Last night I saw a production of Sheila Callaghan's Scab (more on that in next week's Time Out), and it occurred to me that Chicago has been lucky this season to have a strong representative sample of new work from the current New York crop of young, downtown female playwrights. Also currently running is Rinne Groff's Orange Lemon Egg Canary; yesterday I mentioned last fall's production of Melissa James Gibson's Suitcase, and the fall also featured Callaghan's Dead City.
Who's producing these up-and-coming, challenging female voices? The Goodman? Steppenwolf? One of the other big subscription houses?
Imagine my best Balki Bartokomous voice as I say "Well of course not, don't be ridiculous."
Scab is produced by the barely one-year-old Collision Theatre Company. Suitcase was the fifth production of Appetite Theatre. Dead City came from Dog & Pony Theatre Co., founded in 2003, which also produced Callaghan's Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) a season earlier. Uma Productions, responsible for Orange Lemon, is the eldest of the group at the ripe old age of six.
To tie into yesterday's post, neither Appetite nor Collision is established enough to be seen by the Jeff committee; Uma and Dog & Pony are, but neither Dead City nor Orange Lemon were recommended by the judges.
Oh, and none of the four companies is Equity, so Chris Jones probably doesn't care for them either.
The rest of us can be thankful for the storefront scene's willingness to bring us exciting new works by up-and-coming women. Now who wants to step up and give us Young Jean Lee?
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