Interview with Hoosier Shakespeare Festival
Interview with Hoosier Shakespeare Festival
Catch my interview with the Artistic Director of the Hoosier Shakespeare Festival Dennis Henry. We discuss the founding of the company, moving to year-round programming, and locations in Indiana where they performed The Tempest and Richard III this summer. Plus why Shakespeare is important for children to experience, and more. (More interviews here.)
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If you’d rather read the interview, a rough transcript is below.
Interview with Hoosier Shakespeare Festival
Michael Van Osch: Hey, it’s Michael Van Osch. Welcome to the HARK Journal interview series. Another great interview coming for you today. And before we get into that, if you haven’t checked out our daily Shakespeare meditations on HARKjournal.com, please check those out. People are signing up really from all over the world.
So we’re so happy about that. Check them out HARKjournal.com but this is our interview series. And today we’re really pleased to welcome Dennis Henry. The Artistic Director of the Hoosier Shakespeare Festival. Hey Dennis, how are you? Thanks for joining us.
Dennis Henry: Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m doing all right.
Michael Van Osch: Good. What’s new and exciting up in your area - you’re in Marion, Indiana. Is that right?
Dennis Henry: Yeah. That’s where we’re based. I actually live in Kokomo, Indiana about 30 miles away, and I teach at the Indiana University in Kokomo, and then we’re based in Marion and we do shows in Marion and Kokomo and Wabash and Fairmount.
Yeah. All around the region.
Michael Van Osch: Excellent. Yeah. And we’re going to get into that in a little bit. So, so tell us a little bit about Hoosier Shakespeare from the perspective of you know, when it started, how you guys got started because I know it’s really not that old.
Dennis Henry: No just 2016 was the first summer season.
And this is just my second year at Hoosier Shakespeare Festival. It was started by Greg Fiebig, who is a professor at Indiana Wesleyan University, and his son, Jeremy, who happens to run the Sweet Tea Shakespeare Festival and went to the master’s program at Mary Baldwin University, that’s affiliated with American Shakespeare Center.
And while he was down there, both he and Greg became enamored of the style of Shakespeare that was going on down there. Has a lot to do my back background too. I worked with that company a lot as an actor and director between 2001 in 2011. So I know a lot of the folks down there and very familiar with this style of, for lack of a better word original practices.
It’s not my favorite term, but that’s the one the industry is using right now. So both he and Jeremy decided to start their companies and their respective locations around the same time. And yeah. So I think Greg started planning for it in 2014 and took a long time to get everything in place and talk to people in the community.
And every summer, except last summer it’s been a couple of Shakespeare shows. And in the last couple of years, we’ve been moving to programming times other than summer as well.
Michael Van Osch: Great, great. So it is expanding. That’s fantastic. Now, are you a professional company? Semi-professional tell us how that works.
Dennis Henry: We, we pay all of our actors. There were non-equity at, at this time. That’s something we’re considering for the future, but not right now. It’s modest stipends. But we work on increasing them each year. And one thing that’s a little bit unique about our casting is that we look for a company of 12 each year four of whom must be undergraduate studies.
And at least four who must be professionals with experience, others can be a combination. Last year we ended up with eight professionals and five undergrad students and the students get paid as well. We’re not just using them for their labor. The idea is that we want to present professional quality work and have those folks with lots of experience.
But at the same time, we have an important educational mission to help younger folks learn from the professionals in the company.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Great. And it sounds like you’re obviously performing in different places when you do your Shakespeare shows. Tell us a little bit about that. How did that come up?
Dennis Henry: Yeah, well the most locations are outdoors and that really developed and Greg has a strong philosophy in doing his research, just starting this company. He believes that most companies that go out of business go out of business because they spend all their money paying really high rent on a building. So he is determined to never have to pay for any rehearsal space or performance space. And he’s pretty good at that. The times that we have to pay, it’s been pretty minimal, but most of the spaces he’s able to negotiate with local cities performing the park or the really nice - there’s a private gardens in Wabash called the Charley Creek Gardens that we perform in every year.
But sometimes at the downtown courtyard in Marion, we have performed here on the campus of IU. We happen to have a really beautiful outdoor stage here on campus. So that was lucky when we expanded to Kokomo last year. So yeah, that’s the general philosophy we’ve been recently gifted a plot of land though in Marion, just about a mile outside of downtown.
And we’re looking into it. It was an old park that really hadn’t been used anymore and had been bought up. And so we’re looking to possibly make that combining with the city, something that could be our regular place to perform when in Marion but also could be used for other purposes. So that’s in very early planning stages.
Michael Van Osch: Wow. That’s great though. And thank goodness for people that gift things like that to arts organizations. Cause it makes all the difference.
Dennis Henry: Yeah. Yeah. You can’t do it without them. Yeah, absolutely.
Michael Van Osch: So it’s I think based on what I read and correct me if I’m wrong, is that you guys have already done your shows for this summer.
I think that was in June. Tell us about that. What shows did you do and why did you choose those shows?
Dennis Henry: Yeah, we did The Tempest and we did Richard III and I directed The Tempest and Richard III was directed by Benjamin Curns. I chose them because coming out of the last, oh five years, this country has had wanted to see a play in Richard III about someone who would do anything to get power and stay in power.
