All this month on NPR's Morning Edition, you've been hearing about how theaters across the country have evolved after being rocked by a few years of shutdown, illness, and social unrest. You can find the entire six-part Next Stage series on NPR's website. Closer to home, Bloomington-Normal theater groups have felt those same pressures.
As with any performing arts organization, operations at Community Players Theatre in Bloomington came to an abrupt halt in 2020. But unlike professional theater companies that struggled finding ways to keep employees working and paid, Community Players is a passion project of theater-loving volunteers.
The Women’s Club of Bloomington organized a play performed at Turner Hall on March 6, 1923 — and Community Players Theatre was born.
That’s according to Bruce Parrish, president of the board and resident historian for Community Players (CPT). Parrish’s involvement began in 1975. After studying theater and elementary education at Illinois Wesleyan University, he was unexpectedly thrust into a role in “1776” — and has been there ever since. Parrish taught in Bloomington public schools for more than three decades.
“I got there and helped a little bit with the set. I had been a tech person somewhat at Wesleyan,” Parrish said in an interview with WGLT. “Gosh, one blooms into a second, to a third. You don’t realize what you’re doing. I went into the shop, house and grounds — all those different jobs. That where I was interconnected.”
“That’s kind of what happens,” said Nick Benson, vice president of the CPT board and an arts administrator at the Center for Performing Arts at Illinois State University. Benson first got involved at CPT in 2016 with a production of “Shrek.”
“You come, and we’re going to make sure you have a place to be,” he said. “Everyone is doing all they can, knowing, in some cases, if you’re not the one doing it, there might not be anyone at that moment that has the time to do it.”
Now celebrating their 100th season, the people who make up Community Players do so purely for their love of the arts and a desire to connect with audiences and each other. That was even the case during the pandemic.
“We needed to keep the theater going,” said Benson. “There’s a passion for it. We know there’s a need in the community for it, even though there are a lot of community theaters in this town.”
Indeed, Bloomington-Normal has a strong legacy of community theater, characterized as a group of semi-professionals and theater hobbyists, plus professional actors and technicians working as volunteers. Community Players is the longest- running of the local troupes, but certainly not the only place to see a play in the Twin Cities.
Rather than viewing other theater companies as competition, Benson said they need each other.
“We all do different things,” he said. “We all have a different niche that we fill.”
Benson’s two-year term as president of the board of governors rotated out in June 2020, a few months after the company shut down operations for what everyone thought would be a few weeks.
“We were doing what every organization was doing: sitting, waiting and hoping,” Benson said. “That was all we could do because we had no information other than, ‘Go home, stay safe and we will come back when we can.’ We went home, we tried to stay safe and we just kept waiting.”
During the pandemic shutdown, something that had, for decades, been Community Players' biggest asset — owning their building — suddenly became a liability. Unlike professional theaters, they were not eligible for initial fiscal flotation devices like the Payment Protection Program that required paid employees.
“Thankfully, we were fiscally solvent and knew that we could keep paying the bills,” Benson said.
“Once we realized that this thing wasn’t going away in a couple months, the board and the community really came together with many ideas about how to do something,” said Emily Ohmart, who works full-time for a web design company and serves as marketing chair for Community Players. She joined the organization with “Into the Woods” in 2018 as a way to meet people and reconnect with her artistic past doing choir and theater in high school.
“Theater people are just the best people,” she said. “I knew that I wanted to make friends and join a community.”
The company managed two performances of “Big Fish” before stay-at-home orders went into effect in March 2020. While managing day jobs at home and online school for their children, the members of Community Players still managed to produce shows online. A collage of videos connected a Brady Bunch-style chorus of Zoom boxes singing “Seasons of Love,” from the musical "Rent." And “The Show Must Go On” was a collection of submitted songs presented cabaret style for virtual audiences.
“’Show Must Go On,’ for us, was a light in that darkness,” Ohmart said. “It was a way for us to express ourselves, to participate as a community even though we were all at home. To see that finished product come together and feel like you worked as a team to make it happen — it was a lovely way to spend parts of the pandemic.”
Bucking the trend set by professional theater companies that have seen a drop in attendance compared to pre-pandemic levels, ticket sales are up at Community Players since returning to live performances in fall 2021. As audiences returned, however, they noticed the same mustard-hued seats installed in the 1980s. Delayed, but undeterred, a $100,000 fundraising campaign to reseat the theater on Robinhood Lane with new chairs and extra wheelchair access is once again underway.
The pandemic is certainly not the first storm weathered by Community Players. Through the Great Depression, Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam War, they put on shows. During World War II, Community Players put on a series of small cast, one-acts so that they had enough performers. “Man of La Mancha” opened two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“There’s a pressure there to make sure we’re putting something out,” Ohmart said. “It’s not a weight. It’s a joyful pressure. We know that we’re going to come out on the other side because of the community we’ve built and the volunteer spirit of every single person that makes this theater what it is. Something is going to happen. We know it will. It always does.”
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” runs Nov 4-20 at Community Players Theatre, 201 Robinhood Lane in Bloomington. “Holiday on Robinhood Lane” takes place Dec. 8-11, and a roaring '20s-themed gala will take place early in 2023. Tickets, information on sponsoring a seat and more information can be found at communityplayers.org.
