Next Theatre Blog

Share your thoughts on MADAGASCAR

2011-01-23T23:10:00.004-06:00

Back in 2008, Next Theatre produced a play called THE OVERWHELMING, which was written by the same talented playwright that wrote our current production. We are so very pleased to produce this play, also directed by the same director who brought THE OVERWHELMING to life, Kimberly Senior.

While the these two plays are completely different, one thing is for sure... MADAGASCAR fits perfectly into our mission of social provocative theatre. Next Theatre has always preferred plays that make you think, and that also start a conversation.

So please, share your thoughts (though remember, some readers may not have seen the play, so don't divulge too much!) and let's chat about the play.

The MADAGASCAR trailer...

See you at the theatre!

Jim Davis
Managing Director

Share your thoughts...

2010-10-25T21:07:00.009-05:00

As Next Theatre Company celebrates our 30th Anniversary season, we will be presenting a group of blog and Facebook questions where you can add to the conversation regarding significant questions from each play.

This will continue on a weekly basis, with a different question each week.

To get us started, here is Manny Buckley, who plays Michael in The Piano Teacher. He answers this weeks question:
"If you could reach out to one person from your childhood who would it be? And what would you say to them?"

Share your thoughts as a comment below or on our Facebook page and the best answer each week will receive a pair of tickets to the current show!

Jenny Avery appointed full time Artistic Director

2010-10-04T16:49:00.000-05:00

Judy Kemp, president of the Next Theatre Company’s Board of Directors and chair of the Artistic Director Search Committee announced today the appointment of Jenny Avery as full time artistic director, effective immediately.

“Jenny, in her time as interim artistic director, has demonstrated that she has the talent and the experience to be a great artistic director at NEXT,” said Kemp, “She has a long history on the Chicago theatre scene in front and behind the curtain and brings those experiences and that rich knowledge to this position. We are pleased that she has accepted the position and we are proud of the direction she has already begun to take Next during our 30^th Anniversary Season.”

Avery was hired as Next’s interim artistic director in July 2010, where she has been an artistic associate for more than five years. She has worked with a number of other theaters around Chicago including Strawdog Theatre, Writers Theater, Victory Gardens, American Theater Co., About Face, Collaboraction, The Next and Roadworks. She spent two seasons at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland and trained with Mike Nichols and Paul Sills at The New Actors Workshop. Avery has worked as an arts administrator for Roadworks Productions, Chicago Music and Dance Theater and American Theater Co.

Update from the interim Artistic Director

2010-07-29T15:44:00.006-05:00

Dear Next Theatre supporters,

What a month we've had! Since my appointment as Interim Artistic Director on June 30th, I've received a tremendous outpouring of support, warm wishes and great ideas from all of our communities: artists, audience, and donors have all input valuable information that is shaping Next Theatre's future.

I am putting together three wonderful productions, deserving of a place in our 30th Anniversary Season. With so many variables in season planning, each offering an exciting opportunity for Next , these first few weeks have been like putting together a puzzle with all white pieces! It has been overwhelming at times, yet I feel a great responsibility to the audience and to the theater to produce the most exciting work available to us. So I've stayed open to every possibility.

This week, some important pieces have found their place. We are extremely fortunate to bring on board three of Chicago's most exciting female directors, all of whom have an important history with Next. Joanie Schultz returns to Next having joined us as the Associate Director on The American Dream Songbook. Lisa Portes (Artistic Associate) has helmed some of Next's most adventurous work including Suzan Lori Parks' Chicago debut, In The Blood, as well as Caryl Churchill's Far Away. Kimberly Senior (Artistic Associate) is the director behind The Busy World is Hushed and our most successful production in recent history, The Overwhelming. Her collaborative method and incredible energy are sure to thrill us once again.

I have been reading two to three plays a day and attempting to find the best stories possible for Next and for these talented directors. I am looking for plays that are smart, engaging and provocative - the kind of plays that the Next is known for and the kind of plays our audience dives into wholeheartedly. We've narrowed it down to some of the best new scripts around; we will be announcing the season very soon. I can't wait to share the line-up of mainstage offerings as well as a slew of alternative programming that will be offered this year.

As always, my door is open. Please share your thoughts, concerns, ideas and dreams about Next. Stop by our office in the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, email me at jenny@nexttheatre.org or call me at 847-475-1875 x14.

All the best,

Jenny

Introducing our new Audience Services Manager

2010-07-14T16:04:00.007-05:00

Our Audience Services Manager Kate Holst is moving along her career path and has accepted a new position with our friends over at Writer's Theatre. However, we have some exciting news to share... We've already found her replacement! Please join us in welcoming our new Audience Services Manager, Amy Buckler.

Amy is a recent graduate of Northwestern University and served as an administrative intern here at Next in 2007. She brings a remarkable enthusiasm and a deep commitment to customer service to her new position here at Next Theatre Company. We are really fortunate to have this talented young lady on our full-time staff.

"I am very excited to become a member of the staff of Next Theatre Company. The type of work that Next does and the amazing group of supporters makes Next a dream job for me. I look forward to meeting each of you in the coming months as we ramp up for the 2010-11 Season!", said Amy

Kate spent her last few days training Amy and showing her the ropes.

"It was a pleasure to meet you during the past year. Thank you for making me feel like a member of the Next family. I'm sure I'll see you around the theatre!" said Kate.

Amy joined us on July 12 and will now be keeping full-time hours. Feel free to call her at 847-475-1875 Extension 10 or email her at amy@nexttheatre.org The box office is open Monday - Friday 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

A message from Interim Artistic Director, Jennifer Avery

2010-07-13T15:22:00.000-05:00

I am delighted to introduce myself to you as Next Theatre's newly appointed Interim Artistic Director. We're entering Next's 30th Anniversary Season; it is a time for celebration! I've been an Artistic Associate here for the last five years and I've had the pleasure learning what a savvy and supportive audience you are. Alongside you, I've always looked to Next to take on challenging topics and plays like no other company around, and do it in a smart, sophisticated way. This is why I am committed to leading Next through this transitional time and ensuring this bold company you've supported is around to celebrate for another 30 years.

The Board of Directors here at Next has formed a search committee and begun the process for a new long-term hire in the Artistic Director role. My interim appointment will carry through January of 2011. The committee is aiming to announce our new hire within four months, and allow for a smooth transition between myself and the incoming Artistic Director.

