2-1-08
Steep Sets First Capital Goal
At its annual fundraiser last November, 5-year old Steep Theatre Company launched its first-ever capital campaign, aiming to raise $30,000. It’s a modest goal, but it will be enough to build out a new home space for the troupe, says executive director Peter Moore. At present Steep occupies a storefront on Sheridan Road near Irving Park, but Moore says the sound bleed from the live bands playing at the next door bar is driving them bonkers. He said Steep would be happy to pick up a few more seats and a little more lobby and backstage room, but essentially they want to duplicate what they have now. Steep is looking north of Irving Park Road and east of Lincoln, which covers a large swath of Chicago’s North-Northwest Side. Ideally, Steep will open its 2008-2009 in the new home come September.
Urinetown composer/lyricist Mark Hollmann and librettist/lyricist Greg Kotis, late of the Neo-Futurists and Second City, are keeping busy in New York with several projects in development. They are collaborating on a musical version of the delightful 1951 British comedy, The Man in the White Suit (which starred Alec Guinness), with former Goodman resident director David Petrarca as co-librettist and director. (Coincidentally, Petrarca will return to the Goodman later this season as director of the new musical The Boys are Back.) Hollmann on his own is composing a musical version of another film, the 1936 Hollywood screwball comedy My Man Godfrey, with book by Claudia Shear. Both projects have had readings in the Big Apple.
Out of the hundreds and hundreds of Broadway and Off-Broadway performances last year, 22 were selected by the editors of Back Stage as their “2007 Performances to Remember,” and among those 22 is Deanna Dunagan in August: Osage County. The Back Stage write-up notes that there’s no star in the “intense ensemble” work, then goes on to say that Dunagan as the deranged, drug-addicted mother of the Weston clan “is a supernova of hostility around which all the other planets in the cast revolve. Whether stumbling, slurring, hurling invective, or dancing to Eric Clapton, she’s so real it hurts.” The show has been extended through April 13 at the Imperial Theatre in New York. Significantly, publicity for the show no longer says “limited run” or “closing April 13” but “tickets on sale through April 13,” which implies an open run if business holds.
So New Yorker Douglas Carter Beane was in Chicago for 24 hours for the opening of his play The Little Dog Laughed at About Face Theatre, and he and I are having tea a few hours before the show, and his cell phone rings, and it’s a call from New York, and of all people it’s Gary Griffin. “Here, Jonathan, say hello,” Beane says as he thrusts his phone at me. “Oh, yes, Gary and I are working on a project together,” he tells me later. “We’re doing a musical called Dancing in the Dark that is a stage adaptation of the film The Bandwagon.” Fans of movie musicals instantly will recognize The Bandwagon as a glorious Technicolor lollipop produced by the Arthur Freed Unit of MGM, with a book by Comden and Green and songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz and a cast starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray and Jack Buchanan. True students of musical theatre will know that the movie was adapted from Dietz’s and Schwartz’s 1931 Broadway revue introducing the songs “That’s Entertainment” and “Dancing in the Dark,” and starring Astaire and his sister Adele (who retired from the stage in 1932).
The League of Chicago Theatres has announced the five finalists for its second annual Emerging Theatre Award of $5,000, underwritten by Broadway In Chicago. The five companies are: Adventure Stage Chicago (formerly Vittum Theatre), Dog and Pony Theatre Company, Gift Theatre, Silk Road Theatre Project and The Utopian Theatre Asylum (TUTA). To be eligible a company must be a League member, have been in existence 3-10 years and have demonstrated artistic excellence and fiscal responsibility in business practices. The winner of the cash and a program of marketing assistance will be announced at the League’s annual gala, March 31 at the Auditorium Theatre. The first Emerging Theatre Award winner was the House Theatre of Chicago.
As tipped in our last Behind the Curtain, Keith Huff’s gritty two-character cop drama, A Steady Rain, will reopen in Chicago March 4 (previews from Feb. 27) under the umbrella of New York-based producers Frank Gero, Jono Gero and Ray Gaspard. Happily, they have engaged original director Russ Tutterow and actors Randy Steinmeyer and Peter DeFaria. They also have booked a properly intimate venue for the play, the Royal George Studio Theatre.
Meantime the Studio Theatre’s previous tenant, the Provision Theatre’s successful C. S Lewis on Stage featuring Brad Armacost in the title role, moved Jan. 4 to the Royal George mainstage, but NOT to the mainstage house of some 450 seats. Rather, scenery and 60 seats have been assembled on the stage itself where the show is performed with the main curtain closed. C. S. Lewis on Stage must close Feb. 3.
The Ten Chimneys Foundation, keepers and preservers of the Alfred Lunt-Lynn Fontanne estate in Genesee Depot, WI, has launched its first national program, appropriately devoted to advanced actor training. The Lunt-Fontanne Fellowships will be a multi-day acting master class for 10 regional theatre actors on the sylvan grounds of Ten Chimneys. The participants will receive a stipend, travel expenses, lodging and food. The first master teacher will be Lynn Redgrave. Later this year regional theatres across the United States will be invited to nominate potential Lunt-Fontanne Fellows. The 10 selected will gather at Ten Chimneys in 2009 (presumably during warm weather) for the program itself, which will be an annual event. Actors and theatres interested in more information are invited to establish contact via email at Lunt-Fontanne-Fellowship@tenchimneys.org or via surface mail at Lunt-Fontanne Fellowships, Ten Chimneys, PO Box 225, Genesee Depot, WI 53127. The Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship program will cost an estimated $100,000 a year, of which $50,000 has been pledged for each of the first two years by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation.