WBEZ | theater

No misprint: The New Regal Theater is on sale for $100,000

Mon, 20 May 2013 05:00:00 -0500

The New Regal Theater — the 86-year-old South Side showplace that is one of the city's finest remaining examples of vintage movie palace architecture — is for sale. Asking price: $100,000.

A city landmark, the theater is being sold by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation which took ownership in 2011 after the bank holding the building's mortgage failed.

An FDIC spokesman said the New Regal, 1645 E. 79th St., had been under contract for $99,000, but the deal fell through and the theater has been placed back on the market.

The FDIC is responsible for the big building's upkeep — a motivating factor behind the cut-rate price. Chicago's U.S. Equities is handling the listing, but representatives from the company did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The New Regal has been closed since 2010 and faces some big-ticket repairs. According to the city's inspection reports, violations include "severe structural damage" on the building's four corners, each of which are "are separating from building structure." In addition, the building has been cited for having dangerously loose and missing terra cotta, washed-out mortar, potentially unstable chimneys and more.

The conditions prompted Landmarks Illinois to place the theater on its "Ten Most Endangered Places" list back in 2011. Preservation Chicago followed suit a year later. The New Regal's exterior and interior are under city landmark protection.

A spokesman for the Department of Housing and Economic Development said the agency believes the low sale price is potentially good, given the building's condition.

"It would enable a potential buy to invest more into the building than into the acquisition cost," said department spokesman Peter Strazzabosco.

Even with its problems, the New Regal is in far better condition than the landmark Uptown Theater which sold for $3.2 million in 2008. The Uptown, 4816 N. Broadway, bears the scars of 30 years of decay, vacancy and disuse — its owners believe it could take as much as $40 million to restore the place (WBEZ's Jim DeRogatis recently pegged the number at upwards of $70 million) — while the New Regal interior remains quite the showplace as photographer Matt Lambros documented in these spectacular images from 2012.

Designed by John Eberson and built in 1927 as the Avalon Theater, the dazzling Moorish style building was inspired by an intricate metal Persian incense burner Eberson found in a Royal Street antique store in New Orleans.

The 2500-seat movie theater could also accommodate live shows. In 1985, the theater was later purchased by Soft Sheen products founder Ed Gardner and his wife Bettiann. The restored theater re-opened as the New Regal in 1987, in honor of the legendary Regal Theater, 47th and King Drive, that was demolished in 1973. The theater has had subsequent ownership since.

Robert Sickinger dies, brought grassroots theater to Chicago

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:58:00 -0500

When Robert Sickinger came to Chicago in the early 1960s, Chicago had great theater. But most of it - think The Goodman Theater - was largely confined to the Loop.

Sickinger, who died Thursday at the age of 86, was hired to be the director of the Hull House Theater, on Chicago’s North side. When he arrived in 1963, the theater was still at the corner of Broadway Street and Belmont Avenue - the building’s an athletic club now.

Donna Marie Schwan was Sickinger’s assistant, and, eventually, his friend.

She said Sickinger, along with Paul Jans, the new executive director of Hull House, were looking to the past to do something new in theater.

“They were basically trying to do something like what Jane Addams originally had in the community. So he went out in the community and had open auditions. I mean, sort of the original ‘Chicago’s Got Talent’.”

Those open auditions not only drew people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity or venue in which to perform or sing, they were a pipeline to Chicago’s talented actors. Through them, Sickinger uncovered talents like actor Mike Nussbaum and Jim Jacobs, who eventually wrote Grease.

Those are some of the same people who went on to build Chicago’s network of neighborhood theaters, to create spaces like Steppenwolf. And that, said Schwan, is how Sickinger transformed the city’s theater scene.

Schwan said “He basically brought grassroots theater to Chicago.”

At Hull House, Sickinger developed a reputation for his fresh adaptations of classic plays.

But he was also known for the number of contemporary works he staged. Playwrights like Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter and LeRoi Jones had Chicago premieres thanks to Sickinger.

Sickinger’s tenure in Chicago was brief. He left for New York in 1969, after things went awry at Hull House. At the time of his death, he and his family were living between New York and Florida.

But Schwan said Sickinger’s influence can still be seen in places like The Goodman Theater.

“Chicago was very formal culturally. And what he did is he said ‘let’s bring in these wonderful works, these new works that are being done by our contemporaries, and see what they look like when they do them.’ And that was a phenomenon.”

Still Schwan thinks his greatest gift was his ability to inspire everyone - theater owners, actors, and regular people like herself.

“What happens when you create that kind of inspiration, where people have that kind of opportunity, it’s an energy that is irreplaceable, you can’t get that kind of energy going. That’s why these tv shows about auditioning and talent are so popular, because people are discovering themselves and what they can do in a way they otherwise would never have had.”

Encuentro con los Artistas: Pedro Páramo

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:16:00 -0500

Flora Lauten y Raquel Carrío, extraordinarias innovadoras de La Habana, ponen en escena una de las obras de mayor importancia dentro del realismo mágico de la literatura latinoamericana—Pedro Páramo, novela de Juan Rulfo escrita en 1955. La historia cuenta de un hijo que regresa a casa a conocer a su padre y revela la manera en la que la ambición sin límites de un hombre destruyó todo lo que amaba y al igual el pueblo que le dio el triunfo.

En Chicago, se hará historia, con el estreno mundial de PEDRO PÁRAMO, una producción comisionada por el Goodman Theatre, y el MCA Chicago. La obra, fue desarrollada por Teatro Buendía, la compañía de teatro independiente más aclamada de Cuba, con artistas locales a través de una residencia de ocho semanas en Chicago y La Habana, Cuba.

El elenco cubano está integrado por los actores Dania Aguerreberez, Alejandro Alfonzo, Ivanesa Cabrera, Carlos Cruz e Indira Valdéz, y el músico Jomary Hechavarra.

Los actores de Chicago son; Charín Álvarez, Steve Casillas, Laura Crotte y Sandra Delgado.

Como músicos participan Victor y Zacbe Pichardo, de la agrupación Sones de México.

Esta grabación la podrán escuchar a través de Vocalo 90.7 FM el próximo Domingo, 24 de Marzo, a la 12 pm, medio dia.

La platica fue moderada por María Inés Zamudio, reportera de la publicación periodística, the Chicago Reporter, y en el panel participó, Henry Godinez, asociado de dirección artística en el Goodman Theater, la directora y fundadora del Teatro Buendía, Flora Lauten, la dramaturga Raquel Carrió, y Victor Pichardo, músico de la agrupación, Sones de Mexico.

La obra, Pedro Páramo, se estrena el 22 de Marzo, 2013. Para más informes visite Goodmantheatre.org.

David Mamet’s Chicago roots

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 08:00:00 -0600

Recently I saw a tweet that referrenced “Zosia Mamet’s dad” – as in “Zosia Mamet’s dad David is rebooting ‘Have Gun – Will Travel.’ “

No. Just, no. I like her depiction of Shoshanna as much as the next Girls fan, and very much enjoyed the younger Mamet’s semi-recurring role as Peggy’s lesbian friend on Mad Men, but until Zosia writes Glengarry Glen Ross or The Postman Never Rings Twice she’s still David Mamet’s daughter to me.

Anyway, add this to the list of things younger members of the Twitterverse might not know about David Mamet: The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright grew up in Chicago.

Mamet started his life in Hyde Park at 53^rd and Dorchester and later moved to South Shore. As a teenager he went to high school at Francis Parker in Lincoln Park, and used the city as his own personal playground:

In those days, being a young kid in the ‘50s, nobody knew where you went. Your parents didn’t know; they didn’t care. You just took the “L” and went to Comisky Park, you took the “L” and went to Wrigley Field. You just went everywhere, and you would explore the city.
I remember as a young kid I would crawl over the girders at the top of the Prudential Building, which wasn’t yet complete. We used to crawl up the Museum of Science and Industry, up among the caryatids. We’d crawl up to that level 40 feet off the ground and spend the whole day walking around, clinging to the outside.

