 Sunset at the Peninsula Players | |
| Formation | 1935 |
|---|---|
| Type | Theatre group |
| Purpose | Summer Stock |
| Location |
|
Membership | Actors Equity Association |
Artistic director(s) | Linda Fortunato |
Peninsula Players is a summer theater located in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Founded in 1935 by Richard and Caroline Fisher, it is known as "America's Oldest Professional Resident Summer Theatre."
The Players was founded in 1935 by the brother and sister team of Caroline and Richard Fisher in a garden behind the Bonnie Brook motel in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. [1] In 1937 the Fishers moved the newly founded theater to the recently vacated 22-acre (89,000 m2) Wildwood Boys Camp, along the shores of Green Bay between the towns of Egg Harbor and Fish Creek. There they built a barn-like proscenium stage house for an audience sitting under the stars. This is the present site of the theater. [1]
The original Peninsula Players stage was built with the help of Samuel Wanamaker, an American film director and actor who is credited as the person most responsible for the modern recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. [2] [3]
In 1946 a canvas tent was erected over the audience to provide some shelter from inclement weather, and in 1957 a new audience pavilion with open sides was built as a permanent structure. In 1960, the Fishers sold the theater at public auction, where it was purchased by Kenneth Carroad, a lawyer from New York City. [1]
Carroad asked long-time “Player”, James B. McKenzie, to oversee business operations as producer. McKenzie accepted and in 1962 assisted in forming the Peninsula Players Theatre Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization created to operate the theater. In 1978 Carroad sold the property to the McKenzies, who maintained ownership until 1993, when the Peninsula Players Theatre Foundation purchased the property. [1]
Todd Schmidt organized more improvements for the Players, such as a new theatre and stage house, improved actor housing, new public restroom facilities, expanded and upgraded rehearsal and storage areas, a computerized box office, and new gardens. [4]
In the fall of 2005 the Players ended their season early and demolition and construction began on a new stage house. The new stage house, which opened in the summer of 2006, has a full fly tower, a grass roof, cushioned seats, and solid walls that can be raised and lowered based on weather conditions. The new theater also has a radiant heated floor that allows performances well into October. [4]
The Peninsula Players were known for getting the rights to Neil Simon plays not long after they opened on Broadway. [4] Through executive producer Jim McKenzie’s association with Emanuel "Manny" Azenberg, Simon’s Broadway producer, he was able to negotiate the Midwest premières of a majority of Simon’s plays from 1963 through 1986. [4] [10]
Simon's “Biloxi Blues” made its Players debut on July 29, 1986, months after closing on Broadway. McKenzie gave Nancy Simon, Neil’s daughter, her first opportunity to direct when he produced the Peninsula Players production in 1986. [11] In 1987, Biloxi Blues was re-staged by Nancy Simon at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut where McKenzie also served as executive producer. [11]
In 1981, actors John Walker, Pamela Gaye, Amy McKenzie, and a small troupe of artisans from the Players created the first Fall season. The play Children of a Lesser God , with Walker and Gaye in the principal roles was presented. [12] James McKenzie remained executive producer until his death in 2001. The fall season continued with an additional play that opened after the end of the traditional summer theatre season.
In 1983, while in New York City, executive producer Jim McKenzie contracted Amy McKenzie and Richard O'Donnell to create an after-show revue to complement evening performances at the Players. The Comedy Cabaret, produced by Amy McKenzie and written by O'Donnell, opened the summer of 1984. [13] The Comedy Cabaret eventually opened in Chicago as New Age Vaudeville whereby they "won over critics and audiences." [14]
In February 2010, Artistic Director Greg Vinkler established a winter play reading series The Play's the Thing, produced in coordination with Door County Reads. It is performed at Björklunden, the northern campus of Lawrence University in Baileys Harbor. [15]
Actors at Peninsula Players are members of Actors' Equity, the union of professional actors and stage managers.
Peninsula Players received the 2014 Governor's Award for Arts, Culture and Heritage. [1]
Company is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth. The original 1970 production was nominated for a record-setting 14 Tony Awards, winning six. Company was among the first book musicals to deal with contemporary dating, marriage, and divorce, and is a notable example of a concept musical lacking a linear plot. In a series of vignettes, Company follows bachelor Bobby interacting with his married friends, who throw a party for his 35th birthday.
Nathan Lane is an American actor. In a career spanning over 40 years he has been seen on stage and screen in roles both comedic and dramatic. Lane has received numerous awards including three Tony Awards, an Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".
René Murat Auberjonois was an American actor and director. He was best known for portraying Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999). He first achieved fame as a stage actor, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1970 for his portrayal of Sebastian Baye opposite Katharine Hepburn in the André Previn-Alan Jay Lerner musical Coco. He went on to earn three more Tony nominations for performances in Neil Simon's The Good Doctor (1973), Roger Miller's Big River (1985), and Cy Coleman's City of Angels (1989); he won a Drama Desk Award for Big River.
