8-31-07
Flack Takes Over Humanities Fest
Appointments and Disappointments
Award-winning playwright Stuart Flack has been appointed executive director of the Chicago Humanities Festival, the region’s largest multi-disciplinary cultural entity. Best-known for his plays Sidney Bechet Killed a Man, Homeland Security and Jonathan Wild, Flack also is a professional management consultant. (Hey, who knew?) For the last 17 years he has been a partner at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. His plays have been produced at theatres throughout the country, including Chicago where he has a long association with Victory Gardens. Flack takes up his duties at the Chicago Humanities Festival Oct. 1.
Next Theatre Company in Evanston has selected Lisa Fulton for the renamed post of executive director, succeeding managing director John Collins who stepped down in July after three years with the troupe to take a position with the Goodman Theatre. For the last nine years, Fulton has been director of marketing for the Intiman Theatre (Seattle). Before that, she held positions with the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. Ms. Fulton is a member of the American Marketing Association and serves as an advisor for the Seattle Pacific University Theatre Department. She also is an emeritus board member of the Leonard Falcone International Euphonium & Tuba Festival (we kid you not).
It’s old news that Damon Kiely has left American Theater Company to become a full-time member of the directing and acting faculty at The Theatre School, DePaul University, but the school also has announced several other new full-time faculty appointments. Catherine Weidner is a working actor, director and teacher with credentials from George Washington University, The Shakespeare Theatre (Washington, D.C.) and Goddard College (spawning ground of Mamet) among others. She’ll be The Theatre School’s resident Shakespeare guru. Shane Kelly is the new head of the Theatre Tech program within the design department. His credits as teacher and tech director range from the American Repertory and Guthrie theatres to the University of Northern Colorado. Also, playwriting and solo performance professor Carlos Murillo has been elevated to full-time status.
Remy Bumppo Theatre Company has selected Amanda Farrar as the company’s new Director of Development. She’s completing her MA in Performing Arts management at Columbia College Chicago, and has previous non-profit experience at Housing Options for the Mentally Ill and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. She’s also danced professionally with Chicago Tap Theatre and co-founded both Inside Out Dance and Inside Chicago Dance.
Stockyards Theatre Project has herded executive director Lori Howard into a different pen: she now is director of the troupe’s Artistic Council. The new executive director is Therese Steinken who comes to the company after five years as board member and vice-president of Pediatric AIDS Chicago. She recently made her producing debut with a successful staging of Oklahoma! in Wilmette.
greasy joan & co. has promoted business manager Ailene Cantelmi to the post of managing director. Cantelmi works with the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), a regulatory agency for physician education, and she has extensive experience as an actor. She joined greasy joan last year in the part-time business position. Her job as managing director also is part time, so she'll continue her day gig at ACCME.
Brian Voelker has left the TimeLine Theatre Company after nearly 10 years, the last five as managing director. Under his stewardship, the company budget grew more than sevenfold to $640,000. Voelker left in July to assume an IT position with Humana in Louisville, where his partner has been living for several years. Retired business executive John Bierbusse has been named interim managing director while TimeLine conducts a national search for a full-time successor to Voelker. Bierbusee has been a volunteer with TimeLine since January 2005. An MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School, he has 23 years' experience and is a director of Sanderson Farms, Inc., a Mississippi-based food-processing company.
Elections
In June, David Girolmo was elected to a five year principal term on the National Council of Actors Equity Association, representing the Central Region.
The Name Game
The Vittum Theater has changed its name to Adventure Stage Chicago, reflecting an updated mission to create dynamic theatre for young audiences that activates the imagination, inspires dialogue and celebrates community among families, educators and artists. Adventure Stage Chicago begins its fourth season at the Northwestern University Settlement House with the American premiere of Eye of the Storm by Charles Way, adapted from The Tempest. Kimberly Senior directs the Nov. 3-Dec. 6 production. Tom Arvetis remains the producing artistic director of the renamed troupe, which won the 2007 Outstanding New Children’s Theatre Company Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education.
Awards and Honors
Experimental Sound Studio and Links Hall have announced the recipients of the inaugural Crosscut Grants of $5,000 each. Crosscut is a partnership of the two organizations aimed at encouraging new collaborations between local movement artists and sound artists, so each grant is made to two or more artists working in partnership. The recipients are: Joan Dickinson and Mildred Hood; Kairol Rosenthal and Robert Metrick; and Josh Berman and Art Union Humanscape (Ayako Kato and Jason Roebke).
The Harris Theater for Music and Dance has received a three-year, $600,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that makes grants to strengthen and sustain institutions and their core capacities, as well as create long-term collaborations with grant recipients. The 1,500-seat Harris Theater was built as a resident venue for a number of mid-sized performing arts organizations, and the Mellon grant will be passed along to several of them as well as to several entities outside the founding resident companies. The six sub-recipients will be: Chicago Opera Theater, Eighth Blackbird, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, Luna Negra Dance Theater, Music of the Baroque and Urban Gateways. The Mellon Foundation funding will be utilized in a variety of ways ranging from general operating expense, to rent and labor costs, to arts education, to expanding a group’s performance schedule.