Shakespeare comes to Oak Meadow
By Gloria I. Wang
William Shakespeare once wrote, "All the world's a stage," but in the case of Los Gatos, Oak Meadow Park is his stage.
The Los Gatos Town Council recently gave its approval for a nine-performance Shakespeare Festival to come to town. The shows will run Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights between July 12 and July 28, taking place on a temporary stage at Oak Meadow Park.
The Festival Theatre Ensemble, a San Jose-based touring Shakespeare company, will perform three plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV, Part I, and an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Along with the shows, the ensemble will reach out to local schools, with interactive theater for elementary schools and an apprenticeship program for high schoolers.
At the Jan. 7 town council meeting, company founder and artistic director Bruce De Les Dernier explained the design of the 50-foot-long and 32-foot-high touring stage, located diagonally across the front of the planned bandstand, which will be topped by the Lyndon cupola. The two-story set, rebuilt and taken apart after every tour, is supposed to resemble a cross-section of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. An 8-foot fabric enclosure will contain seats for 200 as well as ticket and concession booths. While the shows are not going on, the seats will be put away and the fences closed in.
Mary Tomasi-Dubois represented the Friends of Los Gatos Community Theater, one of the collaborating groups for the festival. Tomasi-Dubois said there was a need to bring community theater back to town, especially on a professional level. After looking at several locations, the Friends decided that Oak Meadow Park would be least affected by the festival.
According to De Les Dernier, Oak Meadow's location near the freeway was a plus, as well as the size of the park itself. In addition, if the bandstand is completed in time for the festival, the festival would have a power supply and would not need to rent power.
Speaking on behalf of the Los Gatos Community Foundation, the other town organization involved in the festival, Paul Dubois pointed out that the ensemble's shows and programs were aimed at the family and could benefit Los Gatans of all ages.
"Clearly this is really going to be an asset for the town of Los Gatos, something that we're going to be very, very proud of, and I'm glad to see it put together in such a professional fashion," Mayor Randy Attaway said, commending the Friends and Foundation groups.
"I think this is an extraordinary way for us to continue our process of evolving more community events to allow the entire town to come together and experience things of a cultural nature," Councilman Joe Pirzynski said. "This really is exciting."
In 1994, De Les Dernier founded the Festival Theatre Ensemble, which has since performed at Shakespeare at Benbow Lake in Humboldt County and Saratoga's Wildwood Shakespeare Festival.
De Les Dernier said later that it will cost between $20,000 and $30,000 to put on the festival--to cover advertising, insurance, equipment and park rentals and to say the salaries of the 35 actors and technicians involved.
The ensemble looks to four funding sources, De Les Dernier said, which include corporate and private sponsorships and program advertisements from the business community. Also, the ensemble puts on fundraisers; in October, the group held a murder mystery dinner at a Saratoga winery that netted nearly $5,000. Most of the money comes, however, from ticket sales, which vary in cost from show to show. The cheapest ticket will most likely be the $8 student discount for the family-oriented Treasure Island, and the upper-end price limit $16 for general admission for the other shows.
According to Dubois, construction for the bandstand, on which the Lyndon cupola will sit, is expected to start in spring. De Les Dernier said, however, that "the [bandstand] itself really doesn't have any impact on whether we're there or not," since the ensemble was planning to use the bandstand merely as a roof for their dressing tents.
"If worse comes to worst, we'll just have to rent power, which means long cables--and more money," De Les Dernier said.
The next step is for the groups involved to obtain the proper permits, such as a special events permit from the town--"crossing the T's and dotting the I's," De Les Dernier said.
"We're feeling pretty confident now that it's pretty much a done deal," De Les Dernier said. "What we have now is a definite 'yes' with the event planning yet to be clarified."
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
