9-28-07
The Disappearing Contest
Several people have asked little ol’ Behind the Curtain if we know what happened to the Dept. of Cultural Affairs’s Chicago Blueprints on Stage new play competition, announced in early spring. The program solicited original full-length plays centered on true Chicago historical events, with the top four finalists to receive staged readings at one of four top Chicago theatres partnering with the DCA: Chicago Dramatists, Journeymen, Lookingglass and TimeLine. The staged readings were to have taken place Sept. 17, 18, 24 and 25. Of the four, one winning play was to receive a full production in spring 2009 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Burnham Plan which helped remake the face of downtown Chicago (especially the lakefront and park system).
Reportedly some 70 plays were submitted by the June 1 deadline, each to be read by at least two judges from the four participating companies plus a half-dozen others (Silk Road, Stage Left, ETA Creative Arts). But while participating judges completed the time-consuming process of reading the plays, no finalists were announced and no staged readings were performed. In mid-August, Chicago Blueprints on Stage quietly disappeared.
A DCA official says that the program’s facilitator, DCA staffer Amanda Friedberg, left the department in August to take another job, and she was not replaced due to DCA financial constraints. Representatives of the participating theatres confirm this. Chicago Dramatists managing director Brian Loevner says that his theatre received about 20 scripts from the city, which were duly read and returned …and then nothing. In early August, Friedberg phoned Loevner to say she was leaving and that no further work on Chicago Blueprints should be done by the theatres.
“I was shocked,” says Loevner, “for the theatres to put so much work into it, there should have been a completion of the project in some way. I don’t understand why they didn’t call together the four theatres and ask them to take it over. The department really dropped the ball. Are you kidding? We’re Chicago Dramatists; we would have been delighted to take over a new works festival.”
TimeLine artistic director P. J. Powers confirms details, although TimeLine didn’t participate in the first-round reading. “We received four or five plays (in August) and the very next day I got an e-mail saying not to read them, and to destroy the packet,” Powers says. The plays TimeLine received were semi-finalists, he says, adding that the four theatres were supposed to meet about a week later to make final choices for the staged readings.
It seems to us the DCA still has plenty of time to make amends, since the winning play isn’t supposed to be produced until 2009. Plays have been submitted and have been read, reports have been filled out, a structure is in place; it would seem to be a fairly easy task for the DCA to find a suitable facilitator from among the participating troupes, or by offering a very modest fee to a part-time freelancer, perhaps one of Chicago’s many under-employed dramaturges.
The side project not only is expanding (see Throughlines in this issue) but also is going global. The troupe’s 2005 production When Women Wore Wings recently was staged in Canada in a revised form by NovaStages, Cambridge, Ontario under the title feMAELSTROM (closed Sept. 15). And looking ahead, the side project’s March, 2008 production of Slipping, by Daniel Talbott, will cross the pond in May as an entrant in the 2008 International Gay Theatre Festival in Dublin, Ireland. The drama, which follows the trials and tribulations of a gay high school senior, will be directed by side project founder Adam Webster. Another side project premiere, its 2003 success The Fourth Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide by Sean Graney, will be seen in New York in November in a production by the Hypocrites (who also performed it at the Athenaeum in 2004). Several members of the original cast and Hypocrites revival cast will be featured in the Big Apple showing at 59E59, directed by Devin Brain.
Anastasios Petrovas, the Greek Consul General in Chicago, will attend the Oct. 1 opening night of The Defiant Muse at Victory Gardens at the Biograph Theatre. He’ll be there to see how playwright Nicholas A. Patricca has spent the 15,000 Euro prize he received last year as winner of a Distinction Award in the 2006 Onassis International Cultural Competition for Theatre, a program of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. Hey Nickie, hey Anastasios, “Yassas!”
A new program by American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation gives lovers of the arts and architecture an opportunity to help preserve a number of historic sites in the Chicago metro area, several of them with contemporary theatre connections. The American Express Partners in Preservation program will commit $1 million in preservation grants to sites selected by public vote from an initial list of 25.
Sites reflect the diversity of Chicagoland’s heritage, encompassing cemeteries, Viking ships, farmsteads, cultural centers, lighthouses and cathedrals. The preservation needs range from fixing leaking roofs, repairing foundations and restoring original terracotta to adapting buildings for further community use.
Among the sites are the Chicago Cultural Center and the Mayslake Peabody Estate. Dating from the early 1890s, the Cultural Center is HQ for the Department of Cultural Affairs and also houses the Claudia Cassidy and Studio theatres. The 1920s Peabody Estate in Oakbrook is home to First Folio Shakespeare Company, which uses the Peabody Mansion for its indoor winter season.
The public may vote once daily through Oct. 10, 2007 via a dedicated Web site, www.partnersinpreservation.com. The interactive site allows people to post photos and thoughts about each landmark and thereby lobby for votes.
A spokesperson for the program said each site has submitted an application with a requested amount, the top request being $150,000. The winner of the public vote is guaranteed 100 percent of its request, while lower-ranking sites may receive only partial funding. In theory, the spokesperson said, all 25 sites could receive money, although in the program’s first run in San Francisco last year only 13 sites received grants out of an initial 25.