11-21-08
Goodbye Legends
There’s some bitter mixed in with the sweet this post-election season, during which so much international attention landed on our city. Two of Chicago’s greatest cultural champions passed away in the days before the Obama victory. Steppenwolf held a free tribute to Studs Terkel on Nov. 17 with a staged reading of Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, adapted by Derek Goldman and directed by Jessica Thebus. One of Terkel’s last stage appearances was, fittingly enough, as blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in Steppenwolf’s 2004 “Traffic” presentation of Trumbo, and Circle also had two previous outings with Steppenwolf. An all-star cast, including Martha Lavey, Tom Irwin, K. Todd Freeman (playing Chicago Reader critic, caseworker for the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, and Circle interviewee Justin Hayford), David Schwimmer, and Joyce Piven honored the legacy of Terkel’s irreplaceable voice.
Joffrey Ballet co-founder Gerald Arpino also received a send-off from Chicago’s arts community on Nov. 17 at the Auditorium Theatre, home to so many of the Joffrey’s memorable productions (and where the company’s annual presentation of The Nutcracker takes place this year). Arpino’s family asks that memorial contributions be made to: Gerald Arpino Scholarship Fund, Academy of Dance, Official School of the Joffrey Ballet, Joffrey Tower, 10 E. Randolph St., Chicago, IL 60601. The Academy, set to launch on Jan. 5, will continue the legacy of Arpino and Robert Joffrey.
Two Chicago favorites have been honored in the inaugural round of Lunt-Fontanne fellowships. Steppenwolf ensemble member Francis Guinan and Goodman regular Mary Beth Fisher join nine of their peers in this program, sponsored by the Ten Chimneys Foundation (the famous summer home of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne). The thesps receive cash and will participate in an intensive week-long master class and retreat at the bucolic Wisconsin setting, conducted by Lynn Redgrave. This continues the tradition of Ten Chimneys as a destination location for the best stage actors in America.
But closer to home, some theatres are starting to run up against economic reality. As reported by Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune on Nov. 9, Porchlight Theatre is pulling back from its plans to renovate the former Fullerton State Bank Building in Lincoln Park, while other high-profile companies, including Chicago Children’s Theatre, are still itinerant. The space race gets no easier as the economy continues to waver. On the other hand, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation just expanded its reach to DuPage County, awarding the College of DuPage $7,500 in support of Buffalo Theatre Ensemble, one of the five resident companies housed at COD’s McAninch Arts Center. The grant is aimed at expanding the subscriber base for the 21-year-old company.
Two shows seen in development with Theatre Building Chicago’s Stages festival of new musicals are now in successful full productions. Theo Ubique nabbed Belle Barth: If I Embarrass You, Tell Your Friends, based on the 1950s bawdy comic and created by Joanne Koch, Ilya Levinson, and Owen Kalt (with story by Koch and Sarah Blacher Cohen). Belle appeared in this year’s festival. (See story, page 1.) Meantime, British composer Laurence Mark Wythe’s romantic Tomorrow Morning, workshopped at the 2007 festival, is winning raves in its commercial production, directed by Tom Mullen at the Greenhouse Theatre.
“This is extremely unusual and we are extremely happy with both Belle Barth and Tomorrow Morning,” says TBC executive director Joan Mazzonelli. “It’s what Stages is all about, because these two shows could not be more different.”
A playwriting newbie writes about something he knows well—the effects of homelessness. Rick Roberts, whose father was a homeless alcoholic, has been a longtime advocate of services for the homeless and, as executive director for Horizon Communications Group, has also produced several documentaries with a social conscience. His first play, The BenchMark, is described as a “poignant satire” on the condition of homelessness, and it runs Nov. 29-Dec. 14 at Chicago Temple. Information and tickets are available through www.hcgrp.net/benchmark/index.html.
Victory Gardens kicks off its Access Project Crip Slam series, which explores and celebrates disability culture, with Queen Elizabeth’s Dwarf by Kathryn Jones on Nov. 23. Jones, who is a little person, brings to life the story of Mistress Thomasina de Paris, who worked in the court of Elizabeth I. The role should come easily to Jones—she has played Thomasina for five seasons at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. A post-show discussion with Jones and a pair of medieval literature scholars follows.
Theatre just isn’t theatre without the great taste of Hellman—Lillian Hellman, that is. You thought we’d seen all we were going to see a couple seasons back, when TimeLine did The Children’s Hour and Writers dug up Another Part of the Forest? Nope! Eclipse, Shattered Globe, and City Lit collaborate on “Lillian Hellmania,” in recognition of the fact that each is producing a Hellman play this season. Eclipse is currently running The Autumn Garden through Dec. 21, Shattered Globe picks up the baton with The Little Foxes in early January, and City Lit continues in late January with a world premiere adaptation of her controversial memoir, Scoundrel Time (the one that, in part, caused Mary McCarthy to famously observe of Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’”).
It’s no lie: Circle Theatre has a new managing director, and it’s Jon Arndt. Arndt moves over to the Forest Park venue after several years with Chicago Public Art Group, a community arts organization dedicated to using public art as part of neighborhood development. He has also worked with Stage Left, Chicago Dramatists, Bailiwick, Collaboraction, and other companies. High on his to-do list is working out a deal for the auto industry and closing Guantanamo (oh sorry, wrong to-do list!). Seriously, Arndt will be charged with getting Circle on track for opening a new venue for 2011.
It’s Sketchbook submission time! Collaboraction’s annual extravaganza of short plays is now accepting scripts online at www.collaboraction.org. Deadline is Dec. 22, and there are new categories this year, including live music videos, “Sketchbook Jr.” for young playwrights ages 7-12, and “new American fables” devised collaboratively by directors and ensembles.
Finally, if you’re still looking for that fabulous gift for the theatre fan in your life, why not see if you can persuade John Wolfson to sell his priceless collection of early play texts (which include Shakespeare quarto and folio editions) to you instead of bequeathing it to Shakespeare’s Globe in London? The gift, announced earlier this month, is worth millions of pounds, but maybe you could persuade Wolfson to give it to you instead for something equally hard to come by—perhaps a ticket to the inauguration.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Send tasty seasonal tidbits to kerryreid@comcast.net.