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As Curtain Falls On Theatre Program, Director Says It May Be Time To Exit The Stage

Guy Stephens
/
WNIJ

Rock Valley College theater director Mike Webb is getting ready for the new summer season of Starlight Theatre. He also was thinking about another season of the college's Studio Theatre in the fall. But Rock Valley recently announced it was dropping Studio Theatre, along with staff layoffs that also affect Starlight. And that has Webb thinking it might be time for him to go as well.

Preparing a theater season often takes months -- lining up the production rights, assembling the cast and crew and, of course rehearsals. Mike Webb was in the thick of it with Rock Valley College Starlight Theatre, even as he stole a few moments to look ahead, when he got the news the college's Studio Theatre was being put on hiatus due to budget problems.

That's got him talking out loud about retirement – something he'd never thought he'd say.  But he says events have taken an emotional toll on him.

"It's a tough financial time in the state of Illinois, obviously," Webb  says. "And then, you know, to be doing theater that's important to the community and Starlight's 50thseason. That's a long time. I've been here 32 of it, and I'm not as young as I was when I came here in 1985."

The reason the College gave for shutting down the Studio Theatre was that it was losing money. But Webb says the plays there have sold out their runs for a number of years.  So, despite being what he calls "a postage stamp of a theater," it mostly pays for its production costs. He says it's only when you add in staff salaries and benefits that it goes into the red. One solution would be to build a bigger theater, but hopes for that came and went with a previous administration.

Regardless, Webb says the cuts are, in his eyes, based on a false premise. Rock Valley, after all, is not running a commercial theater. It's a place of learning and training for a career. And that includes Studio Theatre.

"We have a number of our students who are just starting to break in New York and L. A. and like that were my students in the past 32 years,"   he said,   "and they sort of cut their teeth here in the Studio." 

Webb says it also serves an important outreach function to the community.  It's a mission he says came to him from Dr. Karl Jacobs, the college's president at the time he started.

"He sat me down my first day in his office and said, your job is to get as many people on this campus as you can," Webb recalls, "because they won't all send their college kids to Rock Valley but they can all enjoy the theater program. And so I took him quite literally, and so that's what I've been doing ever since I got here."

Over the years, Webb has presented all of Shakespeare's plays as well as most of Agatha Christie's. He's also mounted many original and new works.  It's something he's proud of, but also something he says he thought he was expected to do.

"The Studio Theatre was an alternative space. It was meant to be different, challenging theater," he says. "One of the college's missions is to present diverse cultural activities, and that's what we were doing. It never was intended to break even like Starlight was."

And yet, Webb says he'd put the Studio Theater's revenue numbers against any of the community and college theaters in the state.  They just haven't, apparently, been good enough.  And, coupled with the similar success he's had with Starlight, he realizes that, in some ways, the program has been a victim of its own success.

"The college kept saying, you're going to kill yourself if you do all these hours and all this time, so we need to give you staff. So they started increasing the staff, and then the staff came around to sort of causing the budget problems," he laughs.

Webb doesn't think some at the college appreciate how many days and hours he's put into his work – with or without staff -- or the price he's paid to his career choice.

"People want to go out to eat or do this, and I need to go home and go to bed, because I've got to start the next morning early and sell tickets," he says. "But, you know, it's been my life, this has been my whole life. And, you know, some of the college folks understand how many hours it takes to do this. But I do it purely for the love of the theater. And I'm not done doing theater; I'm just -- perhaps -- done at Rock Valley."

Webb said he doesn't have time to make a final decision just yet. He's got a season to produce and, as he would be likely to say, the show must go on -- at least if he has anything to do about it.

Guy Stephens produces news stories for the station, and coordinates our online events calendar, PSAs and Arts Calendar announcements. In each of these ways, Guy helps keep our listening community informed about what's going on, whether on a national or local level. Guy's degrees are in music, and he spent a number of years as a classical host on WNIU. In fact, after nearly 20 years with Northern Public Radio, the best description of his job may be "other duties as required."
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