BY JONATHAN ABARBANEL
I spent a pleasant mid-July week among the roses and redwoods of Ashland, Oregon, where I caught up with my old friend, Libby Appel, now in her fifth year as artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Appel did graduate work at Northwestern, and directed locally at the Court, Goodman and St. Nicholas theatres before moving on to teach at California State University, serve as Dean of the Theatre Program at California Institute for the Arts, and serve as artistic director of the Indiana Rep (1992-96).
Appel is regarded as one of the most powerful women in American theatre, or perhaps world theatre, and no wonder; she supervises a company of 450, including a repertory ensemble of 70 actors (52 of them Equity), in an eight-month season of 11 plays presented in three theatres. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has a Fiscal 2001 budget of $17.6 million, of which an astonishing 78 percent will be earned income. The OSF will sell more than 380,000 tickets (no subscribers, either) and will play to 95 percent of capacity or better. In a typical performance at the 1200-seat outdoors Elizabethan Theatre, about 1100 ticket-holders will be repeat visitors to the Festival. Indeed, 85 percent of OSF patrons travel 300 miles or more to attend, and will see at least three plays. These are stats for any performing arts organization to envy.
The National New Plays Network (NNPN) held its fourth annual meeting in Minneapolis two weeks ago, hosted by the ever-iconoclastic Jack Reuler and his Mixed Blood Theatre. Chicago was represented by Scott Vehill and Stefan Brun of the Prop Thtr., a founding NNPN member. The umbrella organization currently has nine members, but expects to expand to 15 within the next few months.
The exciting news is that the NNPN has received its first two grants, one of which will be used to commission three new works at member troupes. The remaining NNPN companies will then have rights-of-first-refusal to stage second productions of the plays. The idea is to help promote an extended life for the new plays, beyond their development and first production. The second grant will underwrite observerships and travel by NNPN members to familiarize themselves with the work of other NNPN members as a door to future collaborations.
The first afternoon of the Minneapolis meeting was highlighted by a lively dialogue with two of the biggest theatre moguls around, Peter Schneider and William O’Connor, both former Chicagoans. Schneider is chairman of Walt Disney Studios, and the producer of Aida and The Lion King on Broadway, but in the late 1970s he was the young-sprout managing director of St. Nicholas Theatre Company. Schneider soon will leave Disney after 17 years to start his own Broadway production company, with substantial financial backing from Disney. O’Connor worked at the Equity Central Region office, and at Court Theatre before moving on. After various stops along the way, O’Connor now is president of Clear Channel Entertainment’s (formerly SFX) Boston operations.
When Kary M. Walker stepped down after 21 years as executive producer of the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, he said he was going to build a house in his beloved Spain and move there. Well, maybe he will sooner or later. In the meantime, he’s accepted a post as associate producer of NETworks Theatrical Productions, a Maryland and New York City-based producer of touring Broadway shows. Walker will serve as a producer of current and future touring shows, and also will be involved in the development of new musical works.
NETworks is responsible for a number of shows that have been presented as part of the Broadway in Chicago series, including Cinderella with Earth Kitt, The Civil War with Larry Gatlin, Cabaret and Rent. NETworks also has a tour of Ragtime on the road, and plans to tour Seussical the Musical to more than 200 U.S. and Canadian cities. We didn’t think the energetic Mr. Walker could last long just sitting around in a mantilla, playing his castanets.
"Come to Chicago. They’ll leave you alone here," Paul Sills famously advised Organic Theater founder Stuart Gordon in the late 1960s, when the Madison-based troupe was busted by the local cops for having a nude Tinkerbell in a production of Peter Pan. Well, "plus ca change, plus ca meme." Terence McNally’s Corpus Christi is running quite amicably at the Bailiwick Theatre, with nary a protester in sight or threats to the theatre (as occurred when the play first was produced at the Manhattan Theatre Club). But it ain’t so across the border in Indiana, where the Neanderthals, Philistines and hypocrites still dwell. A group of Hoosiers including 21 state lawmakers filed suit on July 5 to ban a two-day production of Corpus Christi, scheduled at Purdue University-Fort Wayne August 10-11.
So far, the University has refused to back down, even though the suit threatens to withdraw public funding from the school. Although most of the plaintiffs haven’t read the play, they perceive it as containing "theological attacks on Christianity and its Founder" and, therefore, tax money should not be used to support its production. Their tortured argument is that since tax dollars cannot be used to promote religion (separation of church and state), they should not be used "to tear religion down." Huh? If they read or saw Corpus Christi, they would see that it does not discredit any established church, and certainly DOES promote spiritual values. Oops, I guess we better ban the Greeks, too, since those plays promote anti-Christian polytheism. The controversy, by the way, has persuaded the university theatre to add four more performances, August 11-15, to the original two. Way to go, Indiana!
Apologies to the Noble Fool Theatre Company. Some readers took me seriously when I suggested–in my last column–that Noble Fool has misused the $1 million TIF grant they received from the City of Chicago. The Noble Fool is a comedy troupe, right? So I thought everyone would understand that my tongue firmly was in my cheek when I implied they were living large in the Bahamas, thus delaying once again completion of their Loop home. Really, folks, it’s just normal construction snafus. Your taxpayer’s dollars are safe and, from my perspective, being well-spent.