To ensure the success of Next, the Board has also named Jim Davis as Producing Director. Jim has served Next as the Production Manager for the last four seasons, bringing plays to life in our space. We are working together to ensure the financial stability and professional quality of the theater. I encourage you to read more about the extensive and valuable experience Jim brings to this role here.

Our Managing Director Kevin Heckman has recently announced his departure. He voiced his continued support saying, "I have tons of faith that the board, Jenny and Jim will lead Next through these changes and I have offered to help in the transition in any way that I can. Next has been a fantastic place to call home. I look forward to joining them in the future as a patron and an artist."

Our 30th Anniversary Season

With the Board's support, I plan to announce a new line-up of plays for the 30th Anniversary Season. We are a Chicagoland company, and I want to honor that history of engagement with our community in our 30th year. Jim and I are working quickly to identify artists who will help us ring in this important year right for you, our Evanston and Chicagoland audiences. If you have already subscribed, of course your season tickets will be honored for the new line-up. As soon as the plays are squared away, we'll be sharing the compelling titles and playwrights you can expect to experience in our 2010-2011 Season.

Judy Kemp, our Board President, was instrumental in steering the process for the future of our company. She remarked, "A number of committed artists stepped up and voiced their interest in helping Next. I'm so grateful for the conversations I had with each of them. Their show of support has deeply informed this transition and Jenny and Jim's appointments. This has always been a launching ground for forward-thinking Chicago artists, and Jenny has already re-engaged our Artistic Associates and Board to ensure a successful 30th Anniversary Season in that tradition."

Stay in touch

I look forward to talking with you, our audiences, artists and supporters, during this time of transition. I hope you'll once again feel that Next is truly your theater. We are invested in the mission of Next Theatre to bring socially provocative, artistically adventurous works to the stage because we know you want to see them. Please reach out to me with your questions, thoughts, well-wishes, and concerns. Our door is open to you.

All my best,

Jenny Avery
Interim Artistic Director
(847) 475-1875 x14
jenny@nexttheatre.org

Next Theatre office
10am - 6pm weekdays
927 Noyes Street, room 108
Noyes Cultural Arts Center
Evanston IL 60201

the press loves "War with the Newts"

2010-06-01T21:15:00.002-05:00

"War With the Newts," which you must see, is an exquisitely detailed show and it is clearly dedicated to revealing that Capek (who wrote science fiction before anyone really saw the genre as a separateentity) was one prescient dude.

- Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

"unbelievably contemporary . . .underneath the fansiful story is more about basic truths with of our relationship with the environment . . . just like oil beneath the seas this is about the exploitation by humanity of an underwater resource . . . its also about the Walstreet meltdown . . . it remains completely contemporary and urgent, its very intellectually exciting show."

-Dueling Critics, WBEZ

...Loewith's direction of this multifaceted production is compelling...With its talk of ecological disaster, financial meltdown, colonialism, religious fanaticism, social unrest, military buildups and an overall sense of global upheaval, it could have been penned this week.

- Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

"War with the Newts" is a fascinating, gutsy and intensely creative show that precisely evokes the era and style of Kapek’s creation.

- Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

Read the full reviews.

What did you think of "Children's Scientology Pageant"?

2009-12-17T19:39:00.008-06:00

Our irreverent holiday musical starring eight of Chicagoland's most talented young performers is now playing through January 3. We've heard lot's of great things about this updated version of the OBIE Award winning hit! And in step with Next, we've heard great questions too. Add your thoughts, comments, review and questions as a comment below. Be a part of the conversation.

"These kids are hysterically funny! The laughs are many and multifarious". - Chicago Tribune

"The success of the show depends upon the absolute sincerity of its performances. Director Kathryn Walsh understands that and, as a result, her guileless production strikes exactly the right tone." -Daily Herald

"Children re-enacting with absolute earnestness the life of L. Ron Hubbard, the modern prophet of Scientology, is a premise with Wildean potential. But Next has pulled its punches and stayed closer to conventional home." - ChicagoTheatreBlog.com

"Any kids' pageant involves some kind of adult ideology -- yes, even the traditional nativity. And to its great credit, this show manages to simultaneously skewer Scientology and showcase the young performers in an upbeat, fun way." - Chicago Tribune

Share your thoughts on End Days

2009-11-11T14:35:00.002-06:00

End Days probes big questions of faith and hope. We've heard lots of interesting feedback already, and now we hope you'll add your thoughts to the conversation.

"...a lighthearted, fresh look into the ideas that make up evangelical religion, physics, the Rapture, and belief in general."
(Edge Chicago)

"Absolutely fantastic!!! A definite MUST see. We thoroughly enjoyed this and definitely recommend."
(Scott S. via goldstarevents.com)

" Laufer's characters are written too cartoonishly to truly connect; all we hear is the author's voice." (TimeOut Chicago)

"...exceedingly smart, goofily apocalyptic tragicomedy ...provides plenty of food for thought and an array of bittersweet side dishes." (Sun-Times)

Leave us your full review a la the critics, a response to another write-up or just a thumbs up/down; we want to hear what you think!

Opening Night of End Days

2009-11-05T17:34:00.002-06:00

End Days opened on Monday November 2nd to a full house of Next supporters. After the show, Evanston restaurant Va Pensiero sponsored a beautiful reception upstairs in the Noyes Cultural Arts Center.

Managing Director Kevin Heckman, Artistic Director Jason Southerland, Board President Judy Kemp

Molly Glynn, Joe Foust, and End Days actor Adam Shalzi

Melanie Esplin and Board Treasurer Jeff Emrich

Production Proccess - END DAYS Technical Rehearsals

2009-10-24T14:56:00.009-05:00

Greetings from Jim Davis, your friendly neighborhood Production Manager, reporting from the theatre and the first day of technical rehearsals for END DAYS. I am always amazed at how quickly the scenic, prop, lighting, sound and costume elements can change to an entirely new world. We've gone from the basement research lab of BOOM to he living room and kitchen of the Stein family of END DAYS in no less than ten days!

