YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Hopewell Theatre has become known as the place that introduces little-known plays with thought-provoking punch.
In recent years, the small Youngstown venue – it seats roughly 100 – has garnered glowing reviews for productions of shows like “Morning’s at Seven,” “Middletown,” “Rabbit Hole” and its own creation, “In the Zone.”
While musicals are always the biggest attraction in the theater world, the Hopewell has carved a niche for itself by sticking to straight plays.
The area’s top actors usually fill the casts of its productions, which tend to be obscure.
Musicals do have a place at the Hopewell, but they come from its tenant, Millennial Theatre Company.
The Hopewell sits in a former 1890s church building at 702 Mahoning Ave.
Keeping the old structure in shape requires lots of money, but its stability is obvious to anyone passing by. The small but stately appearance of the venue corresponds to the depth of its productions.
A host of improvements in the past few years improved the auditorium, restored the downstairs, and beautified the exterior grounds.
Steering the Hopewell through the changes has been Regina Rees, who has been board president since 2018.
The retired college professor and high school English teacher handles the duties of an executive director and then some. She is at the theater nearly every day to keep it running and plan its future.
But Rees will step down at the end of the year and leave the helm to a new executive director. The Hopewell board will announce this month how she will be replaced.
Reason for Leaving
Rees loves the little theater and says she’ll continue to help it in some fashion after she steps down. But she feels like now is the right time to leave the spotlight.
“It’s actually kind of corny,” she says. “My husband and I have been married for 50 years, and we worked most of that time. After retiring from Youngstown State University, I immediately started here.”
The 74-year-old wants to spend more of her time with her husband, Bill.
“I’m just going to be selfish,” she says. “I don’t know how many more years we have together. And I just want to spend them with my husband…I think it’s time for us to be able to wake up in the morning and say, ‘hey, do you want to go here today? You want to do this?’”
One reason for Hopewell’s preference for serious plays is Rees, who has been a person of letters her entire adult life.
She taught English and communications at Warren Harding High School and also ran the school’s television station.
After finishing at Warren, she became a professor in YSU’s college of education.
She first got active in theater while a student at Poland Seminary High School and then acted at the Youngstown Playhouse.
“Every theater in town has its own thing that they like to do,” Rees says. “We don’t like to do comedies. Maybe it’s just me, because I don’t like silly things. I want something a little more literate because I’m a literature person. I want something with a little more meat to it. And I think we’ve been able to achieve that with our place.”
Finding a Replacement
The Hopewell has no paid staff. Everyone is a volunteer – including Rees, who handles both administrative and artistic tasks.
It is unlikely that a single person can be found to replace her, so the board intends to split the duties among two people.
It will iron out the details at its Dec. 18 meeting.
“The plan is to look at the responsibilities and see how we can divvy them up,” says Traci Manning, vice president of the Hopewell board. “Regina was doing more than the lion’s share, and I don’t think any of us can step in and do what she was doing…If you’re working full time, or even part time, you don’t have the availability that she has. She gave so much time to the theater.”
Many small theaters have both an executive director and an artistic director, whose duties can largely be separated into “daytime” and “nighttime,” Manning says.
The Hopewell will implement a version of that plan.
“The first one will oversee daytime responsibilities – calling the electrician or the plumber and doing administrative things – and the second one is in charge of marketing and working with casts and crews,” she says.
Manning praised Rees for spearheading the improvements to the building and helping to guide the product on the stage.
“Not only is she helping to oversee which shows are being picked but she’s also helping with the productions themselves,” Manning says. “She does great costume work. It’s been really important to have someone of her talent.”
Since Manning became a board member four years ago, the theater has started getting multiple submissions from people who want to produce shows there. The board has formed a review process to select them.
“That’s been a really great transition from when I started,” she says. “And I’ve seen a change in the types of shows that we’re producing and the interest that people have. People are much more aware of the Hopewell Theater than they were even five years ago.”
Picking the Shows
Producing obscure plays that surprise or intrigue is a driving force of Hopewell Theatre.
