Another one bites the dust:
Apple Tree Theatre, my home as Resident SM for the last 4 seasons, has closed permanently, as of Friday afternoon. I was notified by voicemail.
I was finishing up my pre-pro week for the first show of the season, and am now out of work for the season. This theatre had been around as long as Steppenwolf, and had been struggling for a long, long time. Sad to see it end.
http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_theater_loop/2009/09/apple-tree-theatre-falls.htmlAfter 26 years of productions on Chicago's North Shore and 40 years of educational programs, Apple Tree Theatre's board of directors plans to release a note Monday saying the Highland Park theater is going out of business, effective immediately.
In the note, Apple Tree says its doors will close, with the entire 2009-10 season canceled.
"This decision has not been made without a great deal of soul searching," the note says, "and only after exhaustive efforts to explore every possible avenue of financial support that would enable us to keep the doors open and the wonderful services and traditions alive."
The note says further that the theater has laid off all its staff (there were six full-time positions, along with numerous instructors and actors who had expected to work with the theater). Students of the theater are told they will either receive refunds for their tuition or be offered alternate options.
"It's the right business decision to make," said executive director Mark Weston on Saturday. "But it's very emotional for many of us."
Weston said that he was working with other area theaters to honor Apple Tree subscription tickets. "I want to do right by our core believers," he said. However, subscribers won't be able to get their money back.
Apple Tree was founded as the Eileen Boevers Performing Arts Workshop in 1970.
Eileen Boevers mug In 1983, the late Boevers (left, in 2005) expanded operations to include a professional theater company, which she dubbed the Apple Tree Theatre (she lived on Apple Tree Lane). The company started off in the same Highland Park church basement that launched the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, though most North Shore theater-goers will remember the theater as being housed on the second floor of a strip mall in downtown Highland Park.
The Equity-affiliated theater was especially known for its contemporary plays and small-but-bold musicals, many of which Boevers directed herself.
Boevers died last January at the age of 68.
After losing its longtime space, Apple Tree, once an illustrious North Shore theater, has languished in inadequate quarters in the Karger Center in Highland Park, its budget and audience dwindling.