The creative team has been hard at work in planning meetings since last summer, and especially hard over the past few weeks to get all of the elements ready for this very concentrated time known as "technical rehearsals". A simple looking transition can involve several light cues, sound cues, movements of props and costumes. In these days of amazing technology we're now able to make amazingly complicated effects that would have been impossible just 15 years ago, but all of these effects must be programmed into the sound and lighting computers... and that takes LOTS of time. Add that to a stage manager calling the whole thing from the control booth, a sound engineer and light board operator running the cues, and the assistant stage manager making sure that the movements of props, costumes and props all happen with perfectly with the actors, the complicated details can be enough to give you a headache... but without the talented people to do this work, there would be naked actors in the dark on an empty stage!

I've always felt that people who earn their living as technicians, stage managers and designers often get overlooked by audiences who maybe don't realize all the details that go into putting up a professional production. So, below you can meet some of the members of the creative and technical team who are responsible for bringing this play to life:

Production Stage Manager Nancy Staiger, Director Shade Murray and Lighting Designer Lee Fiskness discussing cues on a break.

Sound Designers Marni and Nick Keenan programming a complicated palette of complicated and layered sound effects and music.

Lighting Designer Lee Fiskness adding a few lights during the first technical rehearsal.

While every detail is being worked out on stage, the rest of the creative team is working on elements in their department.

Assistant Scenic Designer Izumi Inaba and Scenic Designer Andre LaSalle making plans for set dressing while the tech rehearsal takes place on stage.

Costume Designer Mellisa Torchia training cast member Carolyn Faye Kramer the correct method for applying her makeup.

Production Assistant Justin Argenio and Properties Master Patrick Fries working on building a lot of fake bibles.

Next Theatre Company is very fortunate to work with some of the most talented and creative theatre artists in the Chicago area, and I know that I'm lucky to be able to spend these long days with these amazingly talented people, sitting in the dark theatre working our way cue by cue, costume by costume, prop by prop, creating the world of the play.

Talk soon,
Jim Davis, Production Manager

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

2009-10-16T12:36:00.009-05:00

In 2001, Next Theatre Company was honored to bring the Chicago-area Premiere of the groundbreaking docu-drama The Laramie Project to life.

On Monday October 12, 2009 Next Theatre collaborated with the theater departments at Northwestern University and Loyola University to be one of 150 companies to share a new, compelling work from Tectonic Theater Project. The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later has been similarly created through company members interviews with the townspeople of Laramie, WY and serves as an epilogue to the existing play. This moving story of Matthew Shepard's murder is not yet over, and the artists of Tectonic have created lasting impact by sharing this work across the globe in simultaneous staged readings this past Monday.

At every venue, a live-stream introduction featuring Greg Reiner (Tectonic's Executive Director), Glenn Close, Judy Shepard (Matthew's mother) and creator Moises Kaufman was broadcast on stage before the reading.
Watch the replay of the live simulcast intro.

The full team from Loyola & Northwestern Universities.

After each theater had completed the two-hour reading, they re-connected with the live broadcast from The Lincoln Center in New York with Tectonic Theatre Project for an international Question-and-Answer session. Folks from far and wide participated by sending questions online via twitter.

Watch the replay of the Q&A.
Follow Next Theatre on twitter.

Moises Kaufman, Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project, shared this message with the participants:

150 Theaters. 50 States. 9 Countries.

Congratulations to everyone on making this possible.

It's been inspiring to work with all of you, and follow your
individual productions. Thank you all so much for jumping in with both
feet on this adventure.

I look forward to being in touch with all of you in the future, and
meeting those of you in person who I haven't met!

-Moises

For in-depth information on Tectonic's process, as well as study guides, compelling questions, and interview excerpts, take a look through these 4 audience guides to The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later.

Share your thoughts on BOOM

2009-09-29T12:26:00.004-05:00

Peter Sinn Nachtireb's explosive comedy boom is being seen in no less than 13 theaters across the nation this season. (Next's current production is the Chicagoland Premiere!) That's big for a new play, especially one asking us to imagine the fate of humanity.

So we know it's popular among the nation's artistic leaders. Yet, it has elicited a big range of responses! We've got long-time subscribers pulling us aside to tell us how much they loved it, and some critics in town telling us they'd rather watch guppies in a tank at the pet store. New plays are a big risk and as we know at Next, when they bring up big issues like fate vs. free will, they are bound to cause some controversy!

So what did you think? Share your thoughts as comments below.

Production Process -- Boom Technical Rehearsals

2009-09-05T14:12:00.009-05:00

Greetings from the first technical rehearsal of BOOM. With the actors onstage and the lighting, sound, scenic designers, technicians and stage managers all sitting in the back of the theatre and facing a line of computer control consoles, we've begun the unbelievably complicated and detailed process of programming the lighting and sound cues.

I'd like to introduce to some of these talented individuals that Jason Southerland and I have assembled to do this work:

Production Stage Manager Nancy Staiger and Assistant Stage Manager Katie Eckert discussing cues before the tech began.

Lighting Designer Seth Reinick programming the lighting control console.

Composer/Sound Designer Nathan Leigh creating music and sound effects.

Sound Engineer Hilary Murray running the cues at the sound control computer.

Finally, and most importantly, the cast and crew gathered outside the theatre during our dinner break today for our own holiday weekend barbecue...

It's been a great first day... I'm holding off sharing photos of the show with you... Maybe tomorrow... stay tuned!

Stay tuned for more from the theatre as things develop.

Talk Soon,
Jim Davis, Production Manager

Production Process - BOOM Designer Run Through

2009-08-27T22:21:00.009-05:00

Greetings from the rehearsal hall! In just a little over two weeks the Jason Southerland and his cast have made amazing strides. Just yesterday the design team all gathered for the designer run of the show. This is the time that the people responsible for giving the play its world join the cast, stage managers and director in the rehearsal room to get an idea of the work they've done to date getting the show on its feet. The performers are really ready to get into the theatre and we have a bit of work to do before that can happen.

Pictured to the left are Costume Designer Chelsea Warren, Scenic Designer Andre LaSalle, Director Jason Southerlnd and Lighting Designer Seth E. Reinick.

After that Run through, we spent another couple of hours in a very detailed production meeting where we made final plans and decisions about the production elements and talked about the very complicated schedule for the days that the scenery, lighting, props, costumes and sound elements all move into the theatre, making sure that everything we've been planning for the past few months actually happens on-schedule!

Stay tuned for news from our scenery load-in, coming up in just a few days!