Mamet even has his own memories of Chicago’s old Riverview amusement park, which he said “always just wreaked of danger and sex,” and which Curious City took a look at earlier this week.

In 2006, Mamet sat down with another Chicagoan reliably full of delicious memories – WBEZ’s own Afternoon Shift host Rick Kogan – to reminisce about the direct and lingering effect the city had on his life and work. You can hear a snapshot of Mamet shooting the sh*t with his old friend Rick in the audio above.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Rick Kogan and David Mamet spoke at an event presented by Chicago Public Library in October of 2006. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.

Follow Robin Amer on Twitter @rsamer.

María Irene Fornés returns to NYC but custody struggle continues

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 09:49:00 -0600

María Irene Fornés has gained three pounds in the last two weeks.

Not a big deal, or maybe a big deal in some quarters, but for one of the greatest living English-language playwrights, those three pounds are a very good sign.

"If you made a list of the most influential English language playwrights of the 20th Century, it seems to me you have the vein of writers who descend from Beckett (his lineage includes Pinter, Mamet, Churchill), the poetic naturalists like O'Neill and Williams, all the various kinds of expressionists, and then there is Fornés,” said Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, who was mentored by Fornés and is best known for his play, Blind Mouth Singing (staged in Chicago by Teatro Vista in 2005). “I don't know how we get to Paula Vogel or 13P or the ethos or aesthetics of off-Broadway today without Fornés. Why she is lesser known then playwrights that she is just as important as is an interesting phenomenon and seems connected to gender and ethnic bias to be sure, but this phenomenon is also compounded by what an iconoclast she was. How difficult it is categorize her ... She is the ultimate playwright's playwright. Everyone in theater knows who she is and many are deeply influenced by her.”

Now, finally, after years in an upstate New York nursing home close to her blood family but far from friends, former students, colleagues, and a vast and adoring support network of chosen family, Fornés, who has Alzheimer’s, is back in New York City.

And in New York City, where she lived most of her life, her friends have organized themselves into a disciplined army of love, with a Facebook page and a Google calendar to schedule regular and continuous visits in which they sit with her, read to her, bring her gifts and treats -- all efforts that seem to be making Fornés, 83, flourish in her new home.

The move to New York, which was chronicled by the New York Times, was supposed to alleviate tensions between the friends and Fornés’ family. But the battle over Fornés’ last days continues, playing out even on the Times story’s comments page.

The winner of nine Obie awards for plays such as Fefu and her Friends, Mud, The Conduct of Life, Manual for a Desperate Crossing and Letters from Cuba, Fornés began having some symptoms of short term memory loss in 2000. I met her that year when she came to town to have a public conversation with Mary Zimmerman up at Northwestern. And during our interview for the Chicago Tribune, she spoke openly about her recent struggles to remember.

"You know, I've never had a very good memory, but it seems now, as I'm getting older, I still remember things, but not for as long," she told me over lunch.

The following year, we were on faculty together (along with Junot Díaz, Danny Hoch, David Unger and Cortiñas) for a U.S.-Cuba exchange program called Writers of the Americas. Cortiñas, the performance artist Tania Bruguera, a local writer and I spent a lovely afternoon walking through the town of Matanzas with Fornés in a dreamy sweet state. Technically, Cortiñas was there as her assistant, but in fact, he was more of an anchor.

By 2006, Fornés was no longer able to function on her own and custody was granted to her nephew, David Lapinel.

