6-9-06
Changes at TCG
Ben Cameron and Joan Channick, the dynamic one-two punch that’s run the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) for the last seven years, have delivered resignation notices to the TCG board. Cameron is leaving the TCG to assume an executive position with the Doris Duke Charitable Trust. Channick is leaving to take up the post of managing director of the embattled Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, a Tony Award-winning regional company with a history as a Broadway incubator.
Cameron and Channick made their decisions independently, but unquestionably they influenced each other. They are close friends of long standing from their student days at Yale University School of Drama. When Cameron was named to head up the TCG, successor to founder Peter Zeisler, he immediately recruited Channick (then associate managing director of the Center Stage, Baltimore) as his deputy director. The industry joke, not far from the truth, is that Channick ran the TCG’s day-to-day affairs so Cameron could bustle around the country making great speeches. Under their leadership, the TCG absorbed the American Section of the International Theatre Institute (ITI), a UNESCO-affiliated world cultural organization.
The local connection is Channick (coincidentally a cousin of this writer), who spent her late childhood and adolescence in the Chicago area, and still has immediate family living here. Channick has a BA from Harvard, a University of Pennsylvania law degree and a Master’s in arts management from Yale Drama. While at Yale, she interned at the Goodman Theatre and taught Roche Schulfer all he knows. Since joining the TCG, Channick has taught in the Yale Drama management program, and will continue to do so when she assumes the Long Wharf post at the end of the summer.
The TCG board and staff will conduct a national search for successors to Cameron and Channick.
Among their last official obligations, Cameron and Channick will participate in the TCG annual conference, June 8-10 in Atlanta, GA, hosted by the Alliance Theatre. Entertainment for the conference is being provided, in part, by Chicago’s Free Street Teen Ensemble, which will perform excerpts from its recent show, eternal return. Free Street will hit Atlanta almost directly following the troupe’s 10th tour to Germany, after a three-week program of performances and workshops.
Producer Vicki Quade celebrated a double anniversary June 8, as Late Nite Catechism began its 14th year and Put the Nuns in Charge began its second year, both at the Royal George Theater. Late Nite Catechism was co-authored and produced by Quade and Maripat Donovan, and various editions of it have run all over the world, but the one in Chicago is the original. Quade points out that it’s now the longest-running one-person show in Chicago theatre history. There can’t be many shows – save the Neo-Futurists’ Too Much Light… – that have run longer. (Coincidentally, both of those shows started as late-nite offerings at Live Bait.)
Drury Lane Oak Brook Terrace Theatre recently named Noreen Heron & Associates as its public relations firm, after years of handling media in-house. According to Heron, the Drury Lane contract makes them the leading local PR agency for musical theatre in Chicago with such clients as the Marriott Theater, Theatre at the Center and Porchlight Music Theatre. Heron also frequently handles musical attractions at the Allstate Arena and the Rosemont Theatre. Says Heron, “Who knew that this would be my career path when I started at Candlelight Dinner Playhouse as a 14-year-old usher, lying about my age to get the job, moving on to the House Manager position and then the PR Director position? I worked there a total of 16 years. I learned a lot of what I know about theatre publicity working with Bill Pullinsi, Tony D’Angelo and Eileen LaCario, amongst others.”
John Mahoney dropped out of Romance at the Goodman Theatre because of a bout of pancreatitis, but pledged he’d be ready to tackle The Retreat from Moscow, the current production at Northlight. When he dropped out of that one, too, rumors about serious illness began to circulate once more. All we can do is report the news: word is, Mahoney was laid low by a recurrence of pancreatitis, and he’s pledged his home troupe, Steppenwolf, that he’ll be fit as a fiddle for The Unmentionables, a Bruce Norris world premiere, June 29-August 27. He’s also committed to a benefit performance of Beckett’s All That Fall for Irish Repertory of Chicago, postponed from April 10 to June 19 and long sold out. Mahoney’s many friends and fans hope he’s got it right this time. The affable actor always has been generous with his time and talent, and has been missed.
Lucy Paquet Gabbard – known to Actors Equity as Lucina Paquet – passed away peacefully on May 23 in Houston. She was 84. Almost immediately, PerformInk staff members began to receive e-mails from former friends and colleagues with fond memories. For example, writer and choreographer Scott Sandoe – long absent from the Chicago scene – e-mailed from Los Angeles, “I’m not sure how many of you knew Lucy Paquet, but my guess is that a lot of you did. A lovely woman and fine actress who I was fortunate enough to work with in Chicago. She’ll be terribly, terribly missed.” PerformInk columnist Greg Mermel recalled her performance as Grandma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath at Steppenwolf and cited her long friendship with him and with his father in Houston.
In addition to her stage work, New Orleans-born-and-bred Lucy Paquet appeared in a number of Chicago-shot films before moving to Houston in 2001, among them Groundhog Day, Prelude to a Kiss and My Best Friend’s Wedding. Originally an academic, Lucy was a professor at Eastern Illinois University (where Joan Allen was one of her students), and was the author of two books, The Dream Structure of Pinter’s Plays and The Stoppard Plays. A private service was held in Houston.
The long-established Village Players in Oak Park, founded in 1959, definitely is ramping up its institutional profile. First, the Village Players created a 40-seat second theatre in a backstage area of their existing facility, opening the venue with the chamber musical, The Last Five Years in March. Now they’ve hired respected casting director, talent manager and award-winning choreographer Janet Louer as director of the New Actors Studio at Village Players Theatre, where she’ll oversee Village Players’ children’s theatre classes, camp and workshops. She’ll report to Carl Occhipinti, the widely experienced theatre veteran who is Village Players artistic director. Louer is co-owner of O’Brien/Louer Casting, recently assigned to cast this summer’s Ravinia Festival production of Gypsy staring Patti Lupone. Louer factoid: she has a Master’s degree in Dance/Movement Psychotherapy.