Talk Soon,
Jim Davis
Production Manager

Rehearsals underway for 2009-10 Season opener, BOOM

2009-08-15T17:10:00.010-05:00

The beginning of rehearsals for the first production of our 2009-10 Season can only mean one thing... summer has come to a close and it's time to get to work.

The creative team, production staff, board members and supporters gathered at our new rehearsal hall this week to get things rolling and to see us off for our production of BOOM by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. It was an exciting evening... and we're ready to get to work.

The creative team has been hard at work since mid-June bringing this play to life for Jason's Southerland's Chicago directing debut. As a part of this first rehearsal, they presented their designs to the group.

(Click on images to see them full-sized)
Scenic designer Andre LaSalle, who is making his Next Theatre Company debut, has created an amazing set, possibly one of the most detailed and intricate sets we've put on stage during my four seasons here at Next, complete with a few surprises (no, I'm not going to tell you what kind of surprises!)

Costume Designer Chelsea Warren (left), also making her Next debut, explained her concept for the clothes that the actors will wear. The creative team also includes Lighting Designer Seth Reinick and Sound Designer Nathan Leigh.

The production staff includes Production Stage Manager Nancy Staiger, Assistant Stage Manager Kathryn Eckert, Technical Director Caleb McAndrew, Properties Master Patrick Fries, Charge Scenic Artist Grant Sabin, Sound Engineer Hilary Murray, Master Electrician Mac Vaughey, and yours truly as your friendly neighborhood Production Manager.

You'll have the opportunity to meet these individuals here in the Blog as we move forward. Also, stay tuned for regular updates from the rehearsal room and as the set and other production elements move into the theatre and as technical rehearsals start.

Talk soon,
Jim Davis, Production Manager

Share your thoughts on THE OVERWHELMING

2009-04-30T15:01:00.003-05:00

The Overhwhelming is playing to sold-out houses and we're hearing feedback from many of you about this powerful play.

Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune called this " one of the very best shows in the 28-year history of Nex" and Hedy Weiss of the Sun-Times hailed the show as "a volcanic Chicago premiere" and a "brilliantly realized production."

What did you take away from this production? Share your comments below with us and with each other.

Be aware - some SPOILERS below!

Production Process - Meet the Props Master & Technical Director

2009-03-27T17:29:00.006-05:00

Many people ask me what the hardest part of my job is... and I think it has to be assembling just the right people for a specific production team. We've been very fortunate to assemble some of the best theatre professionals in the Chicagoland area.

Over the next few weeks, I'd like to introduce you to some of the people who make it possible for our production values to excel in the challenging space in our home here at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center Theatre.

Meet Props Master, Susana Pelayo:

Susie Pelayo is pictured above painting the market baskets for the show. Susie has over 70 properties in the show from very exact wicker chairs to lots of glassware to these hard to find market baskets. Susana has to be very creative about how to find these difficult items... asking just the right person the right questions at the right time can make all the difference. Susie has been our assistant stage manager for the past two shows and is also the stage manager for our Next Communities Project.

Meet Technical Director, Phil Canzano:

Phil Canzano has been hard at work building the set for the show. His attention to detail has really helped make the difference between a well-constructed set and a very detailed realization of the set designer's drawings. Phil has worked as a carpenter on many of our shows over the past few years and we're lucky that he was able to step into this role, taking complete responsibility for getting the set done WAY ahead of schedule.

We're just over two weeks out from the start of previews, so everyone is really hard at work putting the final touches on the technical elements of the play to be ready to integrate those elements into the production during the crazy five days known as "tech week".

Stay tuned...

Production Process - First Rehearsal of THE OVERWHELMING

2009-03-18T12:46:00.009-05:00

Last evening the cast of gathered on stage for the first rehearsal and read-through of J.T. Rogers' play THE OVERWHELMING.

Si Osborne who plays Jack, Assistant Director Jason Gerace, and cast member Lily Mojekwu listen as director Kimberly Senior, discusses a conversation she had with the playwright.

Dramaturg Becky Perlman discusses all of the interesting research information she's gathered regarding the play with cast members Christoph Abiel, Jamie Vann and Rob Fagin.

The cast, director, dramaturg will spend the next few nights doing "table work" where they dissect the play, bit by bit, before they start blocking (staging) the show on Saturday. It's always exciting to see so many months of pre-production planning come together and see the excitement in everyone's eyes as we start this journey of bringing the play to life.

Coming Next to the Production Process Blog... "How many props does it take to put on a play of this size? A visit with Props Master Susie Pelayo.

Production Process - THE OVERWHELMING designs complete

2009-03-12T17:45:00.013-05:00

With the closing of DYING CITY, we've just had our second production meeting for THE OVERWHELMING, and after working out our lots of lists of costumes, props and furniture, sound and music and lighting effects... our designs for THE OVERWHELMING are complete!

Set Model by Tom Burch, scenic designer (click photos to enlarge)

Tom's set features sliding panels which will open and close in different configurations to allow us quick transitions and a creative way to suggest the play's many locations, and keep the pace of the play moving.

Three of 40+ Costume Renderings by Whitney McBride, costume designer

Whitney has her hands full with well over a hundred costume pieces for the show, which she has very carefully researched to suggest the plays very specific location and time period.

Shopping for costumes and props has begun and the technical director and his crew are working on building and installing the new set... so we can ready for rehearsals to begin on the 17th... stay tuned!

Share your thoughts on DYING CITY

2009-02-19T14:33:00.004-06:00

Our Chicago Premiere of Dying City is really getting audiences talking! As you may know, every Sunday matinee is followed by an in-depth talkback. They are always popular, and for this show, nearly our entire audience stayed to discuss this emotionally riveting production.

It's clear this show gives you a lot to talk about! Some of the most captivating questions we've heard surround the character's motivations. Why does Peter come to Kelly's house on this night? Did he plan to come? Did he plan to read the emails from his twin brother to her?

And still more address the unique backstory surrounding the unusual twin bond. Though Peter and Craig seem worlds apart, how are they bonded as brothers? What about their lifestyles is more alike than different?

Please share your thoughts on these and any other topics you contemplated, discussed and debated after Dying City. If you haven't yet seen the show, join us soon (perhaps at one of our Sunday matinees) and share your thoughts with us and your fellow audience members!