"After custody was awarded, Irene lived with her sister’s family for a while, but when her sister became ill as well, David Lapinel placed her in a home in nearby Oneanta,” said Morgan Jenness, Fornés’ agent at the Helen Merrill Agency since 1997, when Merrill, Fornés longtime agent, died. “The idea was that it was close to the upstate family and that there could be frequent visitations and also visits to her family for the holidays, etc. This did happen, I think, for about a year or so. However, (around) 2008-2009 there were decreasing visitations, and it became clear that aspects of the guardianship were not being properly maintained… At one point, another brother, Dean, wrote to the court outlining all the issues which were not being taken care of and tried to garner custody – but he was deemed not appropriate – or ignored – it’s hard to say.”

"It's hard not to see here that old privileging of biological families over chosen families,” Cortiñas said. “It makes me worry about how queer artists fare when they get older and (more) vulnerable. Irene was single, unmarried and had no children when her dementia began. Her mother was dead. Her sister was ill. Her sister's children were given custody.”

Jenness and others tried to get friends and chosen family to visit Fornés upstate, but those three and a half hours it took to drive up were insurmountable for most. Then David Lapinel asked that Fornés be put on “comfort care” when she stopped eating, which Jenness describes as basically “being allowed to starve to death.”

"(This was) without an ethics committee hearing and against objections from us and other members of the family,” Jenness said. “This would have meant a quick passage.”

Tipped off by Jenness and others, friends made the trek.

"What happened (no surprise) is that she rallied and blossomed from being visited and so the situation changed from come and see her while she’s still here to another last ditch attempt to get her moved closer,” Jenness explained.

This time the efforts were helped by other family members and by a public petition that garnered nearly 3,000 signatures asking to have her moved. Two weeks ago, Fornés was finally transferred to Manhattan.

"When Irene is left alone she seems to get depressed, stops eating, and starts certain compulsive actions,” Cortiñas said. “For example, upstate she started scratching her face so continuously that small scabs formed. While she doesn't seem to recognize anybody, she does respond to touch, affection, music. And there are sparks of that old world, whimsical personality we all loved. She doesn't speak much, but still says ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ when she does.”

And there are those three pounds. And reports of smiles at the sound of salsa music. And winks. And flirting.

All very good, very beautiful things.

Chicago's rising stars

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 05:00:00 -0600

As I watched Tina Fey and Amy Poehler kill it as co-hosts of the Golden Globes on Sunday, I was reminded of how they got their start in Chicago over 20 years ago. They met while taking classes at Improv Olympics, immediately bonded over Tina's recent discovery of eyebrow waxing and formed the improv comedy troupe “Inside Vladmir” shortly thereafter. Fey went on to Second City, and Poehler took the Upright Citizen’s Brigade to New York. Then SNL came calling, and the rest is history.

Of course, Second City has a legendary track record of producing comic greats: John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Steve Carrell and many more. Other famous actors who honed their skills in the Chicago theatre scene include Gary Sinise, Jane Lynch, David Schwimmer, Laurie Metcalf and John Malkovich.

Now, a new group of rising stars has given Hollywood reason to take notice. Here is my list of the top Chicago-based actors and comedians poised for career breakthroughs in 2013:

Katherine Cunningham

As an alumna of Conant High School in Elk Grove Village, Cunningham has played a variety of roles on stage, television and film. Her long list of credits includes Detriot 1-8-7, The Playboy Club, Shameless, The Mob Doctor, Chicago Fire and the Michael P. Noens film Two Days in February. Cunningham most recently appeared on MTV's Underemployed as Natalie, the love interest of lead character Sophia (Michelle Ang). Next up: Johnson, a film co-starring Cam Gigandet (Twilight, Easy A) set to premiere in 2013.

Joe Minoso

Minoso is a graduate of Nothern Illinois University and a veteran of the Chicago theatre scene, performing with such revered companies as the Goodman, Victory Gardens, Writer's Theatre and Chicago Shakespeare. In addition to serving as the associate artistic director at Teatro Vista, he has appeared in several Chicago-filmed television shows, including Boss, The Chicago Code, Shameless, The Beast and Prison Break. His current role, the tough but lovable driver Joe Cruz on NBC's Chicago Fire, is his best yet.