“What I am most proud of is that our board and the people we associate with have put out such wonderful plays,” Rees says. “We look for different plays. We look for classic plays. We look for whatever seems to make sense.”
One example was last year’s production of “Morning’s at Seven,” which premiered on Broadway in 1939.
“It’s about senior citizens, but not about them being old,” Rees says. “It’s about families where the people are older. They didn’t talk about aches and pains or anything. They just talked about life.”
The theater recently began reaching out to new directors to take advantage of the area’s substantial – if occasionally untapped – talent base.
“We’re trying to spread out a little bit,” Rees says. “The talent around here is real, and it’s astounding.”
The same is true of the area’s base of actors. There is generally a lot of experience on any local stage, and the actors are welcoming to newcomers, Rees says.
“For ‘In the Zone,’ there were 24 actors, and some of them didn’t have very big roles,” she says. “But there was camaraderie with all of these people. They all got along, older ones and younger ones. We had a little girl in it doing her first show, and they gave her a present on the first night because she was such a trouper.”
Rees says she has never witnessed a play at Hopewell where the cast members were at odds with each other.
Improving the Space
Hopewell Theatre was founded in 1992 by the late Jean McClure Kelty, a YSU professor. It was a specialty theater then known as The Victorian Players and only produced works from the mid- to late 1800s.
The late Marilyn Higgins took the helm in 2003 and was followed by Marlene Menaldi-Strollo. The theater dropped its Victorian-only theme in the early 2010s and changed its name to Hopewell Theatre in 2017.
Rees started to get involved with it after her daughter, Jeanine, moved back to town and started doing shows at the Hopewell.
It was an opportunity to again work with her old friend, Strollo, whom she had known since their days at the Playhouse.
“I started to help out little by little, and Marlene asked me if I wanted to be on the board,” Rees recalls. “I said, sure. And then she said, ‘I’m moving to Florida.’ I got the job because nobody else wanted to do it, and I had the time.”
After taking the top spot, Rees had to fill several vacancies on the board. The team she found proved to be as eager as she was to make improvements to the building.
The Hopewell board today consists of Traci Manning, vice president; Denise P. Walters-Dobson, secretary; Pamela Brockway, treasurer; Dante Bernard, Rosalyn Blystone, Carl Brockway, Frank Carsone, Carla Gipson, Janet Haladay and Mario Ricciardi. Nick Mulichak is box office manager and media specialist, and Atty. Scott Kamenitsa is legal adviser.
“We just have a wonderful team,” Rees says.
The first job was building dressing rooms in the basement.
“When I first came here, there were no dressing rooms,” she recalls. “It was one great big room downstairs, where they stored costumes. I asked, ‘where are we supposed to get changed,’ and they said, ‘the women usually stand behind that rack of coats.’”
The first task was to find a new location to store costumes. Rees first found a place at the Evangelical Temple about a mile up the street. Costumes are now stored in the former IBM building downtown, which is owned by the Mahoning Valley Historical
Society.
Some of the board members erected walls in the basement, relying on YouTube videos for instructions on mounting drywall sheets. Two dressing rooms were soon completed.
The antique building also had electrical problems that had to be fixed. When that was done, the lighting booth, in the former second-floor loft, was improved.
Lighting and sound equipment was also replaced, thanks to grants the theater received.
Outside, a permanent concrete ramp for the disabled was added last year. That big task was followed by landscaping and paving that makes the building stand out to passersby.
Hopewell received a facade grant from the city for the paving. The landscaping was done at practically no cost by the Mahoning Valley Nursery Growers Association.
The theater’s current goals are to add a lighting console in the second-floor crew booth, install accessible bathrooms, repoint and paint the exterior brickwork and find new storage space for its stage scenery flats and furniture.
“We are outgrowing our space,” Rees says. “If anyone out there has a building they’d like to sell to us, let us know.”
Pictured at top: Regina Rees stands behind the counter in the Hopewell Theatre lobby. She will step down as board president at the end of the year.