Inside the Production Process - THE OVERWHELMING first production meeting

2009-02-18T11:54:00.011-06:00

Fresh on the heels of getting DYING CITY up and running, we've started production meetings for THE OVERWHELMING. Director Kimberly Senior and her team have been meeting for the past 6 weeks creating the ideas and deciding what the world of the play should look and feel like. Last Friday was our first opportunity to assemble as a group and share ideas for all to see. It was also the deadline for preliminary drawings so that the process of bidding the show with our scene shop and the other individuals that make the show happen.

Director Kimberly Senior, Sound Designer Tamara Roberts, Scenic Designer Tom Burch, Costume Designer Whitney McBride, Properties Master Susie Pelayo and Production Stage Manager Erin Diener discuss the research images presented by Tom Burch. Photo by Jim Davis.

It's my plan to continue to update you as the production process continues for this final show of the 08-09 season. Feel free to comment and let me know what parts of the process you're curious about. See you soon!

Jim Davis, Production Manager

Dying City is Jeff Awards Reccommended!

2009-02-10T12:43:00.005-06:00

Dying City opened Monday February 9th and is Jeff Awards Recommended.

Have you seen Dying City? Share your thoughts on the show in our comments below.

DYING CITY Technical rehearsals

2009-02-03T21:27:00.006-06:00

Greetings from Technical Rehearsals of DYING CITY. It takes a lot of talented theatre professionals to put up a show here at The Next and we're so very fortunate to work with some of the best in the Chicagoland area.

This amazing team of designers and technicians have been hard at work over the past few days putting the final touches on the technical elements for the play and we've certainly come a long way since we started pre-production in early December. From design meetings where we decided as a creative team what we wanted the world of the play to look and feel like, to scheduling the load-in of lighting and scenery to making sure that the costumes, sound and props departments all stay within their budgets... there are thousands of details to work out and it's my job to coordinate the minutiae of all of it.

We're very lucky to work with the likes of Lighting Designer Keith Parham and Costume Designer Kristine Knanishu (both back in town from their amazing work on the Off-Broadway production of THE ADDING MACHINE) as well as Sound Designer Nathan Leigh who joins us for the first time from Boston. As Production Manager I'm enjoying serving double-duty as Scenic Designer to work with this amazing creative team, led by our old friend (and new Washington DC resident) Jason Loewith, who is directing the show.

Properties Master Michael Groth and Assistant Scenic Designer Diane Fairchild at work re-upholstering the show's sofa.

It always amazes me what a wonderful and talented team of resident technicians I was able to assemble to work with us on our shows. Erin Diener is now in her second show with us as Production Stage Manager and she's assisted again by Susie Pelayo. Our Master Electrician Mac Vaughey has been with us since my first show here two seasons ago and Matt Hallock, our Sound Engineer is doing his fourth show with us. Grant Sabin is back again as our charge Scenic Artist who painted the show to very careful specifications and Properties Master Michael Groth has done amazing work rigging our onstage kitchen to do some pretty cool things. My Associate Production Manager Patrick Fries and Assistant Scenic Designer Diane Fairchild have both been hard at work to make sure that I keep my sanity while serving double duty.

For now, I should get back to work... there's still much to do to make sure that we're ready for our first preview.... in 45 and a half hours!

Next Communities 2009

2009-02-02T14:57:00.003-06:00

It's that time of year again. In a few weeks, Next Communities will bring a small group of community members together on the coldest Saturday mornings of the year, to share their views and passion about an issue, with the goal of creating an original play. This year we'll be focusing on youth and education issues in Evanston, a topic that seems every bit as timely as last year's discussion of race, and the previous year's exploration of gentrification.

Let's face it -- it ain't easy to be a kid these days, much less a young adult, facing challenges that are truly rattling the rest of us. How are we in Evanston preparing and engaging our youth so they can become effective members of our community? Maybe more to the point, what are we, as a community, willing to do to insure that all of our children succeed?

For years Evanston Township High School has doggedly attempted to raise the performance of all students and close the minority achievement gap, with minimal results. Now ETHS has embraced a new model, de-tracking many of the humanities classes, and creating mixed-level honors classes, designed to increase the rigor and academic achievement among lower-achieving students. This move has brought to the surface some very tough questions: What effect do race and privilege have on student achievement? Are our teachers effectively differentiating their instruction to meet the needs of all students? Here in Evanston, our school districts face the same challenges that any diverse, urban community's schools face. If these challenges cannot be resolved with the resources, intellectual capital, and strong commitment present in our community, how will they ever be addressed in communities nation-wide?

On January 24th, our community ensemble made up of youth services providers, parents, teachers, students from ETHS, and Evanston born playwright Marsha Estell will start questioning and listening to each other. We'll talk it out and argue it out. We might even hug it out. In March, we'll take a break while Marsha writes a play in response to our conversations, and then in April we'll come back to rehearse what she's created. We'll keep you posted, and hope you'll add your voices to our conversation at the Next Communities performances May 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

DYING CITY First Rehearsal

2009-01-07T12:21:00.003-06:00

After staff's various vacations East, West, South and abroad, Next Theatre is back in full swing! Last night we dove head first into our next production, Christopher Shinn's remarkable drama, Dying City. Jason Loewith is back in Chicagoland to direct the two-hander, which features Coburn Goss and Nicole Wiesner.

(L to R): Artistic Director Jason Southerland, Coburn Goss, Nicole Wiesner (foreground), and Jason Loewith check out the set model for Dying City.

Greetings from Tel Aviv

2008-12-05T08:23:00.003-06:00

My dearest Next Theatre Company friends,

I know it's only been three weeks since I took the helm of the company, but I am already traveling on behalf of Next. I was invited to attend IsraDrama, a week-long intensive immersion in Israeli theater that is sponsored (and paid for) by the Tel Aviv and Israeli governments. The purpose of the program is to introduce artists from around the world to Israeli theater and to promote partnerships that will bring this work to our countries.

I have an additional agenda for Next Theatre Company. I would like to see the company build some international partnerships that will allow us to work across borders to share the work we do at Next as well as bring work in from these other places. This type of cross-cultural exchange will bring new ideas to Next and will take our unique brand of theater and promote it around the globe. It is my hope that we can further enrich Evanston and Chicagoland culture with these partnerships.

