Hey hey!

Last day, baby!

We decided to see as much as possible: three shows in one day!

This Chicago pizza held us over for over 10 hours while driving/seeing plays

At first we tried to get into Bad Jews at Theater Wit. We wanted to compare this production to the one we saw at the JET in Detroit.

We didn’t plan on the show selling out, though, at 2 pm on a Saturday.

About face!!

So plan b: we started at the Steppenwolf, the Tony award-winning theater, now on North Halsted St, founded by three college students in a church basement in 1974. “In its fourth decade as a professional theater company, Steppenwolf has received unprecedented national and international recognition, including a series of Tony Awards, and The National Medal of Arts. Click here for a full timeline of notable, events, productions and awards at Steppenwolf” (from their website).

We saw The Herd, Rory Kinnear’s first play. The set was a fully realized livingroom/kitchen. Onstage was a working fridge, microwave as well as an oven, a chimney, potted plants, table, chairs, couch, armchair, front door, and a staircase leading to a landing with two doors. They went the full nine yards.

Ten minutes before their 3 pm Saturday matinee the lobby was a sea of upper middle class to upper class white people. In the house there were literally two ethnically ambiguous audience members, tops. There was a trio of African Americans in the 3rd row and an Asian American couple; the rest was white.

Normal balcony tickets run $84; we got $15 student rush tickets in the front row.

After the show dramaturg Derek Matson led an invigorating talkback about the play. He then made himself available for questions in the lobby, which we definitely availed ourselves of.

We asked “could a young director open a theater in Chicago and get an audience?” Derek immediately answered “absolutely. That’s the specialty of Chicago: small, storefront theaters…. there are a lot of good, cheap spaces…and a lot of acting talent, a lot of hungry, young people wanting to work.”

Pretty promising. But it doesn’t answer a certain burning question.

On the way up, we got a call from Maya’s friend Celina in LA. Here’s her perspective:

“you guys may really positively affect a smaller market [like Detroit] and that may be fulfilling to you so I encourage that. But it seems like you want to make a splash in the industry and there are so many more opportunities and contacts in NY and LA…I would encourage you guys to commit to somewhere and try it…give it 3-5 years and if something comes up to make you leave go with it.”

What gets me is the fact that all the contacts we’d make in Detroit would link us to Detroit, not the larger markets in New York and Los Angeles.

She said that Chicago would have this effect, too, and that she’d seen her friends struggle in New York after gaining major credits in Chicago, including the Steppenwolf.

Derek had this to say:

“that’s not untrue…Chicago has a self-contained market for theatre, but that’s good because there’s no pressure to move the production on…Chicago is not a steppingstone to Broadway…budgets aren’t high so there’s more energy in the work and that’s what it’s really about here…if you want to work in American commercial theatre don’t choose Chicago… ”

Big question: what are we doing this for? Potential commercial success? What’s more important: doing the work or making the contacts?

“We got tickets yet?”

We spent the next hour trying to find a show to go to.

For this leg of the trip think more Rambo and less Robert E. Lee in terms of game plan.

We called five theaters before finding one that wasn’t sold out.

Good news: Chicagoans go to the theater on Saturday night.

On our way we picked up another friend of Ryan’s. Also named Meghan. She graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design this May with a BFA in advertising design and business. She’s now working at one of the big ad firms in Chicago; by the way, she digs super heroes.

Superpowers and subwoofers

We ended up securing seats at the final preview of original comic book musical Soon I Will Be Invincible at the Lifeline Theatre. The show is based on a popular novel by the same name.

There was singing, dancing, fighting, chest puffing and enough self-aware humor to keep it from being too serious. It gave us nonstop goosebumps.

I loved even better sitting next to the interim lighting designer. She shared that she had been thinking about moving elsewhere, but didn’t know where she’d go. She said that Chicago had a saturated market and we would have a lot of competition from other small theatre companies. When I mentioned that this somewhat contradicted Derek, she said the large theatre-going community somewhat makes up for the competition. “If you have a bad show you’ll still have a return audience” because they will see aspects of the show they like and come back.

Smart crowd.

I also got to watch her geek out with the director, choreographer, and playwright throughout the performance. You could tell they loved working on this show.

“Stop! Way too much light!”

The third stop of the day was to the Neo-Futurists’ abode to see “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind”, a show that

“is now in its twenty-fifth year, making it the longest-running show in Chicago today. Too Much Light…, with its ever-changing “menu,” is an attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. The single unifying element of these plays is that they are performed from a perspective of absolute honesty” (from their website).

Here’s a tidbit on the Neo-Futurists’ thing:

“The Neo-Futurist aesthetic draws upon Dada, Surrealism, the work of the original Italian Futurists, and an array of other artistic and performance disciplines to create something new and different” (from their website).

Not only did we know none of that, we got there late. Not just a few minutes late, the front door was locked and no one was in sight.

But then right as we were about to give up, a guy with a bike opened the door.

“The show’s started, guys. No one can take your ticket.”

“We’ll totally pay afterwards.”

“That’s not the problem, man, it’s…alright, go ahead.”

We had no idea where to go so we followed a maze of corridors and passages going towards distant sounds of an audience to a large room mostly taken up with seating.

The lights were on. The performers were laying the ground rules. Everyone saw us walk in late; they were all wearing name tags, we didn’t get one.

And somehow we found the seat right next to the house manager.

“Did you pay?”

“No, we will afterwards.”

“Did one of the performers let you in?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“Ok then.”

The show was totally different from the previous two (heck, twenty) plays we’d seen. They performed thirty 2-3 minute plays, all halted by the word “curtain”; at that point, audience members shouted out a number (1-30); an ensemble member jumped up to grab a piece of paper from a clothes line with the first number they heard on one side and a corresponding play title on the other. That was the next play. 

We spent a couple of minutes talking after the show. One takeaway is finding a niche, that thing you do that no one else is doing. The Neo-Futurists never tell a lie (they said this at the top of their show).

They also mentioned something we’ve been hearing a lot: it depends what you want to do. Every city has its pros and cons along with its own personality. You have to find the personality that fits your game plan.

Another thing we’ve heard before: it’ll be hard wherever you go, probably 10 years of really hard work to build a viable theatre company. Even the people who can boast of the longest-running show in Chicago work several jobs to make ends meet.

Nothing like showbiz, right?

So, what now?

Right.

New York. Philadelphia. New Orleans.

We would like to make all those stops before making a decision. It’s not an easy one. And the crux of the matter is, again, dependent on what we want to do.

At 22 and 23 we’re still figuring that one out.

More on that later.

Much love and thanks for taking the ride,

R&R

P.S. We will resume the blog soon when we travel to more places in the coming months. So keep an eye out!