Storefront Rebellion

Filler

Oh, hey. I haven't forgotten you. I'm still here, though I'm definitely more there and there right now.

I actually have a post percolating in my head for here that came to me over the weekend; the only question is when to find time to write it. Guess I just wanted to pop in and say I haven't forgotten this place.

In my other few seconds of spare time this week, I'm trying to decide what to be for Halloween. Any ideas?

Chicago Theater 101 in the Guardian

Last Wednesday, I got a call from an editor at the Guardian asking if I'd be interested in contributing a post about Chicago theater to their Stage blog. They were looking for a quick turnaround in a week that was already very busy here; factoring in the time difference, I had to dash this thing off over a couple of very late nights.

It did feel a little odd to me that I ended up using our current New York exports as a way in, especially given what I'd just written here. But for an audience at the Guardian that has up to now only been reading about theater in London and New York, it seemed like a convenient introduction to why they need to keep up with Chicago theater as well. I think I made a pretty good case. This may or may not become an ongoing thing; let me know what you think.

The Only Thing Wrong With Chicago Theater

My buddy Nate posted a note on Facebook tonight about what he calls "The Only Thing Wrong With Chicago Theater." I won't link to it, since I don't know if his or your Facebook settings would allow you to read it, but the gist is this: Nate's remarkably young to have accomplished as much as he has in the theater, but he's worked on shows in a number of cities around the U.S., in a number of capacities, and on both commercial and non-profit productions. He's worked in Chicago on the independent commercial production of Gutenberg! The Musical!, the tour of Xanadu and on several productions by the local, non-profit company The New Colony (which is also run by folks I consider friends).

Nate's beef is against what he sees as a bias in the Chicago theater community against commercial theater producers, a job title that's one of (the many) credits he's working toward putting on his resume. To quote briefly:

I love Chicago, and Chicago theatre. I love (and have worked with) storefront theatres (when the shows are done well (companies who do nothing but rip off bad movies ILLEGALLY is not what I call done well).

What do I hate? Storefront elitism and attitude that commercial theatre is the enemy. Please. If anything commercial theatre (everything from Broadway In Chicago down to mid-sized shows that play the Mercury, Drury Lane, Royal George, etc) bring people in and puts Chicago on "the map" as a theatre city, opening the entire community up for more exposure. We're all (storefront, commercial, non profit, whatever) in the same community. Commercial Theatre is not the enemy.

I'd be interested to know what kind of criticisms he's been hearing on his end about commercial theater. I don't get the sense that there's a bias in the Chicago theater community against commercial theater per se, apart from the character that writes Don Hall's blog (no offense meant, Don, but I think of the "Don Hall" that writes Angry White Guy the same way I think of the "Stephen Colbert" who appears on The Colbert Report). For instance, I haven't heard of any local animus towards Million Dollar Quartet in the year or so it's been running here.

I think—and this is admittedly from my limited perspective both as a journalist looking in from the outside and as someone who's only been in Chicago for a little under a decade—that what bias exists against, say, Wicked and Jersey Boys is about the perception that the gorillas in the room get disproportionate attention from major tastemakers, from the Mayor's office to the Tribune Company. (This recent conversation about why the Tribune-owned ChicagoNow's theater blog is branded and run by major Tribune advertiser Broadway in Chicago, for instance, seems to me like a valid topic of discussion.)

I want to be clear about this: I do not think Broadway in Chicago is an inherently evil corporation, nor do I think exporting our work to New York is inherently bad. National media attention for Broadway productions of work by Keith Huff or the cast of Superior Donuts can do us good, and since I can't get to New York as often as I'd like I'm glad to get the tours of Spring Awakening and In the Heights, the pre-Broadway run of The Addams Family and a sit-down run of Billy Elliot. I love storefront theater—hence the title I gave this blog a few years back—but I love big commercial theater when it's good, too. Nor do I equate financial success, or at least achieving the financial solvency to pay artists a living wage, with selling out artistically.

But I do think that too often our local government and local media are going about it the wrong way. For the last few decades, at least, since the rise of Steppenwolf, Chicago's theatrical identity has been tied up in our homegrown, non-profit theaters. Rather than getting our validation from either sending our own work to New York to be patted on the head with cash and prizes, or from becoming an outpost for franchises of works originated there, we should be focusing on making Chicago a theater destination on its own, equal but separate from New York. Come see theater here not because it's a shorter drive from Columbus to see Jersey Boys, but because you can see Tracy Letts's follow-up to August: Osage County and Josh Schmidt's newest musical.

