Hail and farewell to First Folio Theatre, a suburban mainstay for 27 years

Actors and directors, designers and composers originally came to First Folio Theatre to perform Shakespeare under the stars.

They stayed for the quality work First Folio produced and for the nurturing, collaborative environment director Alison C. Vesely and her husband, David Rice, established when they founded the Oak Brook theater in 1996 on the grounds of the Mayslake Peabody Estate.

But Sunday afternoon, the curtain comes down on First Folio, whose matinee of "And Neither Have I Wings to Fly" will be its final performance.

"We lasted 27 years," said executive director Rice. "We beat the odds and did so with great artistic success."

That success included 44 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations and seven wins. More than 100,000 people saw the company's 87 productions, which included more than half Shakespeare's cannon and 16 world premieres.

Vesely died in 2016 after two years with ovarian cancer. Rice announced three years ago the theater would close upon his 2024 retirement, but his own bout with cancer prompted him to move up the date. As he explained in a statement last April, "I don't have as much gas left in my tank as I thought."

<h3 class="briefHead">An 'artistic home'</h3>

The couple founded the company in 1996 as a suburban equity theater devoted to nonmusical works, established in part to provide Vesely with directing opportunities not readily available to women at the time.

In 1997, they staged their inaugural production, Shakespeare's "The Tempest." Three years later, they added a second summer show. They moved inside the Tudor Revival-style Mayslake mansion in 2004 and staged plays in the library. The larger event hall became their permanent home in 2008.

An expanded season meant an expanded repertoire that included classics by Noel Coward, Eugene O'Neill and Oscar Wilde; contemporary plays by Lauren Gunderson; Joseph Zettelmaier, who had three plays premiere at First Folio; and Margaret Raether, whose P.G. Wodehouse adaptations were an audience favorite. Original works included Rice's "The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story" and "Cymbeline: A Musical Folk Tale," which he and Michael Keefe adapted from Shakespeare's comedy.

New shows established First Folio as a company willing to take risks, Rice said. But it was their award-winning 2009 revival of O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten" that confirmed the theater as a producer of serious drama.

Zettelmaier said working with First Folio was a joy. He cited "graceful direction" of his plays and "absolutely masterpiece sets" from designer Angela Weber Miller. But what most impressed him was the attention to detail.

"Performances were nuanced, even when my shows tended to be larger than life," said Zettelmaier, an ensemble member since 2014. "The design elements were intricate and masterful. There's a lot of joy in the craft, and that speaks to me."

<h3 class="briefHead">First Folio 'family'</h3>

Rice said he and Vesely wanted to a create a place where artists felt valued, a theater they could call their "artistic home."

"From the beginning," he said, "we referred to them and to patrons as the First Folio family."

And family sticks together.

With Vesely's illness advancing in 2016, she reached out to Melanie Keller to codirect "Silent Sky."

"Our last conversation was her asking if I would take that on. That felt like such a privilege, so enormous, so daunting," said Keller, who credits Vesely and Rice for encouraging her to direct. "Above all, I just wanted to make her proud."

Closing is bittersweet, said Keller, who took over as associate artistic director after Vesely's death.

"If we had more years we could go even further in the stories we were telling," she said, but "this is the right time for us to hang up our shingle and say goodbye."

Keller wasn't the only Chicago actor willing to drive from the city to DuPage County to perform Shakespeare outdoors. Actor/director/combat choreographer Nick Sandys regularly endured two-hour commutes, which he doesn't regret.

"In the summer, you drove out in sunshine and arrived in golden light to an outdoor space," he said. "That's why the summer was such an idyll.

"And at the end of the rainbow you got to do Shakespeare, to play to an appreciative audience," he said. "You got to push yourself as an artist. You got to take risks and make choices that were bold."

Still, performing outdoors posed challenges, not all of them weather-related. Coyotes howled, bats circled, a mama skunk scampered with her six babies, and a deer once wandered backstage. During a preview of 2009's "Macbeth," which Sandys directed, a raven landed on the stage during one of Lady Macbeth's monologues.

"This is why we do outdoor Shakespeare," he said. "Those moments when the outdoor world lands you in the right place at the right time."

<h3 class="briefHead">Personal, professional</h3>

Christian Gray made his First Folio debut in 1998 in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." More roles followed, and Gray joined the ensemble in 2005. But his relationship with Vesely and Rice went beyond professional.

"Alison and David had my back," he said. "They saw me through my father's passing, and following that, my alcoholism."

In 2009, Vesely cast the sober Gray as alcoholic actor Jim Tyrone in the stellar "A Moon for the Misbegotten," which he says cut "really close to the bone."

But Vesely and Rice had faith in him. Vesely advised him to "let go and let fly," which was her way of encouraging colleagues to take risks.

"That was her theory of how to approach the arts in general," explained Rice. "If you're afraid to take a risk, you will never find true artistic success. You have to be willing to put yourself out there and to take chances."

When set designer Angela Weber Miller took creative risks, Vesely went along for the ride.

"Alison didn't try to dictate her preconceived ideas of what a set should look like," she said. "She trusted me, which was phenomenal."

On the personal side, Vesely and Rice, parents themselves, understood Miller's struggle to balance family and career and didn't mind when she brought her toddler to a meeting or left early to relieve a babysitter.

"They respected me as a designer and made space for me to be a mother," she said.

<h3 class="briefHead">Destiny and legacy</h3>

Rice says his proudest moment was 2015's "The Winter's Tale," codirected by Alison and their daughter Hayley from a concept Hayley developed.

"It was an incredibly successful production of a problematic Shakespeare play," he said. "I was so proud to see my daughter come into her own."

Theater was something of a birthright for Hayley Rice.

As an infant, she played baby Ulysses alongside her parents in a show titled "Ithaca." As a teen, she filled in for an understudy in "The Taming of the Shrew." As an adult, she acted in and directed First Folio productions remembering what her parents taught her: Respect fellow artists, pick your fights, stand up for what matters - and let go what doesn't.

"First Folio has always made sure the humans shine through," she said. "We were unique in the work we did and how we did it. It was not something that was represented before, and it may not be represented after we're gone.

"I hope I'm wrong."