Tiffin’s Ritz Players to cap off 40th season with ‘The Wizard of Oz’

TIFFIN — The Wizard of Oz will be the curtain call for the Tiffin-based Ritz Players’ 40th anniversary season.

From Rumors to Steel Magnolias , each of this season’s productions have been encore shows of plays or musicals that the Ritz Players put on sometime in the last four decades.

It’s not just audiences who remember the hits.

Ritz Players board member and Tiffin youth services librarian Joan Ledwedge is tracking down each former cast member, inviting them to an after-show party to reminisce about their time in the Players.

What : ‘The Wizard of Oz’

When : 7:30 p.m. July 12-13, 20; 2 p.m. July 21.

Where : The Ritz Theatre, 30 S. Washington St., Tiffin.

Admission : $20, with a $7 online fee, $4 telephone/mail order fee, or no fee when purchased in person

Website : ritztheatre.org

For The Wizard of Oz , which was staged by the Ritz Players in 1998, Ledwedge is finding that many of the munchkins are now on social media and excited to share memories about performing with Dorothy, Glinda the Good Witch, and the rest of the iconic cast.

“It’s been fun having people come back and tell their story,” Ledwedge said.

Bringing old members to participate in the company’s anniversary celebrations is a given for a close-knit theater group like the Ritz Players, which the board’s vice president Mike Steyer compared to a second family.

“I’ve got lifelong friendships that were formed through the players,” Steyer, also a Tiffin City Schools staff member, said. “It’s an outlet for creativity.”

Each season typically includes a big summer musical, a smaller musical, a comedy, and a drama, utilizing the Ritz’s black box theater for at least one small cast production a year.

From veteran actors to newcomers dipping their toes in the theater scene, the Ritz Players embrace all levels of experience. Some want to step foot onstage as actors, but many are happy working offstage.

With enough time, members will find themselves taking on all sorts of roles.

Steyer played the lead role in the Ritz Players’ first official show, Anything Goes . Like Ledwedge, he has since taken on everything from directing to prop work to lighting, along with turns as every officer position on the Players’ board of directors.

Someone who’s handled the breadth of theater work, Steyer said, is better equipped to appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into each production from their seat in the audience.

The satisfaction, Ledwedge said, comes from moments like their 2008 production of Grease ; when the curtains came up and the audience saw the large jukebox on the stage, a gasp reverberated throughout the crowd.

“It just brings you so much excitement, and it’s just the thrill,” she said.

An attraction for potential members is the opportunity to play in The Ritz Theatre, the 1,400-seat vaudeville and movie house that houses the Ritz Players, which provides uncommon technical opportunities for the Players through their unusual role as the community theater arm of a larger venue.

When the non-profit Tiffin Theater Inc. purchased the 1928 venue at a sheriff’s sale in 1981, management needed someone to turn out an audience.

Ledwedge’s father-in-law, Pat, was a member of a local theater troupe called the Cardiac Capers and noticed a “need for theater in the community,” Ledwedge said.

Pat Ledwedge worked with Ritz Theatre management to test interest in a permanent community theater group; when their production of the musical 1776 was a hit, they continued doing shows from the summer of 1983 on.

The Ritz Players, acting as a performing arts committee under The Ritz Theatre, have expanded their scope, partnering with the acclaimed touring Missoula Children’s Theatre to bring an annual two-week theater summer camp.

The group also hosts the Ritz Teen Thespian Guild, which provides teens with an outlet for theater in the face of school cutbacks in the arts.

Since a 1998 restoration brought it back to a near-original state, the Ritz Theatre’s programming has grown substantially, making the Players one of several attractions at the venue.

With other shows splitting their audience, the Ritz Players don’t get the numbers they once did, such as the 1991 performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that saw a standing-room only crowd and was later showcased at the northwest regional OCTA fest.

But with a capacity 500 seats larger than the Valentine, empty seats at the Ritz are the size of full theaters elsewhere — like the Toledo Repertoire Theater, which caps off at less than 200 seats. Performances average about 300 audience members, estimates Steyer.

“People look forward to our shows,” Ledwedge said, which they view as professional-quality productions showcasing the talents of people of Tiffin community members.

Ledwedge and Steyer are confident that The Wizard of Oz ’s family-friendly charm will appeal to the community that has supported them over the last four decades, making it a fitting send-off to a milestone anniversary.

Give it another 40 years, and the Ritz Players will add a third generation to the munchkins reminiscing on the joys of local theater.

Coming up:

Shrek Jr. , July 11-14 by the Oregon Community Theatre, Fassett Auditorium, 3025 Starr Ave., Oregon.

School of Rock , July 12-21 at the Croswell Opera House, 129 E. Maumee St., Adrian.

Jennifer’s Birth , July 12-21 at the Black Swamp Players’ Oak Street Stage, 115 E. Oak St., Bowling Green.

Mean Girls (High School Version), July 13-16 by 3B Productions at the Maumee Indoor Theater, 601 Conant St., Maumee.

DOUBT: A Parable , July 18-21 at the Village Players Theatre, 2740 Upton Ave., Toledo.