Instead of writing reviews saying that the next Steppenwolf production should go to Broadway, we can write reviews that say if you want to see the next play by Marisa Wegrzyn or Steve Spencer or Emily Schwartz or Justin Palmer, you have to come to Chicago, whether it's a nonprofit production or a commercial one. And you can see Billy Elliot while you're at it. And maybe that's the way to break this branch of our Second City complex.

Anyway. I started writing all of this as a response to Nate's Facebook note, before I realized I really wanted to hear what all of you might have to say. So please, pile on.

Identity Jeffed

I should be writing my Under Milk Wood review right now, but just wanted to quickly acknowledge that the Equity Jeff Award nominations were announced tonight. You can read the full list at the Jeffs' site or at the TOC Blog, where you'll also find the latest helping of They Wuz Robbed. I considered switching up the format of TOC's response, but people seem to enjoy TWR—it's a true fact that at least one person has said they'd prefer a TWR mention to the actual nomination.

I was rushed in putting the post together today, and I'm already thinking of more I could have included: What about James Schuett's Tempest costumes? Hanna Dworkin for Picnic? How does it make sense that Ensemble is the sole nod for Scenes from the Big Picture? And I'll keep coming up with more. But I mean it when I say that the Jeff committee got a lot of things right this time around. I personally missed some of the most-nominated shows (Drury Lane's Miss Saigon, TimeLine's Not Enough Air), but I'm glad to note the committee didn't nominate much from shows that I did see and had lukewarm feelings about.

And more importantly, they made a number of good calls that I might not have expected: A double nomination for Tanya Saracho, Jake Cohen for Steppenwolf's Up, Taylor Mac for solo performance, Levi Kreis for Million Dollar Quartet, Spencer Kayden as the only acting nom for Don't Dress for Dinner. (And I'll just say that it's…interesting, if not perhaps a little cruel, for them to nominate one of the kids who played Noah in Caroline, or Change and not the other. Suddenly the Billy Elliot compromise makes more sense to me.)

Your thoughts are welcome, either here or at TOC (though it might make the most sense to consolidate the discussion over there).

Critics aren't obligated to support theater we don't like.

I'm reading with some fascination the comment debate on Chris Jones's review of Route 66's High Fidelity, which opened Monday night. I was there, but I'm not reviewing the show for TOC, so I'll leave my own opinions of the show aside until John Beer's review hits on Monday. But the bedrock of the comment by "allison" that kicked off the conversation, and some of the comments that follow, deal in what I consider to be fallacies about a critic's job description; they also address some of what I talked about in my post here earlier this week. Not that he needs it from me, but I feel compelled to defend Chris a bit.

Allison says:

chris, theatre in this country is suffering right now. you are a chicago theatre critic. by your own words "america's hottest theatre city." you are supposed to support and encourage theatre in this town.

Bullshit.

Oh hi. Remember this place?

What's up, Rebels? I know things have been slow around here, but I'm chalking that up to summer. Like many of you, I've taken a bit of vacation in the last couple of months, while juggling friends in town and still taking in some of the reduced number of theatrical offerings in July and August (though things have stayed fairly busy at TOC). Haven't had much to say here, but the season's about to hit hard, as Rob Kozlowski noted earlier today. (Speaking of Mr. K, *ahem*.)

Couple of things today worth pointing out. My friends at The New Colony (standard disclosure: I do count several TNC members as friends, and as a rule I don't review their shows) respond on their blog to my Time Out New York counterpart David Cote's recent wishlist for NYC theater. Their rejoinder is a new blog series about goals for Chicago theater, the first of which is: "Make Chicago the home of NEW theater."

This city can be an epicenter of new art if we choose to make it that. The only way for that to happen is for our theater community to collectively end the habit of remounting and reproducing the same shows over and over again (sometimes within the same season!).

Storefront theaters: we make up the majority of that scene. So rather than letting the 10% at the top control the direction of Chicago theater – let’s take that responsibility and herald in a new era of World Premieres and New Works!

Emphasis theirs, but as I said when I retweeted the link earlier, "YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!"

Secondly, I found some interesting comments in regard to TOC's revamped star rating system on my Spring Awakening review. Suffice to say, this is far from the most emphatic feedback I've gotten about star ratings recently. I'm interested to hear what you guys think. Feel free to leave comments below, or email me if you'd prefer to keep your thoughts private.

The gender bias thing

I want to point quickly (and probably futilely, heading into a long holiday weekend) to my latest post at the Time Out blog. Amid the hubbub over Emily Glassberg Sands's report last week on bias against female playwrights, and especially given the sensationalized reporting on her finding that women in power as artistic directors and literary managers were more biased against women playwrights than male leaders were, I wanted some feedback. I asked about a dozen of Chicago's female ADs and LMs (and one key dude) for their reactions to the study. To my delight, nine of them replied.