And then I wanted to see a play in The Tempest in which somebody who has obtained absolute power. And so I think that kind of forgiveness and the kind of looking at the power struggles of our country right now just were, went really hand in hand together. And I think that resonated to the the people who saw those two plays in rep.
Yeah.
Michael Van Osch: And it’s amazing. You know, I talked to a lot of people in the Shakespeare realm in North America on a weekly basis. And, and those themes are always kind of coming up these days. Of course. And The Tempest seems to be also done a lot too, for those very similar reasons, because you know, it’s always a mirror to society and what’s going on, and it really helps us to think.
And isn’t that one of the best things about art?
Dennis Henry: Yes, absolutely. And just working when I was able to work with the very talented Craig Esther who played Prospero. And going over those speeches and just kinda on one-on-one sessions going through I felt we were going through the journey together of discovering just what it takes to, to really forgive.
And Craig made the comment after the experience was over and it might’ve been in a Facebook posting, if I recall, and it talked about learning to forgive others, In that you have to learn to forgive yourself first in order for that to happen. And that was something that came to him about this by playing Prospero.
To go through that journey. And I thought it was really touching and it was you know, and you’re absolutely right. That’s art at its best when we’re learning things. No matter how late in life. Absolutely.
Michael Van Osch: And so 2020 summer didn’t happen like everyone else. So, so did you get good, good crowds for June of this, of this summer for your shows?
Dennis Henry: They were down a bit. Yeah, even though it was outdoors. And a lot of the local restrictions have been lifted at that point. Don’t know if there’ll be coming back now but they were down. Not quite sure why, we did happen to have a bad heat spell in June, June was hotter than July, just as an aberration.
I don’t know if that kept people from our outdoor shows. But also it might be just having the year off. People forgot about it or not everybody was ready to go back out in public. And it was probably a combination of those things. But that’s going to be one of our big goals in the next year because we are free.
And I, so there should never be a reason why we’re losing audiences. Like we shouldn’t lose audiences even in a big economic town downturn because of that. So this next year a lot’s going to be looking into, Hey, how can we get more people to see it. We were really happy with the quality of the shows and the great cast we got.
I think we happened to get a better cast than we would have been able to because of the pandemic because I moved all the auditions to online. And so we ended up getting people from Chicago who I didn’t think would come down rural, rural-ish, Indiana. Yeah. And we had people far away, so Orlando and New York in the cast.
So And there were some people who were unemployed that otherwise wouldn’t have been available to take six weeks out of it to come down, do a show. So we kind of lucked out with that. But yeah we’re really working on getting more people to see what.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. And like you say, hopefully, this next strain won’t affect next summer’s shows and people will be used to going back out and that sort of thing.
But you know, before I forget, I want to read a little bit of your bio for the folks because you have obviously an amazing resume. Like all the people I talked to and I mentioned you’re currently an instructor at, or you mentioned, of theater at Indiana University in Kokomo. You’re the Artistic Director here.
You have an MFA in directing for stage and screen from Johnny Carson School at University of Nebraska, Lincoln. And you remember of Actor’s Equity, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and Society of American Fight Directors. So you do a lot of directing there. It says, there for Hoosier Shakes?
You’ve done Santaland Diaries, Complete works of Shakespeare Abridged, the Tempest, and you have really performed all over the place. More than 40 US states and national tours with the American Shakespeare Center, National Theater for Arts and Education, Connecticut.
Michael Van Osch: What does that traveling and what does that working in all these different places, what do you feel that it’s done for your career, but mostly what do you think it’s done for yourself as a person?
Dennis Henry: That’s a fabulous question. As I was yeah, between 2001 and 2011, I spent about seven out of those 10 years on the road.
Doing a ton of different plays and a lot of exciting things about that. Well, one living in hotels, you don’t ever have to make your own bed. Seeing so many different audiences and how they respond to theater and a lot of what I did not exclusively, but most of it actually, which was, was Shakespeare you know, on tour one day.
You’re playing a giant proscenium house with 1500 people in it. And the next day you are in a grass field at a botanical gardens. And then you’re in a high school in coal country, Eastern Kentucky for middle-schoolers. And, and so I’ve played to just about every different demographic and socioeconomic class. And really almost across the board, almost everybody responds to the same things in the stories. And in doing a lot of regional practices too, I got to do a lot of audience interaction. So like in jokes and the same interactions, people just really respond to it.
Not only interaction, but also when you’re telling a good story No things stand out about high school audiences. It’s, it’s 11 in the morning and you’ve been up since seven 30, setting up the set and and they’re watching and they’re like begging Juliet to wake up before Romeo kills himself.
And they’re like shouting it out from audience. And that sort of thing is, is very exciting. And if you’re just doing in the dark proscenium theater in New York, or at a big regional theater, those things are awesome. I’m not disparaging them at all. But I think there’s something very exciting about playing for people who don’t typically go or aren’t the theater-going crowd.
