Theatre Cuts Bait After 20 Years

BY Carrie L. Kaufman

Sharon Evans and John Ragir

When Sharon Evans and John Ragir announced a couple of weeks ago that they were closing Live Bait Theatre after a 20-year run, you could hear the collective groan from writers and solo artists all over Chicago. Live Bait has become their home, their destination, the place where they know their script would be treated fairly and have a great production, and the place where they could just drop in with a great solo idea and have it be taken seriously—and produced.

Yet, many in the theatre community probably noted it, thought it was sad that Chicago theatre was losing yet another space, and then thought about what they wanted for lunch. Chris Jones didn’t even write about it, though Hedy Weiss did. Few people really understand what Live Bait has represented, and how its passing is really the triumph of commerce over art, of ambition over mission. It’s the loss of real stories being told in non-traditional ways, as opposed to fantastical stories being told in traditional ways.

Most theatres want to go somewhere. Live Bait always wanted to be something. And what it wanted to be was whatever the artists who worked with it made it, and whatever its audiences and the community wanted from it. Live Bait never wanted to move up. It wanted to delve deeper.

And deeper is not where our market-based, ticket sales theatre economy wants us to go.

Late Nite Catechism producer Vicki Quade points out that Live Bait almost always had good houses. “You could go on a Thursday night and there would be half a house for a show that had no publicity.” They didn’t need Theatre Thursdays.

The people who came were from the neighborhood, or people who had built up a relationship with the theatre over the years. It had much more respect from audiences than it ever did from the theatre community.

Just for the record, Live Bait is in the black. They are not closing for financial reasons. Evans and Ragir are walking away because they’re tired, because they want to do other things. Live Bait is not a failed theatre. Live Bait is a successful theatre using a model that no one finds sexy enough to emulate.

“I have not wanted to or attempted to do a Steppenwolf arts model,” says Evans. “I’ve always been independent within this community.”

The Live Bait Theatre model is this:

-Create an environment where creativity is encouraged and input is solicited even from the guy selling tickets.

-Create a place that welcomes artists with stories to tell and that provides the production work and mentoring so artists can focus on their script and performance.

-Create a place where risk is part of the fun.

-Create a place that engages with and effects the community around them.

And always do it with intelligence.

“Live Bait is smart theatre. It wasn’t that it was experimental theatre. It is really smart theatre,” says Quade. “I really don’t see that being replaced.”

Solo artists certainly don’t see a replacement for Live Bait.

When Tekki Lomnicki heard that the theatre was closing, her first reaction was, “Oh my god, I’m screwed.” Lomnicki has done quite a few shows at Live Bait, two produced by Evans and Ragir and the rest productions and co-productions with her theatre, Tellin’ Tales.

“It’s one theatre that’s really accessible for people with disabilities, for both performers and audiences,” Lomnicki says.

Brigid Murphy also thought she was screwed. She’s been producing shows at Live Bait with solo artists she’s worked with, and she can’t think of any other place she can go.

“It definitely makes me less apt to produce stuff for people,” says Murphy, who hosted and produced Millie’s Orchid Show, which showcased solo artists in the mid-90s.

Murphy sees Live Bait’s closing as the final nail in the coffin of a once thriving solo scene. In the early to mid-90s, you could go to any number of clubs or theatres and see one person putting on amazingly imaginative shows, and not just in a narrative vein. But as real estate prices rose, many of those clubs and theatres closed. And the new blood coming into Chicago theatre was more traditional, more tied to the well-made play.

“Every other theatre does straight plays,” says Murphy. “There has to be a place for non-traditional artists to grow. It doesn’t exist in Chicago anymore.”

When most other Chicago theatres do solo work, it’s a one-time thing, with a well-established, usually New York-based, performer. At Live Bait, housewives or police officers or filmmakers who had an interesting story to tell could perform.

“People can come off the street and get into Fillet of Solo,” says Murphy.

She attributes that largely to Ragir and Evans’ lack of strict hierarchical boundaries. Others who have worked with Live Bait echoed that. In a world in which directors and designers and actors are all separate, Live Bait threw them all together, and expected them to be part of one, organic whole.