As for my own opinion, I haven't had time to check out the full 170-page doc yet, but based on the published reporting I think I find some of Sands's methodology suspect—Isaac has noted the discussion raging on one of the theater-related listservs, which I've been following as well. I'd also note that doolee.com, while sometimes useful, is far from what I'd consider a reliable primary source; neither Emily Schwartz nor Tanya Saracho is represented, which strike me as fatal omissions if you're interested in who's getting buzz and commissions and productions in Chicago. But even a potentially flawed study keeps the conversation going; as others have said: This isn't a final judgment, it's a starting point.

Are journalists the new actors?

Last weekend I attended the Chicago Media Future Conference, or rather what will be the first of many events under that umbrella title. I went in part to support my friend Scott Smith, one of the organizers, but also because I have an interest in this stuff, both vested and non. As one of the (conventional wisdom would have it) few who've made the upstream swim from online to print, I've got a stake in the discussions about how print media will survive and/or (emphasis on the or) evolve.

The two panels last Saturday were, I thought, refreshingly less doom-y and backwards-facing than some other recent assemblies on the topic here in Chicago. But as an arts journalist, I did feel—more in hindsight than in the moment—a bit excluded. My impression is that these conversations as a whole are being dominated by hard-news journos. Investigative and civic-affairs reporting is obviously vital and should be emphasized in any discussions about the future of journalism. But for all the hand-wringing in the arts communities about how to deal with shrinking media coverage—the last time I'd been in the space where the CMFC was held, Columbia College's Film Row Cinema, it was as a panelist for arts orgs on that very topic—I'm starting to wonder how seriously we're being considered in the larger whither journalism discussion.

The observation that's really stuck with me over the last ten days was made after the conference, at the informal afterparty down the street at the Wabash Tap. My friend Andrew Huff, the proprietor of Gapers Block, told me that two or three people had separately suggested to him in recent weeks that the future career model for journalists might be a lot like that of actors. That is to say, only a fraction of a percent of those who go into the profession will get steady jobs (staff positions/TV gigs) or achieve high incomes (columnists/celebrities); the majority will go from gig to gig or project to project, and guaranteed employment for journalists will become the exception, not the norm. Those stumping for full-time staff writers at publications will come to sound like evangelist outliers, much as those who campaign for resident repertory ensembles do now. The majority of people who try to make a go of it as working journalists will do so, like those who go into acting, because they're driven by a passion for the work. Many will likely work for little or no pay in hopes of establishing a career (Non-Equity/bloggers? And if we're talking bloggers, isn't this already the case, cough cough?) [Please note none of this is necessarily my opinion, but me relaying and expanding upon what was laid out by others.]

It's a compelling parallel that, oddly, had never occurred to me before. Your thoughts?

Sound, mind and body mikes

Just finally got around to listening to Anne Nicholson Weber's Talk Theatre in Chicago interview with sound designers Nick Keenan, Ray Nardelli and Joshua Horvath. There's a lot of thought-provoking stuff (especially in the second half of the interview, when they get a little more free-form) about American theatergoers' relationship with sound design; as Anne admits, many regular theatergoers (including critics) don't know a lot about what goes into the sound designer's job. I was particularly compelled by their opinions on body miking, which I often find in the big touring houses (or even in relatively smaller proscenium spaces like the Goodman's Albert theater) makes me feel like there's a sheet of Plexiglass between the audience and the stage. The specific productions they discuss (Goodman's Rock 'N' Roll and Court's The Piano Lesson) have both, unfortunately, already closed, but it's still worth a listen.

Ministers, mechanics and merits

In this week's issue of TOC I review two world premieres (an appellation that makes me uncomfortable for reasons that may or may not be warranted). A Minister's Wife, the musicalization of Shaw's Candida by Josh Schmidt, Jan Tranen and Austin Pendleton, is charming if a bit meandering. Schmidt's score strikes me as lush, romantic and altogether different from his angular, intentionally mechanical work on Adding Machine (which I'm sad to say I've heard only via the New York cast recording—missing the original production at Next is high on my list of Great Theatrical Regrets).

Pavement Group's debut of Mallery Avidon's fracture/mechanics had me working hard to like a script I just couldn't. As much as there is to admire in David Perez's production, I just couldn't get down with Avidon's facile, ultra-slight play.

Meanwhile, I'll have a full report later today at the TOC Blog on last night's Non-Equity Jeff Awards ceremony.