8-20-04
BY JENN Q. GODDU
To borrow a lyric from a Proclaimers song, Pyewacket Productions is on its way from Misery to happiness today. Artistic director Kate Harris, at least, is having a grand time adapting the 1974 film The Conversation to the stage. She's seen the movie 20 times now (she admits to having a big ol' crush on Gene Hackman) and had the idea for a stage adaptation percolating in her head for years. Finally Pyewacket's Kenneth Lee suggested calling Paramount Pictures about rights. "I had just never pursued it and it just took one person to make a few phone calls and say 'Let's see what happens,'" Harris said.
Paramount put the company in touch with American Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola's company. A representative of Coppola said the director/writer was amenable to the adaptation. The only catch was the cost. They wanted $5,000 and 10 percent of the house in exchange for the rights. Pyewacket, whose biggest box office hit was a stage version of Stephen King's Misery, said that figure was impossible and sent their financials in to prove it. "We're small but we're mighty," Harris said, admitting, "Our budget for a year probably wouldn't take their producers for one movie out for dinner for one night." Within a day they were offered the rights in exchange for $100 and 12 per cent of the door.
An ecstatic Harris is now only a scene away from finishing her version of Coppola's story of a paranoid and personally private surveillance expert who begins to suspect his spying has uncovered a murder plot. The play combines the final written version of the screenplay with dialog from the movie itself. "The only thing I'm writing is the way it's being laid out," she said. "I'm not trying to bring the film to the stage. I'm trying to see what the film is trying to say and making it its own entity for the stage." Harris' adaptation is scheduled to open at the Chopin on Jan. 21 with Lee directing
The Duncan YMCA/Chernin Center for the Arts is taking a newly focused approach to the next three years. Following the resignation of executive director Malik Nevel in April of this year, the center reorganized under the day-to-day oversight of director of operations Marylyn Rodgers. This has coincided with the center's undergoing "a new artistic visioning process."
"The center is really trying to become a south side campus for the arts," Rodgers said. There is a plan in place to expand the programs for kids, adults and seniors in the performing arts. The center does have a 220-seat theatre, a dance studio and a recording studio. In addition, programs will be built around the computer center with its digital film editing equipment. In 2005 the center hopes to expand its film program even further while in 2006, if the funding is there, there are plans to add a visual arts annex to the center.
"In the past our programming has been sporadic. We have never built a brand identity of programs that people can identify as this is what Duncan's known for," Rodgers said. She hopes this will change by building a wider repertoire of programming around the mainstay youth theatre program (which has a new production director in Nick Minas). [Ed. Disclosure: Nick Minas left PerformInk for the job.] All the changes ongoing at Duncan will be better publicized to the community once the marketing coordinator the center is searching for is hired.
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| Larry Keeley |
One good idea that might be batted around when the League members meet is Northlight and Victory Gardens' new telemarketing move. The two have joined forces to rent a space in the League building at 228 S. Wabash from which to base their individual telemarketing campaigns running mid-July through mid-September.
Kathy Van Zwoll at Northlight and Carrie Gleason at Victory Gardens found they were similarly frustrated with outsourcing their telemarketing campaigns to an arts telemarketing firm so decided instead to co-host their own call center. "It just worked out fairly efficiently," Gleason said. "So far so good." In fact, Victory Gardens has already surpassed last year's 5,000 subscription tally and is now aiming for a 5,300 target.
Have a new one-act play sitting, bereft of attention, in a drawer? Send it off to the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre. The theatre is inviting playwrights based in the Midwest to submit scripts for a professional workshop and public reading. Four previously unproduced works, no more than 45 minutes in length, will get up to 12 hours of rehearsal time with actors, a director, and a dramaturg. In January 2005, Metropolis will present concert readings, showcasing one new play. To apply, send a script and resume to: Metropolis Performing Arts Centre New Play Festival, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell St., Arlington Heights, IL 60005, Attn: Karen Petruska, Literary Manager by Aug. 31.
And it seems that Angel Island may have finally seen the light. Rich Cotovsky reports that the location has finally received the proper licenses to be back in business.
Want to see you or your theatre's name in bold print? If you have news or announcements for Behind the Curtain e-mail Jenn at jqgoddu@sbcglobal.net.