Tawny Newsome

As an ensemble member of Second City's e.t.c. Theatre, Newsome brings the laughs and an added bonus of top-notch theatre training. Before joining the cast in 2012, she graduated from DuPaul's Theatre School and went on to win rave reviews for her performances at Chicago Shakespeare, Writer's Theater, Victory Gardens and American Theatre Company. Newsome is an accomplished singer as well, lending her voice to local rock bands Jon Langford and Skull Orchard, The Dirty Rooks, and This Must Be the Band (Chicago's only Talking Heads tribute). Tribune theatre critic Chris Jones named her one of "10 new faces you should know" in 2012, and her future only looks brighter from here.

Michael Sanchez

Currently one of the driving forces behind Chicago's "Comedians You Should Know," Sanchez studied improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York before moving to the Windy City in 2006. He has traveled all across the country performing stand-up, including Seattle's Bumbershoot and New York's Seaport Musical Festival. In addition to writing a number of award-winning comedic shorts and opening for 30 Rock's Tracy Morgan, Sanchez is finishing up his first feature film The Return of Great Guy.

Beth Stelling

As Chicago's comedy It girl, Stelling did it all: studying improv at Annoyance Theatre, performing with the Chicago Underground Company, earning a 2011 Chicago Beat award nomination for Best Non-Equity play (Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche, which went Off-Broadway and will be published by Samuel French in 2013) and tri-hosting the popular Entertaining Julia showcase at Town Hall Pub. Since re-locating to Los Angeles in 2012, Stelling has worked with many funny people (Rob Delaney, Sarah Silverman and Kristen Schaal, to name a few) and was recently crowned #2 on LA Weekly's "12 L.A. Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013." Check out her super-cool website and watch her appearance on Conan below:

Follow Leah on Twitter @leahkpickett

And now for something completely different: Dickens!

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:00:00 -0600

Just when you thought you'd had all the Dickens anyone could stand . . .

Dickens' Women, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier, Thursday, Friday and Saturday only; 312-595-5600; tickets $50-$60.

Charles Dickens actually did write about women — and not just Scrooge's dead sister and his long-lost love. To prove it, British actress Miriam Margolyes presents this one-woman show in which she portrays characters from the novelist's life as well as his work. She's in town for only a flying visit though, so see it in the next few days or forever hold your peace. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. and there's also a Saturday matinee.

Oliver!, Light Opera Works, Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson Street, Evanston; opens Saturday (the 22nd) and plays through New Year's Eve; 847-869-6300; tickets $32-$92 with some half-price availability.

Fun facts to know and tell: Davy Jones of The Monkees' fame played The Artful Dodger in the original London production of this musical based on Dickens' Oliver Twist. I've never been able to get through the novel myself, but the musical is superb; it would be worth the price of admission just to hear the vendors' cries blend subtly into "Who Will Buy?" You can always count on Light Opera Works for top-notch singing, so this is the place to go if you love the show or if you've never had a chance to see it. And the unrepentantly wicked Bill Sykes makes a refreshing change from that guy — what's his name? — who let a few cheesy visions change his whole perspective.

Wrestling with dead playwrights

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 07:00:00 -0500

Generations of producers, directors and actors have joked that "the only good playwright is a dead playwright," and sometimes they are half-serious . . . but only sometimes and only half. They damn well know that theater requires a steady diet of new works, and everyone one of 'em constantly is on the lookout for the next hot author and the next great script.

Still, a dead playwright can't argue about how the play is cast, about whether or not the design elements meet the author's intentions, about changes to the script or about radical directorial concepts, let alone gross misinterpretations by actors. Perhaps the old joke should be altered to read "the only safe playwright is a dead playwright."

