In early August of 2001, the cast of Gypsy under the direction of Clark Neher, prepared to take the stage at 126 South 5th Street in DeKalb. The first production at the new home for Stage Coach Players. Along with the accompanying butterflies that come with opening night, the anticipation of the proverbial smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd certainly hung in the air.
“Gypsy has long been considered one of the best American musicals. Expectations therefore were sky high about the presentation,” Neher recalls.
Stage Coach Players had just closed the old theatre with a week-long production of the musical, The Fantasticks. Gavin Wilson, who played El Gallo in the production remembers the final performance being quite emotional. The lines, he said, “…were supposed to be poignant in a general way about life and ended up being more about the end of an era.”
With nearly five full decades producing live theatre in the old pole barn, the theatre had a rich and storied history of well-produced shows. The group created plays and musicals which when finished and struck, both truly and metaphorically faded into the backstage and green room. The green room was small, so props, costumes and many set pieces ‘lived’ in the green room proper and a cloistered attic along with a small shed attached to the building.
Theatre strikes were tradition with the cast and crew of the show who have spent weeks creating the show that had closed working side by side with the cast and crew of the production whose production would follow. Hard work followed by hugs and often tears. In this instance however, set pieces, props and costumes were loaded into trucks that caravanned and delivered the items to the new theatre.
The focus quickly shifted to opening that new theatre. With no precedents for costumes, props, lighting, sound, etcetera in the new space, the crew of Gypsy went about utilizing the new space as best they could. They made do with the space and placement of items, and then without missing a beat, got to work becoming accustomed with their new home. By opening night, everything was ready to go and the audience entered the space for the first time.
The new theatre had many amenities the old lacked. Seats in the new auditorium are cushioned and allow for more leg room making the audience more comfortable. And in the hot summers, the air conditioning made a difference for both audiences and actors. “We were of course impressed at how professional the building (looked), both inside and out,” Marilyn James offered when asked her thoughts about the new building. James, and her husband Nelson, who had been involved with theatre since the early 1950’s added, “We were also a little sad at giving up our old spot where we had done so much (theatre).”
As the actors waited in the wings for their respective cues, everyone in the building was filled with excitement, like preparing to open a new toy. The cast and crew perhaps more so than they had ever been before an opening night. Terri Crain Goodman, who portrayed Mama Rose in the production remembered being exhilarated to walk out on the new stage for the first time. “Being the first show in the new building was thrilling and I felt like we had a responsibility to make it a really great production for these larger audiences,” she stated.
Greg Anderson, who played Herbie said Gypsy, “Went without a hitch.” The production paid no attention to Murphy’s Law. In addition, Anderson noted that surprisingly there were no technical issues with the production. “The lights were fine… Everything worked. We didn’t have any huge technical problems or logistical issues,” he said, adding with a small laugh, “Given what could go wrong on any given evening, and the fact that all these systems were new to us… Who knew… We could have had an electrical outage the first night when everything’s turned on. But it worked.”
As important for the group, the audiences seemed to really be excited about the new building and enjoyed the new space along with the production of Gypsy. Which of course continued with the following production, The Importance of Being Earnest, the show that closed the season. So after a total of eight performances, the cast and crew went back to their regular lives with the knowledge and appreciation that they helped bring the first play at the Fifth Street theatre to life. And as they always have, Stage Coach Players prepared for their next production and pondered how to utilize the wonderful space they now owned. An act they continued to perform over the course of the next 19 years.
