The Oak Park Festival Theatre is in the process of recovering from a devastating Nov. 23 fire that caused the destruction of nearly everything in the company’s administrative offices and storage space. The fire at 1034 Lake St. in downtown Oak Park started at Delia’s Kitchen, which was located directly below the theater’s second floor offices.
“As a seasonal organization, during the off season, it was primarily storage,” said Managing Director Bryan Wakefield, explaining how the space was used. “We would keep our sound and lighting equipment, costumes, props, all of our records, historical documents—anything that we wanted in a temperature-controlled, climate-controlled space.” That included the theater company’s computers and electronics.
During the season when the company presented shows, all the sound and lighting equipment was out in the performing space and the office space was used as dressing rooms. They also used it for board meetings.
“It was a very flexible space,” Wakefield explained.
Both Wakefield and Artistic Director Barbara Zahora learned about the fire when they were attending a board meeting of the Oak Park Festival Theatre that day.
Wakefield described the damage from the fire as “total. This is not an official reading on it but from what I can tell, it looks like the fire moved up the back of the building and then when it hit the roof, it went along the roof all the way to the front of the building. Although we didn’t get the actual fire in our space, they were putting that out from the front of the building on the third floor which was directly above our space.”
Wakefield noted that a 33-gallon garbage can they were using to store swords was filled to the brim with water.
Some electrical equipment was taken out of the space to see if it is salvageable.
Zahora noted, “The ironic thing was we had just struck ‘The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe’ the day before—less than twelve hours before this fire started—and we put all the speakers, all the computers in the office.”
As major as that loss was, that wasn’t the staff’s primary concern.
“We lost a lot of stuff that’s not replaceable,” Wakefield said. “A lot of the memories of Oak Park Festival Theatre being there for nearly 50 years.”
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“The biggest thing we were worried about was artifacts and newspaper clippings and photographs and posters that we had from over the past 47 years,” Zahora said. They did make a couple of surprising finds, though.
“We were able to find a scrapbook that was put together for one of our anniversary years about ten years ago and that was almost completely intact,” Zahora reported.
In addition, they were able to salvage a number of framed posters that are currently drying out in the basement of one of the theater’s associates.
The theater company had already been gathering documents from individuals to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary in 2025. They will be seeking more of these—but not until the company has located a safe place to store them.
Some insurance coverage will help the company replace the equipment that was lost. They are also fundraising to cover the rest of the cost.
The good news is that this disaster will not affect the upcoming season, Wakefield reported.
“We will be doing ‘The Winter’s Tale’ this year. That will start rehearsing in June and go up in July and run through the end of August,” Zahora said. “In our fall slot, we have a new adaptation I’m working on of ‘Dracula.’ Those are the two that we could manage given what has happened with our equipment.”
Wakefield said that the community has been very generous with their financial assistance.
“They’ve come out in spades,” he said. “They’ve been with us for nearly 50 years. It’s been really incredible to see the community support for all of the businesses, for the people who lived upstairs, and for Oak Park Festival Theatre through all this.”
More information is available at oakparkfestival.com.
“All of the contributions going through there are going to go into helping us come back this summer for our upcoming shows in Austin Gardens and hopefully Pleasant Home,” Wakefield said.
He added, “The biggest way that they can help us—come see our shows. We’re still going to be there for Oak Park.”