Except that's not true, either. Even dead playwrights can rise from the grave to bite you in the butt if they have well-managed literary estates and surviving copyright holders. Case in point, some years ago Chicago's long-gone (but then high-flying) Remains Theatre staged the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Although it only was a local production, scheduled for a limited run in a small Off-Loop venue, the Weill and Brecht estates shut it down in less than three weeks when they got wind of it via newspaper reviews.

Remains made two errors. First, they used an English translation that wasn't authorized for stage performances but only for reading purposes, thereby avoiding paying royalties to the Brecht Estate. This is one of the sinkholes of producing works in translation. Remains could have made things right by paying the Estate royalties for the authorized translation and then not using it, but they also would have had to pay royalties for the translation they were using.

But Remains could not possibly square things with the Kurt Weill Foundation: with brass balls and incredible stupidity, the ensemble decided that Mahagonny primarily was a Brecht work, so they threw out all of Kurt Weill's music and wrote an original rock score! Hey, let's do The Ring Cycle but we'll write new music and only use Wagner's words. No amount of money could make that right as Remains had violated the fundamental artistic integrity of the work.

On the other hand, since the death of August Wilson in 2005, his estate has sanctioned several productions of his plays by white directors, something Wilson did not allow in his lifetime.

So, the real deal is that the only safe playwright is a dead playwright whose works no longer are under copyright, and who wrote them in English in the first place. Think Shakespeare, of course, or Oscar Wilde or Gilbert and Sullivan. Otherwise you're still stuck dealing with copyrighted translations into English of, say, Moliere or Sophocles or Chekhov or Ibsen.

The way to get around that, as many producers and directors have done, is to cobble together a "new" translation using bits and pieces of many, so that no single translator quite can claim that it is his/her work. In terms of literary quality, of course, you get what you pay for.

Another thing is simply to write your own work, freely stealing storylines and characters from an existing classical source. Hey, The Boys from Syracuse, the Rodgers and Hart musical, is based on The Comedy of Errors, which Shakespeare took from the antique Roman playwright, Plautus.

In Chicago two seasons back, Sean Graney of The Hypocrites assembled Seven Sicknesses by consolidating elements from the seven extant plays of Sophocles, setting the work in a modern hospital. Several years before that, he thoroughly dumbed down Sophocles Oedipus the King by creating a contemporary Classics Illustrated-type version, complete with original rock music. Both of Graney's riffs on Sophocles are far enough afield from the originals (in any translation) for Graney to be able to secure his own copyrights for them, although I don't know whether or not he has.

All of this leads me to the fact that a new theater troupe in town calls itself, with self-conscious cheekiness, the Dead Writers Theatre Collective. Its mission not only is to perform the works of dead authors, but also plays about dead authors, such as Edward Bond's Bingo, in which Shakespeare and Ben Jonson engage in a drinking bout (although the company has not programmed Bingo). Some of the company's plays in the latter category will be new plays by living authors. The inaugural production (through Aug. 26) is The Vortex, the 1925 play by Noel Coward (1899-1973) which was his first great success. My Dueling Critics colleague, Kelly Kleiman, and I discuss the production on Eight Forty-Eight on Tuesday (Aug. 7).

Perusing the July theater calendar, I see that the first three productions of the month were a variation on Euripides' Electra (at Mary-Arrchie Theatre), Chekhov's Three Sisters (still running at Steppenwolf) and Luis Alfaro's take on Sophocles in the Barrio, Oedipus El Rey (at Victory Gardens Theater). The month also offered at least four Shakespeares (all out doors) and one each by Harold Pinter, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill (who has been having a very big year in Chicago).

Obviously, dead playwrights are alive and well and still serving to inspire — sometimes wisely and sometimes not — theater artists of today.

Young actors: Step up to the plate

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 06:00:00 -0500

Wednesday night I trucked out to see The Merchant of Venice, at the annual outdoor Shakespeare festival presented by First Folio Theatre at Mayslake Forest Preserve in Oak Brook, Ill. I enjoyed this handsomely-designed and engagingly-acted production very much, until the show was cancelled at intermission due to approaching violent storms. Lucky for me, I know how the play ends.

