with each staff member individually. Meanwhile, auditions are going on. In January, Garrett will decide on the actors, and casting is finished by March.
Original score composition for the play begins the next month. “My get-down-and-dirty time is usually around the first of April. I really can’t start writing anything specific too early,” explains composer Greg Mackender. “I need to get a feel for the pace of the show and see how long some scene changes will be.”
By the last team meeting in mid-April, resident scenic designer Gene Emerson Friedman has completed the preliminary plans. Friedman will have spent at least six months working on the scenic design, and the team meets to discuss the design logistics. This is the first time many of them see the plans for the set and other elements that will have to be built from scratch.
From here, Friedman will develop design drafting for construction and then a 3-D model so that Everhart can begin putting together a lighting plan. “It’s just the same as any other theatre — we build from scratch every year, depending on the needs of the director,” explains Everhart. “The challenge is that we don’t even have a stage yet. It hasn’t been built. We’re all just working from plans at the moment.”
Though rehearsals start at the end of May and last only three weeks, the actors are given the script for memorizing lines as soon as Garrett is finished editing it. “With a role the size of Richard, that’s an impossible task to achieve in three weeks,” Roach says. “I’ve been working on my lines for two months.”
As the actors rehearse in a studio at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, Jim Lane, design and technical director, is constructing the set in a shop at Johnson County Community College, where he serves as chair of the music and theatre department. Lane also ensures the set building materials will stay under budget and determines how it will be broken down and moved to the park.
This is the same time that Mary Traylor begins building the costumes at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre costume shop at UMKC, after she’s offered conceptual designs to Garrett and gathered the needed materials.
A crew goes out to the park the last week of May to build the tents, or the “physical compound,” as Garrett calls it. After tents go up, the stage will be built, light towers and scaffolding erected. Friedman and Everhart supervise the installment of the set, refining details and finishing up the lighting. The actors move to the park for their last week of rehearsals at the beginning of June.
Then, opening night in mid-June.
“It’s a pretty complicated and complex machine to produce the play and put Shakespeare out every night for the public,” says Roach. “But getting to play to a diverse audience, one with people who maybe haven’t seen Shakespeare performed, and families with kids getting to see live theatre for the first time — it’s kind of a kick.
“I believe in the Festival’s mission very firmly. And I hope the people who do come to see King Richard III enjoy it and continue to support the Festival. It’s free. There’s no excuse to miss it.”