So here is a round-up of my first few days and some observations:

Day 1: Madrid

I had a very long stopover in Madrid and took the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture there. Conveniently I have a friend who is a stage manager for Spanish theater (although he works on shows like Phantom, Beauty and the Beast and the like). He was able to show me around, get me some backstage tours and introduce me to a few theater professionals on the level of Next Theatre Company. In addition I was able to attend a dress rehearsal for a major revival/rethinking of La Vida es Sueño (Life is a Dream) by Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. I was struck by the way the play transformed language and time. It was written in very antiquated spanish in 1636 and yet this production felt compelling and relevant today. It reminded me why I am so committed to using the classics to reach contemporary audiences.

Day 2: Tel Aviv

We hit the ground running with two plays, Hanoch Levin's classic adaptation of 3 Chekhov short stories. This stunning work had been presented every year at the National Theatre of Tel Aviv (The Cameri) since he wrote it in 1998. It has played over 400 performances in the repertory and continues to sell out every night. I was struck by how many young people were in the audience... at least 1/2 the 700 seat house was under 25. This play is a modern "ritual" for young Israelis, a must-see on their cultural development. It was a powerful experience.

The second play we saw was a brand new piece called Return to Haifa, about a Palestinian couple who returns to the home they abandoned in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. The home and the baby they left behind was given to a Jewish couple from Poland who had lost everything, including their child. Now, with the father dead and the son fully grown and serving in the Israeli army, the Palestinian couple return in the post Six Day War calm to reclaim their house and their son. What started out as a very experience-specific play is gently and powerfully transformed into a play about home, property and identity. The dramatic journey these characters go on reminds me very much of a play that Next Theatre Company would produce. Stay tuned!

Day 3: Tel Aviv

Not the most exciting of days, honestly. We began by meeting with the artistic leadership of the two major companies in town, The Cameri and the Habima National Theatre. Both receive tremendous government support and have incredible performance complexes much like the Goodman and Steppenwolf (although larger). The economy and the reduction of government support is as much on the minds of the Israeli theater community as it is on the United States and, more specifically, Chicagoland. What did strike me was their complaint that they would have to reduce their rehearsal time from 3 months to 2 months in most cases. And we're lucky if we get to rehearse 4 weeks. So it's a quite different culture here to create new work.

We then saw 4 plays back to back. The first and the third were very different riffs on the famous play The Dybbuk. One was really stale and unimaginative, while the other pushed so many envelopes and tried so many new things that it was a bit incomprehensible. It was, however, my first taste of more avante garde theater in Tel Aviv. The third play we saw, Nutcase, was by a tiny fringe company and the acting undermined what the play was trying to accomplish. It reminded me how lucky we are at Next Theatre Company to have such amazingly talented actors and other artists willing to work in the intimate environment that Next offers. I must remember to thank our actors again the next time I see them. We are very fortunate. Finally we saw a play that could be describes as Wendy Wasserstein meets Stockard Channing. It was a solid, clean, well produced, well acted and ultimately "by the numbers" play. It's nice to see that there is a mainstream playwright and an audience for her work. But ultimately this is the type of play you will never see at Next. So I am signing off after day three with hope for the session tomorrow morning about Political Drama in Israeli Theatre and with some excitement to be going to a theater where they speak Hebrew and Arab in the same play and take on issues that are germane to both cultures.s

Shalom!

Share your thoughts on WELL

2008-11-24T18:57:00.010-06:00

The Chicago Area premiere of WELL has begun performances. The show is Jeff Recommended and has received many praises from local press. Now, share your own thoughts, questions and reviews here!

"Kron's deconstruction is well-served by Kiely's intelligent production. [Mary Ann] Thebus glows with the maternal energy that can make parents objects of adoration and frustration."
- Kris Vire, TimeOut Chicago

"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Exceptionally fine production.. Kiely's direction is spot-on... cleverly structured, emotionally complex...Well deftly mixes pathos and laugh-out-loud moments. "
- Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
Read the full review

"The talented cast is infectious. Lia D. Mortensen, playing Lisa Kron, delivers some of the most connective, engaging and funny narrative directly to the audience that I have ever experienced. The enthusiastic ensemble is delightful and Mary Ann Thebus is nothing short of brilliant as Ann Kron, Lisa's mother."
- Venus Zarris, Chicago Stage Review

"Well has much of value to say about illnesses that are difficult to define and understand. And Kron's connective tissue between individual and community health is unusually deep and wise."
- Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

JAMES RANK WINS JEFF AWARD

2008-10-21T12:54:00.011-05:00

Congratulations to James Rank, winner of the 2008 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Actor in a Revue for his extraordinary work in our production of The American Dream Songbook last February. In the two-part revue, Jim first tackled the role of Sam in Leonard Bernstein's challenging one-act Trouble in Tahiti. In the second act, we presented five World Premiere songs on the topic of the American Dream. Jim's beautiful baritone was heard in new pieces ranging from the clever morality tale Betty the Clam Girl to the rollicking New Orleans-style jazz number, This Little American Dream.

See a full list of nominees and winners on the Jeff Awards site!

FIRST REHEARSAL OF 'WELL'

2008-10-15T12:01:00.005-05:00

Last night's first read-through of Well (by Lisa Kron, directed by Damon Kiely) was superb: MaryAnn Thebus and Lia Mortensen returning to Next after many years to perform this marvelous, touching, and witty mother-daughter memoir. Hard to believe this play was on Broadway a couple of years ago - and now it's come to our little space in Evanston for its Chicago-area premiere!

It's also hard to believe that such a complex, meta-theatrical play (a play, in part, about what a play IS) could have been successful on Broadway (it was nominated for two Tony Awards). But I think the theatricality of the work is so strong, and in such support, of the subject matter: issues of racial integration, illness and wellness, and family relationships. It seemed from the assembled crowd that the work will appeal to wide swaths of our audience, while exposing them to a new theatrical form.

In other news, check out this fascinating article in yesterday's New York Times - where are the conservative plays? (Funny enough, the one play the cite as truly conservative, Stonewall Jackson's House, was produced at Next in 1999).

Lily Mojeckwu and Kat McDonnell check out the costume renderings
of their characters from Debbie Baer.

Looking at the renderings for the 9 year old bully character "Lori Jones", actress Lia Mortensen recounts her real life experience with the mean schoolgirl bully.

A NEW ERA AT NEXT THEATRE!

2008-10-12T14:05:00.004-05:00

After working with all of you - artists, patrons, colleagues, donors and friends - for six years, I'm so proud of how far Next Theatre Company has come. How remarkable that a community so diverse and vibrant welcomed me with such kindness, and supported me in all that I did at the theater... together, we really grew this organization to a place of strength and national reputation.