Most Shakespeare plays require a large cast, and the program for Merchant listed 19 actors. Combing through the credits, I found that six of the 19 either graduated from university acting programs within the last two years or still are in school. None of the six yet has a union card from Actors Equity Association (which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year).

This is one of the finest characteristics of Chicago theater. Our Off-Loop and Off-off-Loop companies abound with embryonic talent; kids just out of school or soon-to-be. Our larger institutional theaters, too, often engage early-career actors. Once upon a time, I was one of those kids myself acting for peanuts in the seminal Off-Loop troupes of Lincoln Avenue, among them Kingston Mines Theatre Company, the Body Politic, Pary Productions and Del Close's Chicago Extension improvisational company.

Thinking of then and thinking of now, this is the perfect time to be a young actor. So, yeah, sure, the global economy sucks, we're in a depression (don't buy the nonsense that it's only a recession) and if the Eurozone totally melts down we'll really be in the crapper. But what the hell? When has it ever been a good time for a career in the arts? Actors are perpetually under-employed even in the best of economies — it's one of the occupational facts of life — and a sour economy does not substantially offer less employment or less opportunity for employment.

So go for it.

Fact is, electronic, digital, online and video media offer more employment for actors than ever before. From voices for video games, to the explosion of cable TV shows (just think how many actors the Discovery Channel and the History Channel employ), to self-produced internet programs and serials, to direct-to-disc movies, the entertainment industry is exploding with new ways for actors to act in addition to the familiar categories of commercials and voice-overs, TV, film and theater. Yes, much of it is shallow, formulaic and sometimes amateurish; and much of it — perhaps most of it — is not covered by actors union contracts (Equity, SAG-AFTRA), so the possibilities of being underpaid, exploited, ripped-off and/or sleazed are very real, but this blog column isn't a business lesson.

Compared to many of these, live theater may be the worst way to make a living, and I use the words "make a living" with great reservation. In Los Angeles, a newbie actor can appear at an Equity Waiver theater and earn nothing but car fare for professional work, often with established veteran actors. Difference is, the established veterans can afford to indulge their passion for live art, but the starter-out still is eating beans. On the other hand, a newcomer also can find himself/herself on a soap or a series making several thousand dollars a week.

The difference in Chicago is no one becomes rich here from any type of acting, whether you're working at Steppenwolf or the Goodman or a neighborhood storefront theater. Chicago is not the town where you make a killing or become a star; it's the town where you hone your chops, stretch yourself and practice your craft. And, with over 220 producing theater companies, the odds are much better here than in New York or Los Angeles of your landing a role and actually honing, stretching and practicing; witness those six young'uns in The Merchant of Venice.

So, young actors, give it a whirl. No matter if you act for little or no money as long as shoes still need to be sold, hash still needs to be slung, dogs still need to be walked and temp work still is available. Keep in mind that the cost of living in Chicago still is considerably less than in NYC or L.A. Even more important, audiences here are sharper, more receptive to the new and better-informed than just about anywhere else. The lesson from that is to hold yourself to a high standard of craft and intelligence, and to take risks. If not you, who? If not now, when? If not here, where?

The Eastland Disaster: The Musical!

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 13:43:00 -0500

The Eastland Disaster: All Chicagoans of a certain age (ahem, such as myself) grew up hearing about it from parents or grandparents; how, on July 24, 1915, a Lake Michigan cruise ship, overloaded with 2500 — plus passengers, tipped over while still docked in the Chicago River, killing 844 people in just 20 feet of water. Most of the dead were trapped in cabins below-decks, either drowned or crushed to death by tumbling furniture including a piano. Chicago hardly had recovered from the December 1903 Iroquois Theatre Fire in which 602 people were burned, smothered or crushed to death and now, the Eastland.

