A local favorite returns to the Globe mainstage

By GREG KLEIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

Growing up on Long Island, Danielle Henrici said she knew she wanted to be an actor when she saw a performance of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)”.

“I loved it so much I went back and I saw it five more times,” she said, “including taking all my girlfriends back at my birthday party.”

Flash forward to a decade ago, Henrici — then known by her maiden name, Newell — had moved to Cooperstown and established The Glimmer Globe Theatre while working at The Smithy. She was teaching acting classes and had staged a Shakespeare workshop when a Cooperstown native with acting chops and training, Michael Henrici, signed up.

“Michael signed up for the Shakespeare workshop, not because he needed it, but because he wanted to meet me,” she said.

The rest was not just personal history, but dramatic history, too. Finding a local actor who already knew the Bard gave her confidence she could produce the show in Cooperstown, she said. The show became one of the first mainstage Glimmer Globe productions and it proved to be so popular, the company
brought it back for four more seasons.

“Who doesn’t love a show that makes you laugh until you cry,” she said.

Henrici directed that show, but she said she always wondered if she could play one of the characters, too.
Flash forward to the coronavirus pandemic era. As co-artistic directors of Glimmer Globe, now working with Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers’ Museum, the Henricis have been the theater couple in
Cooperstown for a decade.

Their troop has grown into a community of friends who they have trained, directed and gathered several times of year for big-cast professional theater that doesn’t exist in many places. Since they are both classically trained, their productions are summer stock level shows, including summer performances at the Fenimore’s Lucy B. Hamilton Amphitheater.