3-14-08
Theatre in Red Ink?
We all know about blue states and red states, but what color are theatres? Chicago used to be a blue theatre town with companies such as Blue Rider and American Blues, but red now is the color of choice. Consider: A Red Orchid, Redmoon, Red Tape, redtwist (the renamed Actors Workshop) and the newest crimson company, Red Ink Theatre Company, which debuts with iAlone, April 17-May 2, at The Spot on Broadway. We’re not sure Red Ink is a fortuitous name for a non-profit organization.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) appears to have reached the limits of George Bush’s generosity. He has upped the NEA budget by a few million dollars each year of his administration, having proposed $128.4 million for Fiscal 2008, an increase of $4 million over 2007. But Congress upped the NEA appropriation to $144.4 million as part of an omnibus appropriations bill which Bush signed. However, in his budget proposal for Fiscal 2009, Bush has marked the NEA for a cut of $16.3 million which comes out to—guess what?—$128.4 million plus $100,000 for increased fixed costs. Congress probably will put the NEA figure back up again as real work on the 2009 budget begins over the summer.
The boys/boyz are making news. AltarBoyz closes March 30 at the Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place after a five month run while Jersey Boys at the LaSalle Bank Theatre has decided to stay as long as it can, as everyone suspected before the show opened. That leaves Broadway In Chicago with only one theatre open for touring product or pre-Broadway shows, the Cadillac Palace, which makes it almost impossible for any show to run more than a few weeks (although Dirty Dancing is slated for 10 weeks next fall). Broadway In Chicago can book shows into the Auditorium and Chicago theatres, but long runs are difficult at those venues as well since their schedules are heavy with short-run dance and concert engagements year-round.
Way back last June, Circle Theatre announced a season of four shows to be presented by its Emerging Young Artists troupe, one of which was Les Miserables, announced for April 10-20. How would Circle secure the rights to the epic show—let alone stage it in their tiny theatre—when the powerhouse Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire was opening the first post-Broadway production of Les Mis at the same time? Turns out Circle Theatre didn’t get the rights and is doing How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying instead. But Circle’s Emerging Young Artists WILL perform All Shook Up, Aug. 7-17, just ahead of the same show at Marriott (Sept. 24-Dec. 7). We don’t think they steal each other’s audiences.
The Babes With Blades are strong women but they’re stooping low this time. Having already unsheathed their swords and bared their breasts in public, they’re trying a new gimmick. Their upcoming show, Los Desaparecidos (The Vanished), will be their first production featuring a mixed-gender cast. Men! Good grief, does that mean separate dressing rooms? It’s also one of Babes With Blades’ largest productions, with a cast of 12. The world premiere romantic drama by Barbara Lhota is the winner of the Babes’ second international playwriting competition, Joining Sword & Pen. Los Desaparecidos runs April 6-May 11 at Raven Theatre.
Friends of George Stotis gathered in Andersonville on Feb. 25 to raise a glass in tribute to the longtime proprietor of Chicago Recycle Shop, a source for props and costumes for God-alone-knows-how-many local theatre productions. George passed away in February, 2007, having closed his shop and retired several years earlier following open heart surgery. The memorial drinking session was held at Charlie’s Ale House, the very site of George’s shop.
I traveled to Orlando in mid-February for the winter meeting of the American Theatre Critics Association. I know what you’re thinking: Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal Orlando, the Citrus Bowl, Gatorland, etc., endless lines of RVs, screaming kids and Middle-Americans in tank tops with fat bellies and sunburns. Yes, it’s a grim picture, and those folks will elect our next President.
But, lo and behold, I didn’t come anywhere near the tourist attractions nor the tourists attracted to them. Instead, I found myself mingling with real Orlandoans—most of them cultured and many of them moneyed—in a neighborhood just north of downtown Orlando that’s a center of the city’s real and growing cultural life. Not only does Orlando have opera, ballet and chorale companies, but also a symphony orchestra, a gay chorus, an intelligent art scene and a growing number of theatre companies, among them Mad Cow Theatre, Jester Theater, People’s Theatre, the Winter Park Playhouse and even a Fringe Theatre Festival.
Many of the top cultural attractions are clustered in Loch Haven Park, an expansive area of grasslands and small lakes populated with semi-tropical vegetation and a wonderful variety of birds, including Northern songbirds spending the winter in Florida. Loch Haven Park is home to the Orlando Museum of Art, the Orlando Science Center (which includes both an observatory and a planetarium), the Mennello Museum of American Art, the Orlando Repertory Theatre and the Lowndes Shakespeare Center, the venue of the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre (OST). Orlando Shakespeare was the principal host of our three-day meeting which coincided with the opening of OST’s Harriet Lake Festival of New Plays, Harriet Lake being a delightful person and not one of the charming ponds of Loch Haven Park as I thought at first.
I attended five new play readings by playwrights from across the country, and saw one full OST production (Opus by Michael Hollinger, sure to show up in Chicago sooner rather than later). The fare ranged from Act I of John Pielmeier’s unfinished new work, Madonna and Child, with Pielmeier himself as one of the actors, to a one-woman piece set in Jack the Ripper’s London, to a play about early electricity barons Edison and Westinghouse. The best new play I saw—and the most finished—has been requested by the Goodman Theatre’s literary department. Upon returning to Chicago, I was happy to call the Goodman and put in a plug for the script.
In fact, Chicago never was too far away in Orlando. I didn’t see a reading of Erratica, but I talked with young and vibrant playwright Reina Hardy, who not only is from Chicago, but lives just a few blocks from me. She allowed that she’s had little success opening doors in Chicago, although Orlando thinks she has the goods. Do the folks at OST know something we don’t? Close to our hotel I strolled by another playhouse in a found space, Theatre Downtown, and observed that the current show was Chicago’s own Rebecca Gilman’s The Sweetest Swing in Baseball. For a moment, I felt like a Northern songbird that’d flown to Florida for the winter to join its friends.