1-16-09
Eileen Boevers Built Careers and Community at Apple Tree
Boevers died last week of complications due to breast cancer.
Eileen Boevers lost her 4-year battle with breast cancer Jan. 11. The founder and longtime artistic director of Apple Tree Theatre was just shy of her 69th birthday. She retired from running Apple Tree almost exactly a year ago.
“I’m 68-years-old and your priorities change,” Boevers said at the time of her retirement. “To be honest, your energy levels change. It really became an issue of stamina and being able to give to the organization.
“When you get a diagnosis like [breast cancer], it changes your priorities,” she said.
Boevers’ priorities for the last year were to visit more with her children—David, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Jessica, an actress who works extensively on Broadway—and to travel with her husband, Gerald. Apple Tree managing director Mark Weston said she was able to do that for much of the year.
Boevers was among the first to bring high quality, professional theatre to the suburbs. She had been running the Eileen Boevers Performing Arts Workshop for 13 years, before she opened Apple Tree in a church basement in Highland Park in 1983.
Over the last 25 years, Apple Tree has won 28 Jeff Awards. Boevers was given a special Jeff in October, 2008, for outstanding achievement.
Boevers gave opportunities to numerous young actors, many of whom she continued to work with as they became not so young. She directed most of Apple Tree’s shows, specialized in reimagining plays or musicals that had not done as well in other productions.
She leaves behind a theatre which has become an institution in the Northshore and theatre communities, with the Performing Arts Workshop, a traveling troupe and children’s theatre, in addition to their regular productions. She also leaves behind an organization in flux. Apple Tree is currently between homes, having moved out of it’s longtime space on Elm Place into the Karger Center in August of 2006. The lease was supposed to be two years, at $10 a year, with Apple Tree footing the expenses for building the space into a theatre.
Weston said the theatre could be at the Karger Center for another year, but he is in talks with the city of Highland Park to take over another, larger space. Plans for a multi-use arts center have been scuttled, due to the economy, but, said Weston, “Because of the economy, there are more spaces that are empty that can be converted.” He hopes to have that nailed down by spring. Meanwhile, he’s also looking at spaces in Wilmette and Evanston.
In addition to David and Jessica and Gerald, Boevers leaves behind her mother, Bee Gotteiner, and her sister, Lois Seiden. A memorial service was held on Thursday at the theatre.