Naperville, IL - Summer Place Theatre provided the entertainment for the 2009 Small Business of the Year Awards, held May 8 at the Wyndham Lisle Hotel. The Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce holds the event each year to honor its members who show exceptional business success over the past year. 

This year's theme, suggested by Kate Gingold of Gnu Ventures Company who helped plan the event for the Chamber and wrote most of the night's script, was "Show Business," and the entire event had a feeling of the Oscars.

After cocktails and dinner, the Awards Ceremony started off with "Another Op'ning, Another Show" from Kiss Me Kate, Summer Place Theatre's August production.

Later in the evening, our performers took the stage again to sing "There's No Business Like Show Business" to a big round of applause.

Not only did Summer Place supply the two songs, but we also supplied all the music and sound effects for the nominees.

When Lelbach Builders won an award, for instance, we played "One Brick at a Time" from Barnum!, a musical we produced a couple years ago, and when Hurst Landscaping won, we played "Come To My Garden" from The Secret Garden, last summer's production. Several other songs were used in this vein whenever an award was presented, and of course we also played the tympani drumroll! The biggest award of the night, the overall Small Business of the Year, Naperville Running, was accompanied to the stage by an instrumental version of "This is the Moment" from Jekyll and Hyde, also a Summer Place production.

Nearly 500 attendees from the local business community now know a little more about the wealth of entertainment available at their doorstep through the efforts of our talented performers. Not only did they enjoy two of our song and dance numbers; they also each received in their programs a 2-for-1 ticket to any one of our three main shows this summer.

Judy DiVita, on the Summer Place Board of Directors and also liaison to the Chamber, arranged for us to be the entertainment, and helped in producing and costuming the numbers.

Don Gingold, also on the Board of Directors, selected the songs and acquired the music, edited the song clips, and directed the production.

Harmony Barry choreographed the two numbers perfectly for the group, and taught the cast in only two rehearsals. Harmony choreographed A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum for Summer Place a couple years ago.

The ensemble was made up of Summer Place stage veterans save one. Tracy Cidlik came to auditions for Godspel, saw what we were doing for this show, and immediately volunteered. What a trooper! And she did a great job among the others.

Bob Stellatello, on the Board of Directors, was also among the ensemble. The full list of talented performers includes Bob, Don, Harmony, and Tracy, plus Meg McGarry (Lily from Secret Garden), Elizabeth Nystedt (Flower lady from Guys and Dolls), Suzanne Compton (roller-skating diner owner in Footloose), Susan Barry (Domina from Forum) and Rick Kaminski (Nicely from Guys and Dolls).

While the performers appeared only during the numbers, Jeff Sand, on the Board of Directors and Summer Place's sound engineer and technical production manager, was on duty from start to finish, running the sound board for the entire awards ceremony. He cued up all the tympani drum rolls, award songs and of course played the music that accompanied our singers.