Racine Theatre Guild 'The Cemetery Club'
Barbi McGuire, Virginia Hartley, and Kim Ember in the Racine Theatre Guild's 'The Cemetery Club'
With The Cemetery Club, Douglas Instenes finds he’s traveled full circle. Thirty years ago, The Cemetery Club was the first play he directed for Racine Theatre Guild. With the new guild’s season in its early months, Instenes returns to that play for his 100th production with the company. “It’s a weird coincidence,” he says. “I didn’t plan it this way.”
Instenes’ career in theater, however, did not result from coincidence. He spent much of his childhood at the Plaza Hotel in Milwaukee’s East Town. His grandmother managed the place, a favorite haunt and stop over for visiting theater folk. “The Plaza had a great relationship with the Milwaukee Rep, the Melody Top, the Skylight and Theatre X—all their people stayed there. I saw how they lived, paycheck to paycheck,” he recalls. Instenses was not dissuaded by the profession’s financial insecurity. Rather, he was fascinated by their lives. “[Playwright] Larry Shue lived there and some of the characters in The Foreigner were based on my grandmother and other people who worked in the hotel.”
After earning his MFA, Instenes freelanced in theater for several seasons before his wife got a job at UW-Parkside. He found work as the Racine Theatre Guild’s associate artistic director and director of audience development. He is now the guild’s managing and artistic director.
The Cemetery Club concerns three widows, longtime friends who gather each month to visit their husbands’ graves. Doris (Virginia Hartley) will continue mourning her loss. Ida (Kim Emer) wonders if it’s time to move on. Lucille (Barbi McGuire) pretends to move on—but hasn’t. They joke, they quarrel—and then compete for the attention of an eligible new man, Sam (Anthony Lazalde). Betty Petersen costars as Mildred.
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The 1987 play by Ivan Menchell debuted in New York in 1990 and was adapted in ‘93 as film starring Ellen Burstyn, Olympia Dukakis and Diane Ladd. Rather than move the setting to the Midwest and the calendar to 2023, Instenes retained the ‘90s New York ambiance, complete with a rotary telephone and a record player. “It was written with that New York feel, the dialogue lends itself to that setting,” he says, describing the characters’ rhythm of speech. The story speaks to all of us because we all have dealt with loss, with how to respect our memories without dwelling in the past. The story is still relevant—and even more relevant to me now that I’m in my 60s.”
Like all performing arts groups, the Racine Theatre Guild went dormant during the worst months of the pandemic. “We’ve always been about community,” he says. “I made a joke, ‘Cancelling a season, when most of our subscribers let us keep the money, was a good business move.’ Members of our audience donated money, whether $5 or $500. Everyone wanted to help. We found out how important we were to the Racine community.”
The Racine Theatre Guild performs The Cemetery Club from Sept. 15-Oct. 1 in their theater at 2519 Northwestern Ave. For tickets, visit racinetheatre.org, call (262) 633-4218 or stop by the box office on weekdays from noon to 6 p.m.
