Heading into its fifth anniversary season, Rubber City Shakespeare Company on Friday night announced a name change, new educational programs and its new 2017-18 lineup of shows in downtown Akron.
The news was announced at Rubber City’s gala fundraiser, which featured a performance of the comical The Shakespeare Revue. First, the company will change its name to Rubber City Theatre effective June 20 to reflect its new direction in programming.
Rather than doing nearly all Shakespearean plays, the company will now offer Shakespearean plays, modern classics, musicals and new works. The reason for the change? Rubber City realized it was time to newly distinguish itself as a downtown theater.
“We were getting a lot of people that were confused between us and Ohio Shakespeare Festival now that they’re year-round,’’ operating at Greystone Hall downtown, said Producing Artistic Director Dane Leasure. “It’s giving us greater flexibility to provide professional quality theater at an affordable price, and it’s not just Shakespeare.”
When Rubber City stepped out of its Shakespearean mode to produce the epic musical Aida last winter, the company enjoyed sold-out audiences. The musical was such a huge success, it helped clinch the theater’s decision to widen its artistic offerings for its fifth season.
Rubber City also has added Associate Artistic Director Sarah Bailey to its staff to develop new year-round educational offerings in partnership with Spotlight School of the Arts, run by Marissa Leenaarts in Medina. The Akron theater, which previously had offered mainly in-school workshops, will roll out its new youth education program with camps in June: the Something Rotten Shakespeare Workshop June 12-23 and Greek Week June 26-30, both at Rubber City, at the Well CDC, 647 E. Market St. in downtown Akron.
Rubber City also will offer Disney summer stock opportunities for youth with The Lion King Kids July 10-21 and The Aristocats Kids July 24-Aug. 4. Students ages 7-14 will take technique classes each morning at Spotlight School of the Arts in dance, voice and acting, followed by musical rehearsals in the afternoons, when cast members ages 5-6 will also join them.
On the final day of each camp, the students will put on a fully produced musical at Rubber City Theatre, where kids will help work on the set, make props and create costumes. (See www.rubbercityshakes.com for more information and to sign up for all summer camps.)
“She [Leenaarts] has a gorgeous facility and we have a theater, so we were like, ‘Let’s make this magic happen,’ ’’ Leasure said of the new partnership between the arts studio and theater.
“You are as good as your team, and I’ve been working with Marissa and Dane for a very long time and we are always coming up with ideas’’ for new theater opportunities for young performers, said Bailey, former education director at Weathervane Playhouse, where she worked in various capacities for more than 13 years.
Leasure, currently an adjunct theater instructor at Cuyahoga Community College, formerly worked as education coordinator at Weathervane, where Leenaarts also has served as a teaching artist, choreographer and director.
Another element of Rubber City’s five-year strategic plan includes developing a new works series with new offerings by playwrights, composers and lyricists. The theater also will employ two Equity actors in its fifth season as the small professional company transitions toward operating with a full Equity agreement.
Here’s the new season lineup:
• Pippin Aug. 11-27, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by Roger Hirson. Young prince Pippin searches for true happiness and fulfillment in this musical, which Leasure will direct with a vaudeville-style spin. He chose the musical as a juxtaposition to the story of another prince, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which comes next in the season.
• Hamlet Oct. 6-22, by William Shakespeare. Rubber City will produce the Shakespearean favorite for the first time, set in a modern context and directed by Leasure.
• A Christmas Carol Dec. 1-23, by Charles Dickens, adapted by Leasure and Casey Robinson, directed by Michele McNeal. Rubber City is reprising the holiday classic that was a hit at the theater last Christmas.
• Twelfth Night Feb. 9-25, 2018, by Shakespeare, directed by Leasure. This story about shipwrecked Viola, who dresses up like a man and is employed in the court of Duke Orsino, features a strong female lead. Rubber City is producing the comedy of mistaken identities for the second time.
• Equivocation April 6-15, 2018, by Bill Cain. The Ohio premiere, directed by Leasure, is a contemporarily written high-stakes political thriller about Shagspeare (an alternate spelling of the Bard’s name), who is confronted with a moral and artistic dilemma when he is commissioned in 1605 to write the “true historie” of a terrorist plot to assassinate King James I.
• The Crucible June 8-24, 2018, by Arthur Miller. Rubber City chose this drama, directed by Chris Simmons, to dive into a modern classic. The story about the Puritan witch trials in Salem is both a gripping historical play and a timely parable of contemporary society.
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 .