Looking Ahead to the 2015 Theater Season

The play might be just the thing to catch a king, Hamlet tells his audience in Shakespeare’s famous drama, but for many of us, a play is just the thing to capture our imaginations. While Door County offers miles of scenic coastline, countless picturesque parks, and an array of beautiful beaches, during the height of the summer theater season, it also offers playgoers the opportunity to enjoy a theater binge, the chance to attend a different performance every night of a visit to the peninsula.

Choices might include one of the oldest summer theaters in the country or one of the newest, a play performed in a conventional theater and one under the stars, or occasionally an intriguing improvised spaces, a barn or a town hall. One theater is only accessible by a ferryboat ride.

Venues range from professional to semi-professional to amateur to educational, and the plays, from standard classic fare to Broadway hits to world premieres – sometimes homegrown. Many companies publish a schedule for the season, but some announce performance dates once a play is in rehearsal.

Those of us who have spent a few decades of our life in Door County have noted the proliferation of theaters, and some might worry that the area will reach the point of an oversaturation, a competition among companies that will compromise even established theaters. But a professional who conducted a feasibility study years ago when the Door Community Auditorium was being planned maintained an opposite view.

When a theater district develops, she said, a choice of venues exponentially increases the number of customers who visit the area to attend performances. Playhouses in the county recognize the truth of this observation and promote not only their own performances, but those of their competitors.

And the choices range from the opportunity to see performed the Shakespearean play you read in high school to a frothy farce to a musical theater show to significant social commentary to spellbinding whodunit. And expect magical things to happen. Mother Nature providing real thunder as a backdrop for King Lear; an audience almost falling out of their seats as they laugh at onstage silliness; or mute patrons leaving the theater in stunned silence after an especially powerful performance.

The play’s indeed the thing during the summer in Door County. Visit websites, watch local papers, and listen to the buzz as you plan your seasonal entertainment.