5-9-08
Extensions and Logjams
It’s the time of year when folks should be busting to be outside, but the weather isn’t cooperating. Perhaps that’s one reason people are still going to theatre. Whatever the reason or reasons, a gaggle of shows have announced extensions of between one and six weeks: Four Places at Victory Gardens, A Steady Rain at Royal George, In a Dark, Dark House at Profiles, A Passage to India at Theatre Building Chicago (produced by Vitalist Theatre and Premiere Theatre and Performance), The Strangerer at Chopin Theatre (produced by Theatre Oobleck) and Boneyard Prayer at Redmoon.
Eight-year old Steep Theatre Company has found a new home. They’ve signed a lease on a storefront at 1115 W. Berwyn, just east of Broadway in the Edgewater neighborhood. Plans are in place to open the 2008-2009 season in the new venue, which shares the block with a pizzeria, a good non-chain coffee parlor, a health/nutritional supplements store and a Jewel-Osco. Steep will be leaving behind its home of five years, a cramped storefront on Sheridan Road near Irving Park, with a bar next door where live bands kick in about 9 p.m. on many performance nights. Steep says the new venue is twice the size of the Sheridan Road location, thereby benefiting artists and audiences with a more comfortable and professional performance space. Street parking should be easier, too. As for noise, well, Steep will lose the bands blasting next door but gain the Red Line trains which will pass nearly over their heads, with the Berwyn station just steps away. Dealing with noise, after all, is a slippery slope, not merely a Steep one.
The Department of Cultural Affairs has announced 2008 CityArts grants for general operating support to 283 arts organizations in all performing, presenting and visual arts disciplines. Ranging from $1,000 to $8,000 according to the budgets of the recipients, the grants total $1 million in all. Virtually all non-profit theatre, dance, music and film organizations within the city limits received a little of the city’s cash with the largest number by far in the $1,100-$3,000 range of CityArts I grants. A Red Orchid, Aguijon, Chicago Ballet, Chicago Tap Theatre, Babes With Blades, City Lit, Mordine & Company and Stage Left are just a few of the nearly 140 grants at this level.
CityArts II grants of $2,500-$6,000 are being made to American Theater Company, Barrel of Monkeys, Hedwig Dances, MPAACT, Porchlight, ShawChicago and Thodos Dance among 60+ recipients in this category. Receiving checks of $2,500-$7,000 are Chicago Dramatists, Congo Square, Redmoon, River North Dance Chicago and TimeLine among just under 50 CityArts III grants. The final CityArts IV category provides $3,500-$8,000 to 35 recipients, among them Chicago Shakespeare, Court, Goodman, Lookingglass, Steppenwolf and Victory Gardens theatres Chicago Opera Theater and Lyric Opera, and the Hubbard Street and Joffrey dance companies.
Nathan Allen, artistic director of the House Theatre of Chicago, has made his debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Seems that last year Allen created an original show, Rose and Rime, with theatre students at Hope College in Holland, MI. The Hope College production became one of three plays nationwide invited to perform during the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (ACTF) in Washington, D.C. in mid-April. The House has announced that their own production of Rose and Rime will open in Chicago next February as part of The House’s 2008-2009 season.
As if Steppenwolf needed another reason for people to want to come work for them, the theatre was just named one of the 35 finalists in the Wall Street Journal and Winning Workplaces Top Small Workplaces competition. They were selected from nearly 400 applicants. The winners will be announced in October.
Wisconsin News I: Ten Chimneys, the lovely country estate of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, will be declared a National Historic Landmark on May 26, which also was the date of their wedding in 1920. Ten Chimneys is nestled in rolling kettle-moraine country a short distance southwest of Milwaukee in Genesee Depot, WI. Now owned and protected by a public foundation, Ten Chimneys has become a considerable tourist attraction—even for non-theatre lovers—as well as a theatre research center. Beside tours of the main house and other estate buildings, Ten Chimneys offers periodic musical and theatre performances (staged readings), some in affiliation with the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre.
Wisconsin News II: American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI has broken ground on a new 200-seat indoor facility with a thrust configuration, expected to open next year. A second building to support American Players Theatre’s (APT’s) production operations will be built at the same time. APT producing artistic director David Frank said the new venue will offer creative growth to artists and audiences and allow experimentation with classical and original works ideally suited to a smaller, indoor stage. The troupe’s original 1148-seat outdoor amphitheatre will continue to be the primary venue, hosting five productions per season in rotating repertory. The construction projects carry a $4 million price tag, of which $2.7 million has been raised or pledged to date.
APT is continuing its outreach to Chicago audiences, initiated last year. The company continues to work with local publicist Carol Fox & Associates who have facilitated several press events for APT. Chicago and Spring Green are sharing a growing roster of directors and actors as well, among them William Brown and James Bohnen, who will return to APT this summer to direct, respectively, A Midsummer Nights’ Dream and a combined Henry IV: The Making of a King.
Opening Night Logjam, 2008 Edition: OK, kids, you were doing pretty well for a long time. April had nearly 50 openings but still only had three nights upon which there were four or five competing first nights, and those three nights were separate from each other. Compare that with the horrendous month of May. As of this writing, my calendar lists 47 new productions 21 of which opened between May 2 and May 10. No show opened May 1 and no show opened May 6 but 12 shows opened May 2-5 (13 shows if you count Northwestern’s 77th Waa-Mu Show, Skylines). Another 18 shows will open May 11-19, although nothing is opening May 13 and only one show opens May 16. Then, a mere eight shows open in the final 11 days of the month, as most theatres give the Memorial Day Weekend a wide berth (except Court Theatre, which opens The First Breeze of Summer on Saturday, May 24; I won’t be there; I want my holiday weekend).
Why is it important to do this? Because no publication in the city—not even The Reader with its numerous 90-word capsule reviews—can keep up when four or five shows open on the same night and a dozen open in three days. Count how many shows the Trib and the Sun-Times review in total each week and figure your odds in a week when twice that many open. Count the reviews in Time Out Chicago and the Windy City Times and do the same math.