When Adam Webster was a wide-eyed kid just out of college, he moved to Chicago along with two friends who shared the dream of starting a theatre company. They arrived with a promise of funding that would enable them to open a 24,000-square foot Equity theatre, school and dance performance venue. But the deep-pocketed company that drove their ambition went bankrupt. The side project was born in August 2000 after Webster decided to launch his dream on a much smaller scale.

Webster had found himself walking around Chicago, peering into storefronts with "for rent" signs on the door, wondering what they would look like as theatres. In the end he decided to set up The Side Studio at 1520 W. Jarvis St., in a space one-third of the size of his planned arts complex. The storefront had 12-foot ceilings and was mere steps away from the Red Line, and Webster had all this "latent energy and drive" he needed to put towards realizing his dream.

Webster says he didn't start out with a distinct vision of what the side project would be about. The side project's past productions list includes Sean Graney's The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide; race relations plays Innocent Thoughts and style of sympathy; the sketch comedy show Bowlscrapers to Skyscrapers: Business as Usual; a revisiting of Lysistrata; and its annual Harvest Festival, which showcases original one-acts. Fifteen of its productions have been world premieres. He said, "I think the vision now is coming down to producing new works, mostly new playwrights, but also distinct visions of older plays that can allow the space to inform the vision."

On-stage now through Feb. 15 is a production of The Elephant Man, directed by Jimmy McDermott. This is the director's fifth endeavor at The Side Studio. He enjoys being able to rehearse in the same space that the play will be performed in, saying that it allows him to truly stew on his ideas for the show. "Any play I work on [here] becomes as much an installation as a play," he said. "Here you can kind of let it form and take on a life of its own and invade the space. The play gets to tell you what it wants to do in this space." It forces you to distill a play to its elements."

So while McDermott is one of the regulars (or "repeat offenders") working with the side project, there is no established core ensemble identified with the theatre. "There's definitely common people but I don't call it a company or an ensemble because I'm not sure what I have to offer a company or an ensemble member," Webster said. Instead he identifies himself mostly as "a facilitator," or perhaps, in jest, as "the postmaster general of this stamp-sized space." In creating his troupe of creative artists, Webster said, "I look for people that have strong visions but also the know-how to follow through and achieve that vision."

Webster concedes that one difficulty for him has been trusting other people to address all the elements of a show with the specificity he's looking for. "I think I just have to have faith in more people to be able to do that," he said. "By design [the side project] isn't supposed to be an auteurship."

Webster gathers his material from open calls for scripts, connections with writers back in California where he attended the liberal-arts college Whittier College, and suggestions from directors he has worked with. The Side Studio is also rented out to other productions and, for instance, was executive producer of the original run of Sock Puppet Showgirls (which was developed by John Shaterian, one of the three friends involved in Webster's initial search for a theatrical home).

The company's mission statement says that plays selected for staging by the side project are meant "to portray the human condition at the peak of adversity." Why is this the point of human experience that so interests Webster? "That's what theatre is about," he says. "[Theatre is meant] to reflect something that is challenging. I don't really go to the theatre to be entertained, I go to the theatre to be challenged and to think."

At a side project show, audiences might also expect an emphasis on language. Said McDermott, "In a setting like this you can pay particularly nuanced attention to language."

Webster agreed. "It's definitely a theatre of word. You have actor's theatres and theatres that are good at spectacle and this really comes down to words on a page and honest expressions and explorations of them."

Immediacy and intimacy are what the side project is all about, Webster said. "I would like [audiences] to come away with the feeling that they've been witness to raw intimacy and a powerful exploration of humanity's ugliness and beauty. Only by admitting we have an ugliness can we get past it and see the beauty." At the same time, not wanting to sound too grandiose, he adds, "I don't want it to be gratuitous, I want it to be relevant."

But while the side project itself is focused on adversity, what obstacles has Webster faced in putting the theatre together? Building momentum for The Side Studio has been difficult, he says, especially due to the fact that the theatre is found so far north. "I definitely think there's a stigma. One in terms of Rogers Park and the other in terms of far north side," Webster said. On every poster he notes the theatre's proximity to the Jarvis Red Line stop, but he still hears people say "That's a long way."

There is an active neighborhood development force working to increase traffic to Rogers Park, Webster said, and he feels the job is going to get easier with the new interest in the Glenwood Arts District and Curious Theatre Branch moving in nearby.

Webster says the side project has certainly been welcomed in the community and that he has had no negative experiences to speak of, but battling a stigma can be a tough row to hoe. "The neighborhood has embraced us ,and now we just need the rest of Chicago to embrace the neighborhood."