theater professors propose local festival

Terry Converse, center-left, and Will Shephard, center-right, discuss their Shakespeare in Sandpoint festival concept with, from right, POAC board member Marilyn Sabella, Mayor Gretchen Hellar, City Councilman John Reuter and University of Montana theater graduate Greta Weber. (Photo by DAVID GUNTER)

Theater professors propose festival

Shakespeare in Sandpoint

SANDPOINT — Economic development specialists have come and gone through Sandpoint, leaving voluminous, expensive and mostly unimplemented recommendations behind as the only evidence of their costly consultations.

The latest expert could have a better chance of success.

For one thing, he can claim another Northwest community as an example of how profitable his work can be. Given his age — he turned 445 this year — it's hard to argue that he lacks real world experience.

The fellow's name is Will, as in Shakespeare, and two professors in theater and the Performing Arts want to see what he could do here. They point to the impact on Ashland, Ore., where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is about to begin its 75th year.

“Ashland was the first, starting in 1935,” said Will Shephard, a professor in the Department of Music and Performing Arts at California State University in Monterey Bay. “By 1965, it was the second-biggest tourist attraction in Oregon, second only to Crater Lake.”

Shephard recently traveled to Sandpoint with Terry Converse, a theater professor at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., to discuss the idea with members of the arts and education communities, as well as Sandpoint city officials.

In attendance were Sandpoint Mayor Gretchen Hellar; city councilman and board member for the Arts Alliance and Panida Theater, John Reuter; Lake Pend Oreille School District Superintendent Dick Cvitanich; perennial arts supporter and Pend Oreille Arts Council board member Marilyn Sabella; and Greta Weber, a Sandpoint High School theater veteran, who recently graduated from the theater program at the University of Montana.

“Most Shakespeare festivals start small, but they're amazing in terms of their growth,” Shephard told the group during a lunchtime gathering at Ivano's Ristorante. “They can become year-round, multi-million dollar operations.”

That has been the experience in Ashland, where the festival wound up its 2009 season last month with record attendance of more than 400,000 people and historically high revenues of more than $17 million. According to a 2008 environmental impact study, the festival generated more than $58 million in restaurant, hotel and tourism-related spending for the Oregon town, which has a population of approximately 22,000.

The theater professors cited The Festival at Sandpoint as reason to believe a Shakespeare Festival could thrive in the same environment.

“It's rare that a place with the scenic beauty of Sandpoint would also have an event such as The Festival at Sandpoint,” Shephard said. “You've got a powerful combination of a small town surrounded by scenic attractions.”

Ashland, on the other hand, started with none of the natural advantages that Sandpoint offers. In response, the Oregon city did everything it could to transform itself by taking a step back in time.

“They turned it into a visual feast,” Converse said.

“What they created was pageant and an Elizabethan experience,” Shephard added.

Sandpoint already has established a kind of “ritual” associated with performing arts, the educators explained. They envision the way in which audiences gather to picnic, sip wine and socialize before Festival at Sandpoint concerts as a model for enjoying theater events.

“Let me read you something Terry wrote,” Shephard said, at which point Converse reached into his jacket pocket and produced with, yes, a theatrical flourish, a four-line description of the proposed festival concept titled, “Imagine.”

“Imagine your toes, gently dipping in the lake, a vintage bottle of wine, a gourmet meal from Shakespeare's Kitchen, and a night with one of the Bard's great plays, shared with friends and family in a perfect Sandpoint sunset,” the CSU professor recited. “You're not dreaming. You're experiencing the enchantment of Shakespeare in Sandpoint.” 

Talk around the table quickly turned to what such an event might include. Converse and Shephard suggested singers, dancers and impromptu acting performances dotting the local landscape on days when the festival is going on. When the brainstorming session touched on possible venues, Sabella held out a future vision of what the stage could look like.

“We have an idea of where we'd like to be 10-15 years from now — a floating amphitheater adjacent to Memorial Field,” she said.

In the meantime, Hellar and Reuter pointed out that, along with the Panida Theater and Memorial Park, Sandpoint has a number of public spaces that might fit the bill.

“Why not Jeff Jones Square?” the mayor asked. “You could close the streets and put the audience right there.”

If the participants in the Farmer's Market were interested in going retro — about 400 years retro — that next-door event might take on a temporary Elizabethan flair to suit the mood while the festival was on, Hellar noted.

“We have so many potential venues, there's no reason you'd have to put every play on the same stage,” Reuter said, with he and Weber listing Great Northern and Lakeview parks, respectively, as possibilities.

City Beach also was discussed, but it was generally agreed that the logistics of foot and vehicular made it a difficult location for nightly plays in the summer. The participants shared an opinion about the two attributes that might create a perfect spot for the plays — they would take place under the stars and close to the downtown core.

“I like the idea of being able to eat dinner downtown and walk to the venue,” Cvitanich said. “It's good for the merchants and downtown is really the heartbeat, because it's where the people are.”

Additionally, the superintendent wanted to make sure the festival would include an educational component, something both Converse and Shephard said would be a cornerstone. By way of example, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival annually sends its actors to more than 100 schools, introducing students to the wonders of live theater and the language of Shakespeare.

Ashland works on an eight-month run, employing approximately 550 theater professionals using a budget of nearly $27 million. If the festival idea flies in Sandpoint, the professors said, every aspect would be scaled down.

Where Ashland mounts 11 plays, including classics by Shakespeare and works from contemporary playwrights, Sandpoint would roll out two plays and perform them for six to eight weeks, most likely in late-June and July. The cast would be made up of seven professional actors and an equal number of student actors, paid on different scales based on experience.

The overall first-year budget for actors, directors and associated costs, the two men estimated, would be about $60,000.

“One wants to be prudent on an investment like this, but you don't want to do it on the cheap,” said Shephard. “It needs to be professional caliber.”

“The first year has to look good,” Converse agreed.

If a premiere season of Shakespeare in Sandpoint takes place, the first two plays performed would be “A Midsummer Night's Dream” and “The Tempest,” according to the WSU theater professor.

“The marketing scheme is all about repertory,” he said. “If someone comes into town for this kind of festival, they need to have the option of seeing more than one play.”

“We could conceivably begin planning a Shakespeare Festival for the summer of 2010 that would include a modular stage that could be used again in successive festivals,” Shephard wrote in an e-mail after the meeting. “The important thing with any dream is to take the first step. I think our initial meeting was a good beginning and now it's time to consider, 'How can Shakespeare in Sandpoint become a reality?'”

For more information on the proposed festival concept, contact Shephard at: wilhunsh@yahoo.com.