VERO BEACH — The final curtains of the 2010/11 Riverside Theater season dropped May 1, when matinee performances of “Cobb” and “Buddy” came to an end.
Audience members walked out through the lobby while actors exited backstage, leaving the theaters quiet and empty.
By the time the curtain goes up again Oct. 27, revealing an ornate Paris apartment interior that is the single set for “Boeing, Boeing” – the upcoming season’s first show – the theater will have been ‘dark’ for nearly six months.
Sure, there are a couple of entertaining Children’s Theater productions on the Waxlax Stage in July and six comedy shows during the off season, but no Main Stage musicals or serious Second Stage dramas to satisfy the theater desires of island playgoers who haven’t left town.
The darkness of the theater is an illusion, though.
Despite the long hiatus, intense activity continues behind the scenes throughout summer and fall.
“People think there is nothing much going on here this time of year, but we have 40 people working full time during summer,” says Artistic Director Allen Cornell. “We have carpenters, electricians, painters, props people, costume people and designers busy preparing for the next season. As soon as that last show is struck, we go right into it.”
Besides “Boeing, Boeing,” Cornell and his creative team are producing three major Broadway musicals from the ground up, along with three second stage shows, and most of the creative and physical work to materialize those imaginary worlds has to be done before the first opening night in late October.
As of mid-July, that French apartment is already built on the Main Stage, complete with artifacts from Paris flea markets that make it 1960’s authentic.
Carpenters are working in the shop on the set for the second musical, “The Full Monty,” and the plans and scale model for the set of the season’s final big show, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” are in the theater.
“We are looking at those plans and getting ready to break them down into working drawings that will go into the shop,” says Cornell.
“Forum” won’t be seen on stage until next April but the preparations are not premature according to Cornell, who says he learned a tough lesson in the 2010/11 season.
“Last season was the first time we did three major shows in a row, and we just simply started too late,” he says. “It backed up on us and by the time we got to ‘The Producers,’ we were way behind. People were working all night for days on end trying to get that show finished and onstage. It was not an efficient way to do things.”
As sets are built and costumes sewn, the collaborative creative work of shaping the upcoming shows goes on apace.
“I was on a conference call for 90 minutes the other day with the director and choreographer of “Music Man,” says Cornell, who is designing the show, which will run from Feb. 23 to March 25. “And that was just discussing the first act, hashing out things like how we transition scenically from the opening where Harold Hill gets off the train to Main Street.”
Preparation isn’t just happening at the theater, either.
As Riverside’s reputation and reach increase, getting ready for the next season has become an international endeavor, with Ray Klausen, the three-time Emmy Award-winning designer of “Boeing” and “Forum” scouring Paris for the perfect 1960’s phone or light switch, while Production Manager Kyle Atkins does research and casting in New York.
“I started at Riverside as an intern in 2008,” Atkins says, “and I’ve seen the theater transition from producing small shows to big Broadway-caliber theater that requires a tremendous amount of preparation. The scene shop operates 12 months a year with a minimum of four or five carpenters.”
Atkins, who was stage manager for Riverside productions such as “42nd Street” and “Cagney” before promotion to oversee all production departments and schedules, will be in New York until Labor Day.
Among other tasks, he will help select the actors for upcoming shows during three and half weeks of auditions and casting.
“We’ll have at least 100 equity actors this season and we are starting to get Broadway directors, too,” Atkins says. “We are trying to raise the level of our productions to meet their expectations.”
The off-season is also a time for maintaining and upgrading the theater.
“There are things you can only do when the audience isn’t here,” says Cornell. “We have maintenance to do on our flight system, the rigging of the counterweight system over the stage. Every single light in the theater is taken down, cleaned, refocused – that is 300 different instruments. There is general reworking of the shop space to accommodate the new sets.”
Administrative and support staff are hard at work, too.
“The marketing and sales departments are very busy over the summer,” says Marketing Director Oscar Sales. “We sell advertising for the playbills for the year, solicit corporate memberships and do all the marketing and ads for the children’s theatre productions. We also plan our radio, TV and print advertising and other marketing material for the coming season, including brochures, postcards and invitations.”
The three-person marketing and sales team does research for releases about actors, playwrights and productions, creates programs and identifies potential theater patrons who aren’t already in Riverside’s database.
Cornell says he looks forward to the summer “off-season.”
“I love this time of year, because it is really the only time I get to concentrate on working with the staff on an artistic level. As we get into the fall, my job becomes more about dealing with ongoing business of the Riverside Theater, working with our board and the patrons and the audience, but right now it is more about what are we creating.”