Universally, the world still was reacting to the sinking of the Titanic just three years earlier. Parallels were drawn both then and now between the two maritime disasters, but they have few similarities beyond the tremendous loss of life. The Titanic was a 900 foot luxury vessel lost in a vast ocean on its maiden voyage, while the Eastland was a 265-foot lake steamer with a decade of service, docked in a modest river.

But the biggest differences are the great and ironic hubris attached to the Titanic, declared unsinkable, and the class struggle represented by the wealth and fame of its First Class passengers vs. the nameless immigrants in steerage. The Eastland had no such hubris, especially on that July day when the vast majority of its passengers were working-class employees of the enormous Western Electric works (manufacturers of all Bell Telephone equipment) and their families, on an annual company-paid holiday. The Titanic was glamorous, the Eastland was not.

It's easy to create a dramatic work about the Titanic with its inherent themes of mankind vs. nature or god, rich vs. poor and the choices made by passengers and crew — noble or not — in the three hours it took the ship to sink. For decades, too, there was the unreachable and unknowable wreck lying 12,000 feet under the sea. There have been at least four major motion pictures about the Titanic, scores of books, several plays and a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.

The Eastland Disaster commands none of that, as it was instantaneous and absurd, providing no time for personal drama or choices, and offering no inherent themes other than, "Why, God, why?" for the theologically inclined. People died because they arrived early and went below to escape the chill morning air. People lived because, like football great George Halas, they arrived late and were caught in traffic on LaSalle Street. The ship wasn't even lost: within weeks it was righted, refurbished and renamed (the Wilmette) and saw another 30 years of service as a training vessel at the Great Lakes Naval Base. There are a couple of books about the Eastland, a Chicago-based Eastland Disaster memorial society and now — 97 years after the event — a musical, created by the Lookingglass Theatre.

So, what kind of musical do you make out of the Eastland Disaster? The answer, for author Andrew White and composers Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman, is a blue-collar musical; a show as unglamorous and modest and accessible as the folks who boarded and died on her.

What does that mean? For starters, don't expect a Broadway-style show with production numbers and big solo songs; they're not here. Also, don't look for a lot of precise details of the what, when, where and why variety. If you want to know that the Eastland was docked at Clark Street, or was one of three steamers going out that day with Western Electric employees, or was known as the Speed Queen of the Great Lakes, you'll have to Google the "Eastland Disaster" for such things are not the concern of Eastland, the world premiere musical.

Indeed, with the exception of Mara Blumenfeld's costumes in full shirtwaist/Gibson Girl mode, there's nothing about the physical production that says "1915." The same holds true for the score by Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman, which is broadly folkloric and Appalachian in flavor. Most of the show is underscored by acoustic string instruments and piano, and the tunes don't stop to allow for applause. The contrapuntal and chorale writing is quite amazing in the few numbers (not specifically named in the program) where it reaches full flower, such as the chorus "Only the river remains."

The result — and clearly the intent — is an ethereal work which frequently is moving and haunting but rarely exciting. You may leave with musical impressions but you won't hum a tune. You certainly will remember the poor boy whose body lay unclaimed for weeks, or "the human frog" who held his breath like Houdini to dive again and again for the quick and the dead, but you won't leave with much understanding of the event itself. Lacking the obvious themes of the Titanic catastrophe, there is little to understand beyond the frequently-arbitrary and unfair falling out of life.

Author White instead wants Eastland to reflect the connections of the blue-collar, immigrant communities of which most Western Electric employees were members. His focus is on a few real people, a few fictional ones, and the patterns of love, loss, longing and family which the disaster interrupted. In director Amanda Dehnert's effectively shadowy staging, people float before you and drift in and out of Christine A. Binder's pools of light, sometimes suspended in air (as if in water), with dripping-wet clothing hauled out of iron washtubs to represent the dead, and with the audience seated in church pews within a Chautauqua tent.

Eastland wishes to be an elegy and not an exclamation point, an ache rather than a terrible wound, and at this it is highly successful. It continues at Lookingglass Theatre in the Water Tower Pumping Station through July 29.