8-3-07
Throughlines for August 3, 2007
Appointments and Disappointments
Gregory Copeland has left his post as executive director of About Face Theatre after nearly 10 years to take advantage of a professional opportunity on the West Coast. With his departure, About Face producing director Heather Schmucker has been appointed his interim successor. Ms. Schmucker has been with About Face since 1999
After five years, Brandon Ray has stepped down as artistic director of New Leaf and his wife, Tanya Ray, has resigned as managing director. They have, in fact, left to pursue family life and, respectively, a career as a playwright and a Master’s degree in not-for-profit management. New Leaf’s newest member, Jessica Hutchinson, has been named artistic director. Hutchinson directed the recent world premiere of Vox Pandora for New Leaf, and served as Brandon Ray’s assistant director on the well-received The Permanent Way. Managing director chores have been divided among several company members. Marsha Harman will serve as business manager; Erin Shelton is heading up marketing and PR, and Kyra Lewandowski will act as box office manager and event coordinator.
Victory Gardens Theater has hired Will Rogers for the new position of events and audience development manager. An Alabama native, Rogers brings previous marketing savvy from Austin Lyric Opera and the Spoleto Festival USA, among other posts. He’s also a member of both the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and Directors Lab Chicago. With Rogers on board, Shannon O’Neill has been promoted to associate director of marketing and PR.
Beginning Sept. 1, Barrel of Monkeys co-founder and artistic director Halena Kays is taking a sabbatical for the 2007-2008 season, during which company member Laura Grey will be artistic director, presiding over the troupe’s 10th anniversary season. Said Kays, “I don’t think artists, especially those in high-pressure leadership positions, give themselves the necessary breaks to allow them to be the best they can be.”
Laura Grey co-founded the all-female sketch comedy troika Triplette, and was a member of the avant-garde ensemble Dog. She performed for three years with ComedySportz Chicago, appeared now-and-again in the improvised musical Baby Wants Candy, and traveled with the Second City Touring Company.
Redmoon Theater brought Christopher Schram on board as executive director, beginning July 9. Schram succeeds managing director Christy Uchida (now at the Boeing Company) in a newly-created and enlarged post in which he will oversee long-term planning and development. Schram comes from Miami, where he worked for 10 years with the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, most recently as vice-president. Also experienced as a producer, choreographer and dancer/singer/pianist in theatre, opera, dance and TV, Schram holds bachelors degrees in French and business administration from Washington and Lee University. We hope he likes snow.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago recently announced two new appointments: Glenn Edgerton as associate artistic director and Kristen D. Brogdon as artistic administrator of the Hubbard Street Dance Center. Edgerton was artistic director of the Nederlands Dans Theater (1994-2004) and an 11-year Joffrey Ballet veteran under founder Robert Joffrey. Since April 2006 he’s been director of the dance institute at Colburn School of Performing Arts (Los Angeles), a position he will retain while working with Hubbard Street. Brogdon leaves the Kennedy Center, where she has been since 1998, most recently as director of dance programming. Brogdon’s hire is sign that new executive director Jason Palmquist, formerly at the Kennedy Center, is putting his stamp on Hubbard Street’s administration.
Awards and Honors
Joel Hall and the Harris Theater for Music and Dance are recipients of the 2007 Jazz Dance World Congress Award, presented at the Aug. 4 performance of the Jazz Dance World Festival at the Harris Theater. Hall, a 30-year veteran of dance and theatre in Chicago, is a renowned choreographer and founder/artistic director of Joel Hall Dancers & Center. The award acknowledges his dedication to the world of jazz dance and his commitment to providing service to a broad range of communities. The Harris Theater, which opened in 2003, is cited for its outstanding service to all dance by providing and subsidizing a major state-of-the-art venue for local, national and international dance companies and events. Among the 26 past recipients of the Jazz Dance World Congress Award are Peter Gennaro, Gregory Hines, Ann Reinking and Margo Sappington.
At the June annual conference of the Literary Managers and Dramaturges of the Americas, Steppenwolf Theatre Company literary manager Ed Sobel was honored with the 2007 Hayes Award for his work on Steppenwolf’s First Look series, now in its third year.
Vittum Theater at Northwestern University Settlement House is the recipient of the 2007 Zeta Phi Eta-Winifred Ward Award for Outstanding New Children’s Theatre Company, a mouthful bestowed by the American Alliance for Theatre in Education. The award, given by Zeta Phi Eta, a national arts fraternity, honors a theatre company serving young audiences which has been in operation at least two full years, but not more than five years. Tom Arvetis is the founding producing artistic director of Vittum Theater.
For a fourth year, the Liberace Foundation and Columbia College Chicago have awarded Liberace Scholarships to 10 of the college’s outstanding theatre students through a juried, merit-based competition. Two students—Eric Turner and Daisica Smith—are receiving the award for their second year. They are joined this year by Jessica Harpenau, Hilary Williams, Laura Korn, Eleni Kanalos, Ryan Bourque, Brandon Thompson, Behzad Dabu and Brad Fry. The students are concentrating in directing, designing and acting. Since 1976, The Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts has awarded more than $5 million in scholarship grants to over 100 schools and organizations, among them Julliard, Northwestern, Oberlin and UCLA.
Passages
Friends and supporters of the Albany Park Theater Project (APTP) are mourning the loss of co-founder and co-director Laura Wiley, who died June 18 of ovarian cancer, which she had fought for four years. Wiley continued to lead APTP while undergoing cancer treatment, creating and directing three original productions, leading the APTP’s college counseling program and mentoring dozens of teen artists.
Our colleague Jeffrey Sweet has sent word from New York that Bobbi Gordon—a name that will be recognized by improv cognoscenti and true old-timers—died in New York on June 31. Barbara “Bobbi” Gordon was a member of the legendary original Compass Players, where she and her husband worked with producer David Shepherd and a cast that featured Elaine May, Mike Nichols, Barbara Harris, Andrew Duncan, Severn Darden and Shelley Berman. Post-Compass Players, Gordon had a substantial voice-over career in New York and was a charter member of the New York Writers’ Bloc (1978-1988), a group of actors and directors who helped develop new work with such member-writers as Donald Margulies, Winnie Holtzman, Stiller and Meara, Jane Anderson and Sweet.