Summer Stock
Years ago while living in New York City, I landed my first summer stock job and was off to Ohio and Michigan to do two shows in three weeks with the Kenley Players. Past scenic designs for the Sacramento Shakespeare Festival include the 2005 productions of Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and As You Like It. Shawn has also designed productions for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Pacific Alliance Stage Company, Word for Word, City Theatre, Capitol Stage at the Delta King Theatre, Inquiline Theatre Company, San Francisco State University, and other companies around the Bay Area. 
Summer stock theatre is any theatre that presents stage productions only in the summer. The name combines the season with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes. Summer stock theatres frequently take advantage of seasonal weather by having their productions outdoors or under tents set up temporarily for their use. Some smaller theatres still continue this tradition, and a few summer stock theatres have become highly regarded by both patrons as well as performers and designers. Often viewed as a starting point for professional actors, stock casts are typically young, just out of high school or still in college.
Summer stock started in 1919-1920s with four theatres: The Muny, St. Louis, Mo. (1919) is the nation’s oldest and largest outdoor musical theatre; Manhattan Theatre Colony, first started near Peterborough, New Hampshire (1927) and moved to Ogunquit, Maine; the Cape Playhouse, Dennis, Massachusetts (1927); and the Berkshire Playhouse, Stockbridge, Massachusetts (1928). Summer stock n. U.S. theatrical productions by a repertory company organized for the summer season, esp.
In its heyday during the sixties and seventies, summer stock on the East Coast had a circuit in which shows were put up quickly, usually with a recognizable TV star in the lead role in order to sell more tickets. The closest one to Los Angeles is the Sacramento Music Circus, which still pulls them in and does a quick summer season. Out on the East Coast, the Theater By the Sea in Massachusetts is one of the few that is still operating, but it’s a far cry from what it was like several decades ago. Last summer Keith Mottola of the Steps Theatre wanted to produce his first summer stock season.
He brought me in a few years ago to the Steps Theatre, a small theater in Bellingham, Massachusetts, just south of Boston, and with two weeks’ rehearsal, we put on a production of Willy Wonka. While one show is going on costumes are being prepared for the next show and sets are being built, ready to load in the exact same day you strike the previous show. 