The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise and is the oldest ongoing improvisational theater troupe to be continually based in Chicago, with training programs and live theatres in Toronto and Los Angeles. The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959, and has since become one of the most influential and prolific comedy theatres in the English-speaking world. In February 2021, ZMC, a private equity investment firm based in Manhattan, purchased the Second City.
The Neil Simon Theatre, originally the Alvin Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 250 West 52nd Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1927, the theater was designed by Herbert J. Krapp and was built for Alex A. Aarons and Vinton Freedley. The original name was an amalgamation of Aarons's and Freedley's first names; the theater was renamed for playwright Neil Simon in 1983. The Neil Simon has 1,467 seats across two levels and is operated by the Nederlander Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are New York City landmarks.
Biloxi Blues is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. It portrays the conflict of Sergeant Merwin J. Toomey and Arnold Epstein, one of many privates enlisted in the military stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi, seen through the eyes of Eugene Jerome, one of the other soldiers. This play is the second chapter in what is known as his Eugene trilogy, following Brighton Beach Memoirs and preceding Broadway Bound. The play won the Tony Award for Best Play, and Barry Miller won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Arnold Epstein.
Caroline, or Change is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by Tony Kushner. The score combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music.
The Ahmanson Theatre is one of the four main venues that compose the Los Angeles Music Center.
The Lucille Lortel Awards recognize excellence in New York Off-Broadway theatre. The Awards are named for Lucille Lortel, an actress and theater producer, and have been awarded since 1986. They are produced by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers by special arrangement with the Lucille Lortel Foundation, with additional support from the Theatre Development Fund.
Bruce Norris is an American character actor and playwright associated with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago. His play Clybourne Park won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Diane Marie Paulus is an American theater and opera director who is currently the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. Paulus was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for her revivals of Hair and The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and won the award in 2013 for her revival of Pippin.
New Age Vaudeville was an American professional theater troupe founded by Richard O'Donnell and Amy McKenzie, and was part of the Chicago comedy boom of the 1980s.
Richard O'Donnell is an American playwright, composer, lyricist, poet, actor, and stand-up comic. He has worked and lived in New York City and Chicago, where he has written and performed for the stage and television. O'Donnell co-wrote the ASCAP award-winning Off-Broadway musical comedy One & One, and Radio City Music Hall's Manhattan Showboat. He founded the New Age Vaudeville theatre company, the New Variety cabaret, the Black Pearl Cabaret, and St. John's Conservatory Theater. As a stand-up comic, he was the executive producer and host of the Fox, Chicago comedy variety television show R. Rated.
Oak Park Festival Theatre (OPFT) is a professional theatre company in Oak Park, Illinois, under contract with Actors' Equity Association. The company was founded in 1975 by Marion Kaczmar, an Oak Park resident and arts patron, and performed Renaissance works, almost exclusively by William Shakespeare, until 2004, when it broadened its scope to classics of other eras. Its outdoor venue has been Austin Gardens, a wooded park near downtown Oak Park within walking distance from restaurants, Frank Lloyd Wright landmarks, and Metra and CTA trains. To attract a greater following, Renaissance, classical, and modern American works were added to the offerings, some being produced indoors in historic Farson-Mills Home and, in the 2010-11 season, in the studio space in the Madison Street Theatre.
Amy McKenzie is an American producer, director, and actress. She is one of the founders of the New Age Vaudeville theatre company and the Third Avenue Playhouse.
An Evening With Elmore & Gwendolyn Putts, The Neighbors Next Door is an American musical comedy, with a book, music, and lyrics by Richard O’Donnell, directed by Amy McKenzie, and performed by the New Age Vaudeville theater company in Chicago.
James B. McKenzie was an American theater producer best known for heading the Westport Country Playhouse, the American Conservatory Theater, and the Peninsula Players.
Amy Herzog is an American playwright. Her play 4000 Miles, which ran Off-Broadway in 2011, was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Her play Mary Jane, which ran Off-Broadway in 2017, won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. Herzog's plays have been produced Off-Broadway, and have received nominations for, among others: the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Actor and Actress ; the Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play ; and Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Actress in a Play (Belleville). She was a finalist for the 2012–2013 and 2016–2017 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
It's Only a Play is a play by Terrence McNally. The play originally opened off-off-Broadway in 1982. It was revived off-Broadway in 1986, and on Broadway in 2014. The plot concerns a party where a producer, playwright, director, actors and their friends eagerly wait for the opening night reviews of their Broadway play.
Pamela Gaye Walker is an American actress, writer, director, and producer for film and theatre. She is a member of Actors' Equity Association (AEA), and Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (SAG-AFTRA). She is the founder and President of Ghost Ranch Productions. She is known for Shakti's Retreat (2013) and Trifles (2009).