10-12-07
A Musical Mecca
Curtain has learned more about the Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts opening late fall in the small town of Fairfield, Iowa (as reported in PerformInk June 22). The 520-seat venue will be part of the newly-built Fairfield Arts and Convention Center, and will offer a new revue of its namesake’s songs, A Little Sondheim Music, Dec. 7-9 as part of the gala opening. In January, the Center will mount a full production of Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along, followed in the spring season by two more productions plus a concert musical. All the above will utilize Equity Guest Artist contracts.
Beginning June 1, the Sondheim Center will go on an Equity Small Professional Theatre contract. The summer season will utilize a resident company in three fully mounted musicals and two concert musicals, according to artistic director Randall K. West. Come autumn 2008, the company will mirror the spring season with two fully mounted musicals and a concert musical. Do the math and you come up with eight full productions a year—all musicals—and a couple of concert shows. The operating budget for the theatre company (not for the entire Fairfield Center) will be $1.5 million in Fiscal 2008.
Now, here’s the casting news direct from West: “We have a New York casting director who will be handling all of our New York casting but we’re technically represented by the Midwest Equity office in Chicago. We will be holding bi-annual castings in Chicago. We will be bringing Broadway ‘name’ talent into town for our fully mounted musicals and celebrity talent to town for our concert musicals. We will be mixing that talent with the best the Midwest has to offer as well as utilizing some volunteers and college student interns.”
West enticed Sondheim to lend his name by dedicating the Center to the development of new works for musical theatre. Indeed, the Center is accepting submissions of new musical theatre work and resumes from creative staff and talent. Info: www.sondheimcenter.com, or e-mail Randall West at rwest@sondheimcenter.com. FYI: Fairfield is a town of 12,000 in southeast Iowa, about 60 miles due west of Galesburg, IL.
Come next June 21, film actors on both coasts are expected to mount major celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), assuming the politically fractured union hasn’t self-destructed by then as it goes through yet another tumultuous election for national officers. The SAG anniversary will be celebrated in Chicago, too, thanks to a recently-formed SAG committee headed by Roz Alexander, which intends to create a number of public exhibits and events, some of which may feature stars whose careers began here.
Alexander notes that locals may know when a big movie is shooting here—say, the recent Batman the Next that shut down The Loop—but are unaware of Chicago’s long history as a film production center from the pioneering years of the Essanay Studios, to Chicago’s once-vibrant TV commercial business and its notable production of educational and industrial films. The growth of Chicago as a location of films and series TV is only the latest incarnation of our town’s cinema industry. Or reincarnation, rather, for the likes of Gloria Swanson, Ben Turpin, Wallace Beery and the great Chaplin were taking pratfalls on North Side streets back in 1913.
Press flacks Jill Evans, James Juliano and Mary Jane Maharry have formed Chicago’s newest entertainment public relations firm, SHOUT Marketing & Media Relations. The three partners cite their 30 years of collective experience, which is good although I have 30 years experience all by myself, and I have the gray hair to prove it. SHOUT says they’ll work within budgets small and large, and will use the latest approaches such as online and grassroots campaigns. The company’s opening client roster includes Eat the Runt at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, Hizzoner at Prop Thtr, the 19th Annual Rhinoceros Festival, the Seldoms, Remy Bummpo and, in conjunction with BLAST Marketing, the League of Chicago Theatres and the Abbey Resort and Fontana Spa in Fontana, WI. Contact: ShoutChicago.com.
Congrats to local cabaret artist Elizabeth Doyle (a 2007 After Dark Award recipient), who’ll make her New York City debut Nov. 3 and 6 at the Metropolitan Room (West 22nd Street), along with musical director Jeffrey Roscoe. Doyle is taking the act she’s performed with success at Maxim’s and Davenport’s—a tribute to blondes of the silver screen, among them Mae West, Madonna, Doris Day and Dolly Parton.
It’s not an out-of-town tryout but it’s probably just as good: director David H. Bell, now a Northwestern University theatre professor, will stage The Boys from Syracuse next summer at Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook Terrace, but not before he shakes down his concept in a student production this November for the Northwestern Theatre and Interpretation Center. Bell is being billed as adapter and director of the 1937 musical, although The Boys from Syracuse is already adapted from The Comedy of Errors by the legendary George Abbott (book), Lorenz Hart (lyrics) and Richard Rogers (music). With songs such as “Sing for Your Supper,” “This Can’t Be Love,” “The Shortest Day of the Year” and “You Have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea” one shouldn’t muck around with the score.
Stuart Gordon, the one-time theatrical Force of Nature, made a brief and rare return visit to Chicago Oct. 6 to walk the red carpet at the Chicago International Film Festival, which was screening the U.S. premiere of Stuck, written and directed by Gordon. As founder/artistic director of the often-mythologized “original” Organic Theater Company here, Gordon staged such works as the Warp! sci-fi trilogy, Bleacher Bums, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, Sexual Perversity in Chicago and E/R (long before the TV show). Gordon went Hollywood in 1985 and has had a very successful career as director and writer, especially in the cult horror genre of which Stuck is an example. The film also was screened Oct. 7 and 12.
Chicago’s newest theatre space opened its doors Sept. 16 in what may become a hot new arts corridor. Located at 3931 N. Elston (at Irving Park), La Costa Theatre Company turned a second floor into a 110-seat three quarter house with a spacious art gallery lobby. Says associate artistic director Ashley Bush, “Because we know what it is like to rent as a young company with young people in charge, we hope to give renters in our space a very welcoming experience. We will be offering rehearsal space, late night rental and one night event rental.”
It’s OK if you never heard of La Costa Theatre Company. It’s a young ensemble company just two years old and not yet widely known. La Costa inaugurates its new space with On Stars Not Falling by Scott Shallenbarger (Oct. 6-28).
La Costa is the second company to establish itself in the lengthy, non-descript Elston Avenue light-industrial corridor. The Prop Thtr Group opened a two-stage space four years ago at 3502-3504 N. Elston. Since then, several other theatre troupes have eyed Elston Avenue, with La Costa the next to take the leap of faith.