Onstage/Backstage

A look inside the mayor's arts & culture transition team

By: Jonathan Abarbanel | Mar. 11, 2011

Mar. 11, 2011

So maybe I missed it, but now I get it 'cause someone actually has sent out a press release that makes it all clear: Chicago Mayor-Elect Rahm Emanuel's Transition Team--which heretofore most folks understood to be a tight-knit handful of people--actually is a broad-spectrum set of six committees addressing areas as diverse as Economic Planning, Public Safety, Energy and Environment and Arts and Culture. Naturally, we're ONLY interested in Arts and Culture (joking).

The Arts & Culture Committee has 13 members about evenly split between arts managers and powers in the funding community. Among the arts managers are Lane Alexander (a dancer, and founding artistic director of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project), Sound Culture founder David Chavez, Marwen (visual arts education) Executive Director Antonio Contro, MCA Board Chair Mary Ittelson, Broadway In Chicago Vice-President Eileen LeCario, Chicago Children's Choir Artistic Director Josephine Lee and Philip Thomas, newly-appointed head of eta Creative Arts Foundation.

The money folk include top-name representatives of the Boeing Company (Angel Ysaguirre), Chicago Community Trust (Cheryl Hughes) and the Joyce Foundation (Michelle Boone).

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Art you can eat: F&P at Defibrillator

By: Laura Molzahn | Mar. 10, 2011

Mar. 10, 2011

A lot of our artists wanted to work with sweets this time,” says Ania Greiner, codirector of F&P (Food/Performance). “There’s gonna be a lot of sweets. There are a few savories. But the first event was all savories.”

“Except for gumballs,” Jessica Hannah, Greiner’s fellow director, reminds her.

So, maybe don’t plan on eating dinner at the third performance Greiner and Hannah have curated, Saturday and Sunday only at Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery (RSVP required). This gorgeous new space on Milwaukee—which looks like a cross between an old-style Chicago bar and the inside of a spaceship—is the baby of performance artist Joseph Ravens (of penis-baring fame, thanks to the Chicago Artists Coalition and the Reader).

“Food and performance art—everybody’s been doing that for quite a while,” says Hannah.

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Paper Machete: HAIR stage manager shares all

By: Christopher Piatt | Mar. 10, 2011

Mar. 10, 2011

This week Broadway in Chicago presents the tour of the Broadway revival of HAIR. We recently interviewed Marc Weiss, who worked on the original Broadway production. He shared with us stories about getting jokingly drugged by the cast, distributing "nudity pay" to cast members who were willing to disrobe, and about touring the show through Chicago during tumultuous political times.

The Paper Machete is a live variety show hosted by Onstage/Backstage Writer Christopher Piatt. You can watch the show live every Saturday at Ricochets in Lincoln Square. 3pm.

 

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'The Big Meal' goes to eight shows a week

By: Jonathan Abarbanel | Mar. 9, 2011

Mar. 9, 2011

What do you do at a subscription theater when you have a hit? Why, you extend it, of course, for a week or two or even three if possible until the next production just can't be put off any longer. Naturally, that's precisely what American Theater Company (ATC) has done with "The Big Meal," the Chicago premiere of the award-winning Off-Broadway play by Dan LeFranc that uses eight people to tell the story of five generations of a family, all in 75 minutes. It's been extended twice but must close March 27.

However, ATC has done more than merely extend the show, which they say is the biggest box office hit in the troupe's history. ATC has taken several unusual steps to maximize its income. First, ATC has doubled the number of performances each week from four to eight, which may be unprecedented in Off-Loop Theater history. The standard Off-Loop performance week is between three and six shows. Eight-a-week is what Broadway touring shows do Downtown, so ATC's Tuesday-Sunday schedule is unique among the circuit of smaller Off-Loop theaters.

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Chicago director stays with 'Tomorrow Morning'

By: Jonathan Abarbanel | Mar. 9, 2011

Mar. 9, 2011

"Tomorrow Morning," the British-born intimate tuner that won the 2009 Jeff Award for a Musical, is scheduled for a March 21-April 23 New York run at the Off-Broadway York Theatre Company, where the Chicago director, Tom Mullen, will repeat. The four-character show has music and lyrics by British writer Laurence Mark Wythe (there's no book credit), and tells of a twenty-something couple about to be married as their thirty-something friends divorce. First produced in London in 2006, "Tomorrow Morning" had a successful run at the Greenhouse Theatre here, Oct. 31-Dec. 7, 2008.

The local cast--none of whom are doing the Off-Broadway run--featured Michael Mahler, the quadruple-threat singer/actor/composer/musical director out of Northwestern University, who now is appearing in "Working" at the Broadway Playhouse (through May 8). Observers have been waiting for several years for Mahler's star to start shooting, and maybe "Working" will be it . . . if this vastly retooled version of the 1977 original makes it to New York as anticipated.
 

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Onstage/Backstage: Dueling Critics battle over Steppenwolf

By: Justin Kaufmann | Mar. 8, 2011

Mar. 8, 2011

This week, the Dueling Critics review the new Garage Rep 2011 at the Steppenwolf Theater. Kelly thinks it's pretentious nonsense; Jonathan thinks it's poetic lyricism. Kelly loves the production design; Jonathan searches for character depth. To watch the jabs fly and the blood flow, just press "play."
 

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Onstage/Backstage: Bridging the theater etiquette divide

By: Kelly Kleiman | Mar. 7, 2011

Mar. 7, 2011

I was sitting in the theater once talking to a friend.  I was in the middle of a sentence when the house lights went down, which I finished before the stage lights came up.  Nonetheless, the man in front of me turned around and gave me the filthiest look, as though I didn’t know how to behave in a theater and might be expected to talk all the way through.  I hope he got the peace he desired because he sure managed to ruin my peace for the evening: I was so furious and insulted that some total stranger thought he was entitled to police my unexceptionable behavior.  I’ve utterly forgotten the show but the encounter is indelible.

In a roomful of classical musicians and certified classical music lovers–you know, people with subscriptions to everything long-hair including WFMT--I kept hearing the highest accolade they could offer an audience: “They were rapt.”  “You could hear a pin drop.”  “They were completely silent.”

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Lincoln loved Chicago theater

By: Jonathan Abarbanel | Mar. 4, 2011

Mar. 4, 2011

Today, March 4, marks the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of one of our most theater-loving Presidents, Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, Lincoln loved theater just a little too much for his own good, giving rise to the often-quoted send-up of a disaster, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

That fateful and fatal night at Ford’s Theatre notwithstanding, Lincoln has a direct connection to Chicago’s theater history. His surviving letters carry a number of references to the plays and great stars he saw in performances at the McVicker’s Theatre on Madison Street. Lincoln lived in Springfield, IL for 25 years practicing law, during which time he frequently represented clients in cases brought before the Illinois Circuit Court, which still was a traveling body at that time. Attorneys would travel to where the court was sitting. When the court was in Chicago, Lincoln would spend a period of days or even weeks here, wiling away some of his free nights at the theater. And all the better if it was a Shakespeare play.

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