And I think the touring, at least the touring I’ve done allows you to do that. And I just think it, it gives you more empathy for people to see that the divisions that we have constructed by ourselves and they’re arbitrary. And that there is hope, right? When you can reach people with, with art regardless of, of who they are, where they’re from.
That means there’s hope even in the chaos of our recent years.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Right. And boy, do we need it? So what would you say that you know, let’s say someone has never experienced Shakespeare. And we say, well, we believe that it’s important that these 11-year-olds see this Romeo and Juliet that’s coming.
And someone says, well, I don’t understand why. And we all know in the arts, but how do you answer that? And so like, what is a one-time play in the afternoon to a bunch of 11-year-olds or high school students or whatever it is, what does it do for them? Because I always love this topic of the Arts, but especially Shakespeare.
Dennis Henry: Yeah. Big question. Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things is having that live interaction and why it’s different than putting on the Leonardo DiCaprio movie from a few years ago. Right. When I was in school, they showed the one from the sixties. So every, every time, you know, every, every 10 years people talk about how theater is dying and there’s too many other competitions and there’s so much stuff and there is always more stuff and more electronic stuff. Yeah. But you, you can’t get being in the same room with somebody else from the electronic devices.
And that’s an exciting thing. And I think the more technology we get, the more people are actually going to want theater. And I think exposing to somebody at that, when they’re young of having the collective experience of everybody being in that big room together and, you know, yelling out, wake up, wake up Juliet seeing hearing somebody laugh at a joke and that makes you laugh too, because It was just that extra little bit of stimulus that you probably wouldn’t have left sitting by yourself, watching a video having a collective gasp, these things really happen.
Richard III getting sometimes applauded and sometimes booed by our audiences this summer. Love it. You, you can’t get that from from a movie, you can’t get that in truth in the dark in theater. Sometimes you can, if the production invites it, you might get a little bit of response, but really it’s the being in the same room with, with other people and experiencing something.
And, yeah, eleven’s not too young for that, and five’s not too young for that. We need that human contact and that that experience socially.
Michael Van Osch: And, you know, and thank you for what you and everybody there does because whether you hear it enough or not, you all are making a difference and you may not see it all the time.
You got to see it on tour, et cetera. But, I just, I, I try to thank artists as much as I can because number one, it’s not easy work. It, you know, looks glamorous at times, but it’s usually not. And then, but it’s, it’s got a real purpose. It’s got a real purpose and. So again, I appreciate that.
So thank you. Yeah, so where do you see or what’s coming in the next year or so for your company?
Dennis Henry: Yeah. So the first few years, yes, we did exclusively the summer shows. But we’re looking to reach out a little bit more and partly just to expand the audience overall and doing things like we’re going to do Christmas Carol that’s this December and part of the idea with that is twofold. One, it is a show that we will charge for, even though we don’t, we’re going to keep our summers free of charge you want to to help keep that summer both free and professional. Right? So giving folks something that’s a little bit more.
Easy sell to come on out. And also the hope with doing other programming is that maybe somebody who would never see a Shakespeare show, whose introduction was Romeo and Juliet, having to read that when they were 14 and, and being bored to death, right? Because we get introduced to Shakespeare at the absolute wrong age when we decide we hate everything.
So, there’s certain people who are like, oh, that’s just intellectual stuff and it’s not fun. So maybe they come see a Christmas Carol and see our style of doing things and they have a good time and maybe they’re more willing to come out to the summer. Hey, it’s free. Risk-free right. Yeah. So, so it’s a way to make money and it’s a way to reach out.
It’s one saying let’s do a show that’s fun. And we’re going to do a spring show too. Looking for things that are small cast and Shakespeare adjacent, like last year we did Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged. I’ve been reading. A lot of good scripts and a lot of bad scripts and we’ll be deciding something soon.
And then next June we’ll have our next summer season. And I don’t think we’ve officially announced, but it’s going to be Macbeth and The Merry Wives of Windsor. So some things that are really gonna contrast. You’ve got the heavy tragedy and the sitcom a little bit.
Michael Van Osch: That’s great. Yeah.
Fantastic. Well, you know, I mean, I won’t keep you much longer. Thanks so much for joining us here. I’ve got my final question that I ask everybody that we interview and that is if Shakespeare was on this zoom call with us and you got to ask him one question, what would you ask?
Dennis Henry: Okay. I’ve been, I saw it earlier.
And I’ve been debating a few different ones. So here’s what I’m going to go with, the cynical one. I think titles like As You Like It and What You Will are the ones that he hated - those plays anyway, gave them a good sarcastic title. I like Twelfth Night, much better than As You Like It. And so I want to know were those really cynical, sarcastic titles?
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. That’s a good one. I haven’t heard one even close to that before. I like it. Well done. Well done. Well, hang on after we say goodbye here, but last thing your website is Hoosiershakes.org or.com
Dennis Henry: .com. HoosierShakes.com.
Michael Van Osch: People check it out, go on there.
And that’s the place to make a donation. That sort of thing. Please do. Again, Dennis, Dennis Henry. Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Best of luck with the rest of the year.
Dennis Henry: Thanks so much. Thanks for having me take care.
Michael Van Osch: Thank you, you too.