We've become a class act. So it's no surprise that Next Theatre has completed a nationwide search to bring a new Artistic Director on board with all the passion, commitment, talent and integrity we need to grow even more: Jason Southerland. On the opening night of Lisa Kron's WELL - November 17, 2008 - I'll officially hand over the reins to Jason, who is busily laying plans for your theater's future. You can read more about him on our News Page (and please do, because his credits are superb and inspirational).

Jason Southerland (right) with Managing Director Kevin Heckman

But I'd like to take a moment on this blog to publicly thank our Board, staff and artistic associates, who took part in one of the most transparent and enriching executive searches in which I've ever been involved. That is especially due to Board President Judy Kemp, who has been my partner since day one. She led a search process of great complexity and integrity, and despite our disagreements, we all emerged feeling more strongly about the institution's future. All of us owe a debt of gratitude to Judy.

The process began six months ago, and utilized the talents and commitment of so many people - not to mention the dozens of colleagues in Chicago and nationally who gave us leads and made suggestions about the kind of temperament we'd need to start fresh. The thirty Board members, staff and artistic associates who vetted the 100 candidates we considered at different points in the process worked harder than we had any right to expect... because they all care so deeply about this institution's future, and believe so fully in its vision: to become a national destination for artists and audiences who believe that theater can promote awareness and provoke change with more power than any other medium of expression. This critical decision was made so much easier than it might have been by the fact that all of us shared that passion and optimism.

Optimism, you ask? In times like these? Well, none of us would be involved in the arts if we weren't humanists at the bottom of it all... we each believe in the perfectability of the human experience, and that's why we do what we do.

Whenever I read our vision statement, in fact, I'm reminded of an early religious teaching, from when I was (believe it or not) considering rabbinical school. I can't remember the teacher - perhaps it was Hillel? - but I remember the essence: we will never achieve absolute goodness, but we must nevertheless strive for it; we must always keep our feet on the path to righteousness, despite the knowledge we cannot attain it.

We've achieved a great deal in my six years to work towards our theater's vision. But we're not there - we've only been on the path. I feel absolutely confident that Jason Southerland has both feet on that path, too, and he will keep us pointed firmly in the direction of our vision. I suspect he'll get us a lot, lot closer to our goals.

NEW ELECTIONS CALLED IN THE WORLD OF THE U.N. INSPECTOR

2008-10-08T15:45:00.005-05:00

Those of you that have attended a U.N. INSPECTOR post-show discussion know that certain events in the Ukraine in 2000 prompted David Farr to update Gogol's play THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR. At that time, a reporter named Georgiy Gongadze disappeared a week after the publication of his article about government corruption; he was later found murdered, his body mutilated, and suspicion fell on President Leonid Kuchma for ordering the execution. Farr modeled the character of Lizaveta Korshnik in THE U.N. INSPECTOR on Gongadze.

In 2004, the "Orange Revolution" swept away the corruption of Kuchma's regime, and replaced it with Viktor Yushchenko's relatively democratic administration.

But just today, Yushchenko dissolved his own government and called for early elections in the wake of his own Prime Minister's "thirst for power". The two have been at odds throughout the government's tenure in the past four years, but it has reached a boiling point:

"I am convinced, deeply convinced that the democratic coalition was ruined by one thing alone -- human ambition. The ambition of one person," he said in his address, shown on television while he was making a visit to Italy.

BLINKING SATIRE

2008-09-19T12:21:00.002-05:00

While I've never really been a fan of Saturday Night Live, this year's opening skit, featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hilary Clinton speaking about sexism in the Presidential campaign, is the funniest piece of small-screen satire I've seen in many years.

While the progressive in me enjoyed a little fantasy wish-fulfillment (wouldn't it be great to only ever see politicians speak when the other side's right there to rebut or comment?), the cultural critic in me was interested in the way it laid bare the "elite vs. regular" schism that's become so pervasive in American politics since the second half of the 20th century. Sometime around the Lyndon Johnson Presidency - around the time universities became battlegrounds in the emergent culture war - intellectualism took a hit, and it's never recovered.

So there's Sarah Palin, the regular Joe-anne, out on the Alaskan frontier, attending five colleges in six years before she graduated; the woman who was so confident she could be Vice President she didn't blink when McCain asked her to be his running mate.

On the other side of the podium was Hilary Clinton, of the elite and suddenly-upstate Clintons, who couldn't have wanted it more, who talks policy until it bleeds out her ears, who wears a V for Vendetta and a Y for Yale.

As progressive strategist George Lakoff might have it, this skit successfully satirizes conventional "frames" that have been embedded into our thought processes from years of absorbing American cultural output. A person who doesn't blink in the face of a challenge is framed as courageous, patriotic, willing to fight; she shares the virtues of the pioneers.

There is, of course, another frame through which to read Palin's open-eyed clarity. One who professes they didn't blink when asked to take on so grave a responsibility as the Vice Presidential nomination might also have an aversion to thoughtful consideration, strategy or (if I may) the capacity for rational thinking. Unfortunately for progressives, this frame is counter-cultural; it packs no heat; it's not a "sticky frame."

Clinton, on the other hand, is caught in a very sticky frame that derides her because she blinks - or thinks - too much. Poehler's Clinton wanted the Presidency desperately: so she manipulated and connived and was a ball-buster (which is quite different, culturally, from a woman who can gut a moose). She thought so much it made her sneaky, dishonest, insincere, and - remember? - unlikeable.

Of course, the counter-cultural frame here is that she knows a lot of policy, she strategized, she deliberated, she was methodical, she chose her words carefully... but in our current cultural narrative, Clinton's intellectualism is a giant negative.

As the King of Siam (via Rodgers and Hammerstein) might say, in his charming yet uneducated way, "Is a puzzlement!"