“One of the reasons I loved Live Bait is that I could come in as a house manager and then work as a box office manager and then an artist,” says Edward Thomas-Herrera. His partner, David Kodeski (whom he met at a Live Bait Christmas party in 1991) decided before he moved to Chicago that Live Bait was the place for him. He started out as a waiter at the Nightcrawler caf?, which Evans and Ragir ran as an adjunct to the theatre until 2001. Both Thomas-Herrera and Kodeski have performed and written numerous solo shows and scripted plays at Live Bait. Thomas-Herrera just directed Missing Man, which reopened last week after a successful Fillet of Solo run last summer.

“Everyone there started off humbly,” said Thomas-Herrera.

“There were no job descriptions. Everybody’s opinion was respected,” says Catherine Evans, who acted at Live Bait and helped her sister and brother-in-law run the theatre until she left for L.A. in 1996.

Murphy remembers that when she produced her solo performers, “Sharon would be down painting the sets with me and making it all happen. That’s Sharon.”

For Catherine Evans, Live Bait’s lack of boundaries made things more exciting, more intellectually stimulating. In the early days, Live Bait did more new scripted ensemble work than solo work. And much of it was written by Sharon Evans.

“We would sit after rehearsal and talk for hours about one paragraph,” says Catherine, whose Live Bait stage credits include Girls! Girls! Girls! Live Onstage! Totally Rude! and Portrait of a Shiksa, both of which were written by her sister and nominated for Jeff Awards. They remain among the plays that many Chicago theatre professionals over 35 refer to when they talk about Live Bait.

For Catherine, the excitement came in not quite knowing what she was going to get when she walked into her call.

“Frequently, when you were a performer there, there would be nightly add-ons,” Catherine says. Forget workshops. Live Bait tried it on stage and changed it if it didn’t work. “I don’t think playwrights are given that luxury to develop their writing,” Catherine adds.

“I felt that people felt as if they could fail, and if they failed it would be all right,” Catherine says.

Evans and Ragir took a risk in opening a theatre to begin with. Evans’ background is as a visual artist and storyteller with a degree from the Art Institute. Ragir has an MBA from NYU. They met, fell in love and found themselves producing something Sharon had written. It was a success.

“It went to our heads,” says Ragir. “We decided to open a theatre.”

Their model for opening a theatre was as creative and bold as their early shows. First, they bought the building at 3914 N. Clark, a mile or so from other off-Loop theatres, and right up the street from Wrigley field. (“People said to us when we opened, ‘No one will ever come that far north to see theatre,’” laughs Evans.) Then they moved into the top floor apartment while opening the theatre below. But they didn’t just open up a theatre—they opened up a restaurant and performance space.

As soon as the Nightcrawler Caf? opened, it was packed with pre-theatre and post-theatre patrons. “A lot of people would come see the 8 o’clock show and then go to the caf? and stay till midnight,” says Thomas-Herrera. Even non-theatre patrons came. The restaurant was written about as one of the hot new places in Chicago Magazine. It was the kind of success most restaurateurs dream of.

“I thought that was a brilliant combination,” says Murphy. “It created an energy and got people walking through the space.”

The original idea was to have a theatre with a restaurant to attract patrons. That didn’t pan out the way they had envisioned it. “The caf? was a lot of work and John and Sharon soon realized that we were running a caf? with a theatre on the side,” says Thomas-Herrera.

So they closed Nightcrawler and rented the space out to the owners of The Mash Potato Club. That, too, was a success. But that restaurant was “too popular,” according to Evans. “How can you do high quality theatre when you have a bunch of restaurant patrons in the lobby? We thought it was compromising our mission.”

So they closed the restaurant and opened up a second space, The Bucket.

In our market-driven, ticket sales theatre economy, that could be seen as a dumb move. Sure, The Bucket gave them rental income and another space to do solo shows and to have their annual Doodle benefit, but the cafe brought new people to the theatre, whether they saw the show the night they ate there or not. By closing the restaurant, they turned away from what some would call a smart marketing concept. But the marketing was less important than the mission. And they realized that sometimes more is not better. They didn’t decide that they needed to get bigger and have a capital campaign and expand. They decided they needed to get back to their core.

