By Jane R. Elgass
The University and community will receive “an extraordinary gift of education and culture” this week during the residency of the Stratford Theatre Festival company.
The group’s one-week stay here is the result of a luncheon conversation Kenneth C. Fischer had two and one-half years ago with Anne Charles, the Canadian general counsel in Detroit, and an agreement scribbled on a napkin. Fischer is executive director of the Univer-sity Musical Society.
While here, the company will give public performances of The Importance of Being Earnest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The cast and crew members will be available for pre- and post-performance programs, will meet with a number of student groups, and will give programs at six local schools.
“We had a wonderful helping hand in Anne Charles,” Fischer says, adding that as a result of a casual conversation she put him in touch with his counterpart at Stratford, Colleen Blake.
“One thing led to another,” Fischer says. “We visited Stratford in summer 1991 and have had several exchanges in the past two years. The deal was cemented on the back of a napkin at Bentley’s, a local watering hole in Stratford frequented by the Festival’s cast and crew, in September 1992. We had the napkin photographed, which is what Bo [Schembechler] and Tom [Monaghan] didn’t do.
“The real gift of this residency,” Fischer notes, “is the offer by each crew and cast member to devote five hours during their time here to educational activities. With 50 to 60 people coming, that means 300 hours, and has resulted in 54 discrete components.
“It’s absolutely extraordinary for a performing group to give this amount of time. We usually have to beg performers for master classes, usually at a price.”
Campus units that have scheduled activities with the cast and crew include the Residential College, the Pilot Program, the Department of Theatre and Drama, the Department of English, the Michigan Journalism Fellows Program and the Institute for the Humanities.
They also will meet with students at Emerson School, Pioneer High School, Community High School, Huron High School, Greenhills School and Forsyth Middle School.
Fischer notes that “the tremendous support received from the community has been very special. The Musical Society has never before presented theater and it’s a big risk for us. We wanted to make certain that we had sufficient underwriting—$150,000—prior to our public announcement last spring.”
Fischer had a commitment for the entire amount from a single organization that had to back out of the deal, leaving him 28 days to raise the necessary funds.
“The community response was wonderful,” Fischer says. “We quickly had a number of cash gifts and pledges and nine members of the community pledged to make up the difference if we didn’t have all of the money at curtain time.”
The Ann Arbor Area Foundation granted $25,000 for the project, at that time the largest grant in its history. An additional $10,000 came from the Dobson-McOmber insurance agency, “as a way of thanking the community for making its 100th anniversary possible,” Fischer explains.
A number of law firms, banks and other local foundations, as well as individuals also have made contributions, “a truly extraordinary long list of people.” The Musical Society had raised $140,500 as of last Tuesday, and Fischer is confident the entire amount will be raised by curtain time tomorrow.
“This has been a heart-warming town-and-gown project,” Fischer says. “It’s a major project in which we have come together, and both the University and community will benefit. The warm community response has meant a great deal to the Stratford Festival.
“It is a wonderful gift to be able to host a company regarded as one of the top three English-speaking companies in the world, to see their presentations, to have them fully engaged with the University and community.”
A schedule of public performances and discussions accompanies this article. A limited number of tickets for The Importance of Being Earnest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are available. For information, call 764-2538.
