(Above: Richard Scheeland, longtime supporter of Eugene’s Very Little Theatre and an experienced manager of theater operations and improvements, served as project manager of VLT’s massive $1.7 million renovation; photo by Paul Carter for Eugene Scene.)
Note: This article has been updated to include additional information about the cast and crew of Little Women which was not available at the time of the original post.
By Randi Bjornstad
It’s a familiar refrain these days, as more and more arts-and-culture groups make their way back from pandemic-forced hiatuses, and Eugene’s Very Little Theatre is no exception.
“We’re just really excited — this is a moment that has been two-and-a-half years in the making. Who wouldn’t be excited?” Jessica Ruth Baker, the 93-year-old theater’s interim executive director, said rhetorically as well as enthusiastically.
“This” refers to the VLT’s production of Little Women the Musical, which opens Aug. 5 and runs through Aug. 20.
“Originally, it was supposed to open March 13, 2020, but because of the pandemic, it got shut down on that very night,” Baker said.
But at long last, the story of the March family with its four daughters — Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy — will be performed at VLT, with more than half of the original cast resuming the roles they had prepared for back then.
The Broadway show ran for 137 performances in New York City’s Virginia Theatre, featuring Sutton Foster as Jo and Maureen McGovern as the girls’ mother, whom they called Marmee. Jason Howland wrote the music, with lyrics by Mindi Dickstein. Allan Knee wrote the book for the musical, based on Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
A much-changed theater
However, those who attend Little Women on opening night may find themselves in a theater they barely recognize. In the intervening 28 months and 23 days, VLT has gone through a $1.7 million renovation, vastly improving its audience spaces, including for wheelchairs and other accommodations, creating more “mingling” areas for audiences, and replacing the old, well-worn and less-than-comfortable seats originally sized for audiences with the dimensions of 70 years ago, when the theater opened its permanent location at 2350 Hilyard St. in Eugene.
“One of the things that is new is stadium seating with a retractable platform that allows us to customize the number and placement of wheelchair users and companion seating,” Baker said. “When people buy tickets, we will know exactly how much of each kind of seating we need and where, so the seating chart will always be up to date.”
But as “they” say, “That’s not all, folks.” With significant improvements in wall surfaces and layout, theatergoers also will find the acoustics much better now, Baker said.
“We still will use hanging and floor microphones, but I think people will be astonished at how well they will hear be able to hear in every seat of the theater,” she said.
Much of the credit for the design and execution of improvements goes to venerable Eugene architect Otto Poticha, who came up with several innovative ways to improve the theater, both in terms of backstage production and audience satisfaction, Baker said.
One of the improvements is the addition of a large “blue box” that soars above the original quonset-style structure and is clearly visible from the outside of the building.
“This allows us to raise and lower set backdrops and really change the look of the stage,” Baker said. “Now there can be several scene changes during plays that would not have been possible before.”
The “new” theater also now has smaller side stages flanking the main stage to allow action to take place in different settings and among different actors at once. The theater’s lighting also has been modernized with an LED system “that allows us to fade a scene completely down to zero instead of getting down 90 percent and then having everything abruptly go black the way it did before,” she said.
Even with all the improvements, The Very Little Theatre is still The Very Little Theatre, Baker said.
“Great care has been taken to make sure that people still feel that this is their theater,” she said. “We want them to walk in and even with all the changes know that they are in the same place.”
That means instantly recognizing the familiar semicircular cedar walls and ceiling that still enclose the seating area, although the color scheme that goes with it has changed dramatically.
“We had a group of volunteers that met and discussed what colors would go well with the cedar walls and what we want the theater to feel like when people come in,” Baker said. “They were looking for words, and they came up with welcoming, warm, bright, friendly. In the end, they decided that blue was the best choice.”
The lobby also will look comfortably familiar, with many of the same publicity photos of actors and productions that have been a mainstay for decades, she said. “It is an important way to tell the story of the place — both because it has so much history and because it is still making history.”
The VLT’s Little Women is directed by Kari Boldon Welch, assisted by Russell Dyball. Seven actors who were ready to take the stage in 2020 before the pandemic intervened are taking their roles now: Morgan James (as Jo), Hailey Eckhart (as Meg), Sabrina Gross (as Beth), Amy Weinkauf (as Marmee), Jennifer Sellers (as Aunt March), Cydney King (as Clarissa and ensemble), and April Oristano (as Hag and ensemble).
Other actors include Dylan Bunten, Hadley Weiss, Jeff Weinkauf, Diego Millan, Ross Canales, Caroline Cramer, Thomas Weaver, Anna Pearl Johnson, Jonathan Klimoski, Elena Morris, and Brooklyn Nesslin.
The orchestra featured Al Villanueva on piano and Nancy Anderson on keyboard, with violin by Annika Porter and woodwinds by Richard Johnson.
A true community project
Richard Scheeland, who has a long history with Very Little Theatre and served as project manager for the VLT renovation, takes pride in the fact that the entire endeavor so far “has been done without state or federal funding.”
“We have had 800 donors who have helped with this project,” he said. “We applied four or five years ago for $1.5 million towards the project through the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon, which is kind of a gateway to help lobby for funds to help local arts organizations.”
However, just after making the application, the contractor on the project told the VLT that because of rising costs, what they had thought would be a $4.2 million total now would be $5 million, “so we completely redid our plans, scaled back everything to different phases, and started looking at a project of only $1.7 million,” Scheeland said.
Two years later, VLT approached the Cultural Advocacy Coalition again, asking for a $350,000 grant, “and we were in their pipeline at No. 12, and they ran out of funds just before our number,” he said.
At this point, the Coalition has invited VLT to resubmit for a future round of assistance, Scheeland said, which if granted would be used to extend and improve the theater’s scenery shop.
Both Scheeland and his wife, Karen Scheeland, have decades of involvement with the Very Little Theatre. His first foray was acting around 1974 in Night Watch, a film noir play that had been a huge hit on Broadway in 1972, and he has been an active supporter of VLT ever since. Karen Scheeland recently completed several terms as president of the theater organization’s board of directors — “She’s term-limited,” her husband said — and still serves on the Play Selection Committee.
All new for the crew
The first production crew to try out the brand new-and-improved VLT digs was a large group, starting with stage manager Kelly Oristano, musical director Al Villanueva, vocal coach Marieke Schuurs, production manager Sarah Etherton, set designer Tim Tendick, costume designers Gail Rapp and Paula Tendick, costume assistants Lee Wiley, Darryl Marzyk, Julia Fennell, Anwen MacDonald, and Judy Wenger.
Sarah Etherton also handled lighting design, with Tim Tendick as light board operator, with sound design by Jeff Weinkauf with Josh Desatoff as sound operator.
Sarah Nesslin was makeup and hair artist, with Rebecca Lowe in charge of properties, Maggie Hadley as intimacy coach, set construction by Amy Dunn, Tim Dunn, John Elliott, Tim Tendick, Michael Walker, and Sarah Etherton, and set painting by Rich Scheeland and Tim Tendick.
Little Women at Very Little Theatre
When: 7:30 p.m. Aug. 5-6, 11-13; 18-20 and 2 p.m. on Aug. 7 and 14
Where: Very Little Theatre, 2350 Hilyard St., Eugene
Tickets: $29; available at the box office, 2350 Hilyard St., 541-344-7751, or online at TheVLT.com
The cast of “Little Women, the Musical” at the Very Little Theatre includes, left to right, Sabrina Gross (Beth), Hadley Weiss (Amy), Hailey Eckhart (Meg), Morgan James (Jo), and Diego Millan (Laurie); photo courtesy of Very Little Theatre.