When Marj Halperin first took over as executive director of the League of Chicago Theatres, she sat in my office and talked about Evans. “She doesn’t get it,” Halperin said to me. “She just doesn’t get it.”

I looked at her and I thought to myself, “It’s not that she doesn’t get it. It’s that she doesn’t want it.”

Sharon Evans and Marj Halperin were at odds the moment they met. Evans thought the League should remain devoted to member services. Halperin thought it should be a marketing organization. Evans made the big mistake of disagreeing—publicly—and she paid a price for it.

“Sometimes you can only suck it up so much,” says Evans. “Sometimes you have to take a stance in life and it’s not always pleasant.

“If a theatre artist can’t have an independent mind, who can?”

That independence put a wedge between Live Bait and much of the rest of the theatre community. Those who knew Live Bait in the ’90s had respect for it. Those who were newer to the scene saw it as old hat and stuck in its ways and catering to those fringe artists and run by a complaining, middle-aged lady who just didn’t get it. Of course, they didn’t actually know Live Bait. They just knew what they heard.

Some of that reputation came from Evans’ open criticism of the funding community. She often lamented about lack of funds for general operating budgets. Last year, she wrote a letter to The Reader criticizing the MacArthur grants set up through the Driehaus Foundation to help arts organizations get their Performing Arts Venue licenses. Theatres who had already spent the money to get up to code were not eligible. But the fund was created too late. By the end of 2007, the $660,000 fund had given out less than $50,000.

“MacArthur put aside all this money that was for theatres running illegally, but gave no money to people who were operating legally,” Evans says. “Why should we be penalized for being legal? It’s not like we’re any less dedicated to the work, it just means that we’re responsible adults.

“It’s part of the big picture.”

Live Bait’s biggest success in its latter stages of life is also part of the big picture: bringing police officers and teenagers together to do improv and create scripted material for performance.

Police Teen Link, which started in 1999, “changed the dynamics between police officers and teens,” says Tom McNamara, an officer who joined the group in 2001. “The police changed their minds about teens and teens changed their minds about the police.”

McNamara, who was an improviser before he became a police officer, says he saw the announcement in the police bulletin that Live Bait was looking for performers.

“Police officers at first didn’t want to do it,” says McNamara, but then the first few shows were successful, touring to neighborhoods all over the city, and the police became aware that improv and theatre games were a way of connecting to their community and understanding the kids on the street.

“It was an innovative program,” says McNamara. “No one else in the country had ever even tried it.”

“I think we’ve pushed the envelope with the way we interact with our community,” says Evans. “The police aren’t exactly a popular group. Arts organizations that do new work don’t always work with their community in the way that we do.”

But, she adds, “Creativity is not just in art, it’s in everything.”

That’s one thing that Evans and Ragir don’t want to leave behind. While talking about closing Live Bait, Evans put in a new proposal to the new police superintendent, Jody Weis. She’s waiting to hear if the program—or some version of it—will outlive the theatre that started it.

Whether or not the theatre space that Live Bait started will remain a theatre is still up in the air. Many people interviewed echoed Thomas-Herrera’s sentiments that some developer was going “to come in, buy the place, knock it down and put up some ugly ass condos.” That’s still possible. But the day after announcing they were closing, Evans and Ragir were contacted by another husband and wife producing team, Kathy Scambiaterra and John Mossman, who run Artistic Home. Scambiaterra confirmed that they are interested in the space and that their board is considering an offer. Evans says she is open to leasing the space, and keeping their home above the theatre.

Evans and Ragir do not want to retire. They both want to write books. Evans wants to focus more on writing plays, and perhaps a screenplay. They simply don’t want to be responsible for running a theatre anymore.

“When I opened my theatre in the beginning as a playwright, it just gave me a lot of opportunities,” Evans says.“Sometimes it just spins around and it just becomes a weight, a bit of an anchor.”

That’s too bad, because Chicago theatre feels just a bit less weighty with the prospect of Live Bait gone.