A Crew of Patches Theatre Company was formed in the Autumn of 2003 with two goals: to produce first-rate, full-length, First Folio Shakespeare for high school students and to give good paying “day jobs” to professional actors in Chicago—the second goal being an important element to the first.  With top actors, the quality of the performances would be that much better.

We began with three productions in our rep: Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night, directed by company member David Blixt, City Lit Artistic Director Page Hearn, and company member Jan Blixt respectively.  At that time, we had 10 actors, 3 actresses, a stage manager and a technical director.  We formed a relationship at the Lakeshore Theatre in the East Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago; a venue that hosts many comedians and one-person-shows for short runs.  This allowed us to be assured of a bare, or near to bare, stage and daily openings for bookings.

In that first semester, Autumn 2003, we had two performances—not the groundbreaking first semester we had wanted—so, during the break between first and second semester, Jan Blixt took over the Executive Directorship (a combined Artistic Director and Managing Director) of the company.  In the Spring semester of 2004, the Patches had 23 performances of our three shows: performing for over 5000 students.

We returned stronger in the fall of 2004 with renewed determination to produce quality shows and to increase our client/school base.  To those ends, we spent the tiny surplus from the previous season on adding Romeo & Juliet, directed by David Blixt, and The Taming of the Shrew, directed by current Artistic Director of the Stormfield Theatre in Michigan, playwright, actress and director Kristine Thatcher, to our repertory.  That year we increased our performance numbers significantly and began our workshop series.

At the time we offered three workshops: “Shakespeare and Stage Combat,” “Shakespeare’s First Folio,” and “Shakespeare’s Clowns and Musicians.”  The combat workshop was taught by our fight choreographer and director David Blixt with help from our fight captain, Justine Turner;  Jan Blixt taught Folio with help from assorted actors in the company; and founding company members Benjamin Montague and Brion Bliss, both skilled comedians and musicians, taught the clowning and music workshop.  These workshops were offered for any days that did not have performances, and we totaled five of them during that season in addition to our 60 performances for more than 16,000 students.

For the 2005-2006 we hired noted Chicago sound designer Victoria DeIorio to create complete sound designs, including atmospherics, for all of our productions (as opposed to simply making sure we had the necessary cues as required by the text).  We again upgraded our costumes and properties and improved our weapons cache with the addition of more rapiers and more broadswords. During the 2005-2006 school year, the Patches also formed a relationship with Noble Fool Theatricals in St. Charles, IL (an hour or so west of Chicago).  This relationship allowed us to market to schools in districts beyond the Chicago-metro area to the outer collar-counties, exurban schools, and rural communities.  The Patches now perform between 10 and 15 shows at the Noble Fool space in St. Charles bringing in 20 new schools to our base.

In Spring of 2006, the Patches received from the IRS our 501(c)(3) designation.  Until this year, all of the money the Patches used to pay our company, pay our rent, pay for design upgrades, for properties and costumes, and to pay for all of our miscellaneous business expenses has come from ticket sales—around $100,000 per year from individual students around the Chicago area.

The Patches now average between 50 and 75 performances per season of our 3 to 6 productions—performing for between 10,000 and 15,000 students every year. We have a client list of over 150 schools in the greater Chicagoland area.