Kary Walker
|
Kary M. Walker, the longtime Executive Producer at the Marriott Theatre, has died in Spain.
Walker served as Executive Producer at the Marriott Theatre in for 21 years, a leadership that brought with it staging of multiple world premieres and a boom in subscribership. Under Walker's watch, subscribership at the suburban Chicago venue jumped to 35,000, making Marriott Theatre the second largest musical theatre subscription house in the nation – second only to Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. It was Walker who instituted the Marriott Theatre subscription drive in 1981 and changed the venue from a showcase for TV stars in non-musical plays to a stage for ensemble-oriented commercial musicals designed to draw a big audience. Walker's reign included the staging of the first major regional production of Baby, staged by Richard Maltby Jr., the world premiere of the Our Town musical known as Grover's Corners, and premieres of Startime, Give My Regards to Broadway, Ms. Cinderella, Maury Yeston's History Loves Company, Annie Warbucks, Phantom of the Country Palace, Matador and Peggy Sue Got Married. Reworked versions of Houdini, The Goodbye Girl, The New Yorkers and Queen of the Stardust Ballroom also found voice under Walker. Windy City had its American premiere there. Walker productions earned 238 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations, and he is generally viewed in the Chicago theatre community as a hero who reinvented and reinvigorated a large producing house, that then went on to provide employment for hundreds of actors and give voice to new writers. Writer and librettist Sean Grennan expressed an opinion shared by untold members of the the Chicago theater community about Walker giving them their first chance in theater: "Kary really did have a passion for theatre," said Grennan, whose Phantom of the Country Palace and Ms. Cinderella, written with co librettist Kathy Santen, got their premieres at Marriott. "I think it would be very easy for someone to do Oklahoma! every year, but he wanted to do new works. He could make as much or more doing Brigadoon, but he wanted to be part of a creation. He gave me my start and maybe created me as a writer; I had no opportunities until he got me started." |