New Elgin theater company with ECC roots to produce 'Forever Plaid'
"La La Land" cleaned up at the Golden Globes and has generated Oscar buzz. The top kid's movie is "Sing," and live-action movie versions of "Beauty and the Beast" and "Newsies" are coming in a few weeks. "Hamilton" is so popular on Broadway - and in the Loop - that you can't find a ticket.
In Elgin, it seems an auspicious time to start a nonprofit theater company that specializes in musical stage plays. And that's just what John Slawson, who retired last spring as a music professor at Elgin Community College, has decided to do.
The nonprofit group he founded, Encore Theatre Productions, will put on its first musical, "Forever Plaid," Friday through Sunday, Jan. 20-22 and 27-29, at the Kimball Street Theatre. Tickets are $20-23.
Slawson is no stranger to producing musical plays in Elgin. While he was teaching music at ECC between 1986 and 2016, part of his job was to supervise the staging of musical plays every year, in cooperation with the college's theater department.
"At ECC we had a $100,000 budget to do two musicals a year, one in the spring and one in the summer," Slawson recalled. "We did probably 60 productions over those years. We did 'Into the Woods' three times. 'Man of LaMancha' we did twice. One production would be in the big Blizzard Theater and the other, a small show that couldn't involve as many people, would be in the smaller Second Space black box theater."
Then Slawson's life changed.
Two years ago, his wife died after a six-year fight against an autoimmune disease. He hired a personal trainer and slimmed down from 260 pounds to 180. And finally, at age 67, he retired from the college.
But John Slawson wasn't ready to leave behind the fun of doing musicals. So he and five other people who had worked on those past ECC productions founded Encore Theatre Productions.
"We'd like to do our own thing and have our own voice and decide what we want to do," said one of those co-founders, Konnie Kay Sherry of St. Charles.
With no budget at all, and until recently no 501(c) 3 status to solicit donations, Slawson and his partners knew they had to start with something relatively small, easy and cheap - a small cast, little or no scenery, no need for a big orchestra. They picked "Forever Plaid," about a four-man high school "guy group" act in 1964 who are killed in a collision with a bus full of nuns but come back as spirits to do one last show.
It's full of harmony-heavy musical standards like "Love is A Many-Splendored Thing," "Three Coins in the Fountain," "Sixteen Tons" and "No, Not Much."
For a venue, they lined up the Kimball Street Theatre in Elgin Academy's modern Rider Center building.
To play three of the four lead parts, Slawson and Sherry chose three guys who had performed in ECC's production of "Forever Plaid" two years ago - Karl Knutson of Naperville, Terry Christianson of St. Charles and David Pfenninger of Lombard. Then they auditioned other singer-actors. They picked John Perry of Chicago, a native of Hampshire, for the fourth lead role and Quinn Falk of Geneva as understudy.
"Eventually we'll audition for the parts in every show," as they did at ECC, Slawson said. "I've had people with degrees in my shows. I've had professional actors."
Three of Encore's six co-founders are members of the same Tri-Cities family - Sherry, who also freelances for various high school productions and works at the Norris Cultural Arts Center; her husband, showbiz professional William Sherry; and her mother, JoAnne Crawford Granquist. JoAnne's late husband, Herb Granquist, was a musician who ran the Granquist Music Competition in Geneva every year.
Konnie Kay Sherry said she first took on directing and choreographing duties for the ECC group in 1989, while she and her husband were living and working in Los Angeles. She began working with the group regularly when they moved back to the Fox Valley in 1999 and was the director-choreographer when ECC did "Forever Plaid" two years ago.
"With all the negativity going on today, I love putting people in a different world," Sherry said.
She said one thing that may be spurring the current hey day is TV shows like "Dancing With the Stars."
Encore already has picked its second production. "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," with a cast of 10, will be staged at the Kimball Street Theatre in September. And then, Slawson and Sherry hope, there will be more to come, if ticket sales and charitable donations can cover the costs.
They don't rule out Encore Theatre Productions doing some "straight" drama or comedy plays, either. Slawson notes that "we kept 'musical' out of the group's name on purpose."
If you go
What: Encore Theatre Productions' first show, "Forever Plaid"
When: 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Jan. 20, 21, 27, 28; 3 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 22, 30
Where: Kimball Street Theatre, northeast corner of Dundee Avenue and Kimball Street in Elgin, on the Elgin Academy campus
Tickets: $23 at the door; $20 if ordered online
Details: <a href="http://www.encoretheatreproductions.com/">encoretheatreproductions.com</a>