Another great satirical analysis of these cultural frames can be found in this week's New Yorker Magazine, by George Saunders:

Now, let us discuss the Elites. There are two kinds of folks: Elites and Regulars. Why people love Sarah Palin is, she is a Regular. That is also why they love me. She did not go to some Elite Ivy League college, which I also did not. Her and me, actually, did not go to the very same Ivy League school. Although she is younger than me, so therefore she didn't go there slightly earlier than I didn't go there. But, had I been younger, we possibly could have not graduated in the exact same class. That would have been fun. Sarah Palin is hot. Hot for a politician. Or someone you just see in a store. But, happily, I did not go to college at all, having not finished high school, due to I killed a man. But had I gone to college, trust me, it would not have been some Ivy League Elite-breeding factory but, rather, a community college in danger of losing its accreditation, built right on a fault zone, riddled with asbestos, and also, the crack-addicted professors are all dyslexic.

I've lately been interested in another recent small-screen satire that has been far less well-received. I'm speaking here of Microsoft's horrible Bill Gates-Jerry Seinfield ads for Windows. In them, Bill & Jerry hang with a "regular" family. The regular mom buys fancy mustard with white wine in it for her visitors; Bill tries to read a tech-manual as a bedtime story to the regular little boy; Jerry refuses to share financial advice with the regular dad who's bought a few gold coins; they end up getting kicked out of the regular folks' house for pinching a leather giraffe from Cabo San Lucas. (You don't believe me? Watch the clip).

The spots were pulled not long after their debut this month (Microsoft claims this was all part of phased roll-out of the new Windows), but if you ask me, Gates and his ad agency misread the regular-elite frames in the most egregious way. Imagine putting Barack Obama and Joe Biden into this ad, watching the two of them try to make sense of the quirky classlessness of middle-class America. Gates and Seinfeld inserted themselves into the most popular anti-intellectual, anti-elite frame: they condescended to the regular folks, they poked more fun at them ("Have you ever had scalloped potatoes, Bill?" "Yes, I have.") than the reverse.

So, back to the SNL clip: how did it so successfully cut through these embedded frames? By placing one beside the other, the skit exposed them both for what they are: manufactured cultural representations. That's the power of good satire.

ELECTION SEASON BLUES

2008-09-09T15:43:00.004-05:00

Every four years, Artistic Directors around the country get a golden chance to participate in our 230-year old democratic experiment: they can program plays that further community conversation about important issues. As the populace gears up to go to the polls and elect a new (or old) President, September and October are the golden time to program socially provocative plays. It's the only time our nation unites in its desire to have a relatively serious conversation about the issues we face.

Of course, at Next Theatre, we do that all the time... but I'm talking about the big theaters, the small theaters, and every one in between. If theaters really do reflect what's happening in their communities, the plays they produce in September and October of a Presidential election year ought to speak to it.

It's not surprising that we've already got some interesting political theater out there: Writers' Nixon's Nixon, Timeline's Weekend, Theater Seven's Election Day, and even ATC's recently-opened The People's Temple. We'll open The U.N. Inspector next Monday, which is the first of three plays this season that examine Western foreign policy (while entertaining you at the same time). Court's Caroline, or Change will tackle racism in our culture at just the right moment - and that's the kind of theater I'm talking about, when the Artistic Director programs plays that take advantage of the current cultural climate.

So I'm surprised that other Artistic Directors around the City are ignoring the conversation. Take the Goodman, choosing to do the Tommy Tune vehicle Turn of the Century on the eve of the election. Huh? Tap-dancing into the polls?

Now the Goodman's an easy target, so I'll be more generous in my astonishment. Remy Bumppo - whose motto is "Think Theater" - wants us to think about a family of embezzlers in The Voysey Inheritance as we elect a President. Chicago Shakespeare is tackling Peter Shaffer's now-a-chestnut Amadeus (at least they've got Edward II following it, that's a gutsy choice). Northlight brings us Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and unless they're making a snide comment about a certain candidate's anger-management problem, I don't think that's giong to do much for the audience's political thinking. Even Steppenwolf, usually on the ball with "of-the-moment" work, brings us Murakami's adolescent fable Kafka on the Shore (a great book, but I'd rather see Galati's adaptation in January) and Glass Menagerie. Glass Menagerie? Isn't that the show that Shattered Globe just opened? So we need to see important Chicago companies mount TWO productions of that tired, worked-over script within a month of each other, and in an election season?

I know it's my familiar soapbox, but with the stakes so high, shouldn't our major theatrical, cultural institutions be talking about the most important thing that's happening right now? Taken together, Goodman, CST, Northlight and Steppenwolf are talking to upwards of 60,000 subscribers and hundreds of thousands more single-ticket buyers with these productions. That's a lot of opportunities to engender conversation, to provoke thought, to make community count.

And as for New York... here's an interesting look at the declining woman's voice on Broadway: Theresa Rebeck's article in the Guardian. Surprising - aren't those Sarah Palin voters coming to Broadway shows?

WHAT WALL-E, DANNY KAYE & THE SECOND CITY ALL HAVE IN COMMMON

2008-09-02T16:08:00.004-05:00

I'm writing to you from the top of rehearsal week 3 for THE U.N. INSPECTOR, adapted from Gogol's 1836 masterpiece THE INSPECTOR GENERAL. Fortunately, we're working with some of Chicago's best comics on this show - the elastic-bodied Joe Dempsey, the delightfully manic Bill McGough, master of comic timing Joe Wycoff, mistress of the clever turn of phrase Susie Hart, and many more of the best character actors and actresses you're likely to see in town.

The thing they're all good at - and the thing they share in common with Danny Kaye (who portrayed the Inspector General in a 1949 musical film adaptation of the play), The Second City, and even Wall-E is a talent for what we in the business call "a lazzi."

Lazzi is a term derived from the Commedia dell' Arte, the wonderfully wacky Italian improvisational form that began in the 15th century, reaching its popular height in the 16th century. At the root of Commedia is a series of stock characters - the lascivious old man, the miser, the beautiful young lovers, and drunk doctor (Battlestar Galactica fans will recognize that type)... and of course, the Arlecchino, in French Harlequin, the clever servant. These stock characters would travel from town to town, improvising their way through delightfully simple plot scenarios involving sex, food and money. Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Moliere's The Miser are two examples of Commedia scenarios turned into scripts; in our day, clowns from Charlie Chaplin to Monty Python to the stars of Judd Apatow films rely on Commedia plots and characters.

At the core of the clown character is the lazzi (from the singular "lazzo", meaning joke), a physical bit of comedy, rehearsed to perfection and played until the last laugh can be wrung from a willing audience. Danny Kaye was a modern master of the lazzi, and you can see some of his best lazzis on display in The Inspector General. But the work of The Second City often owes a lot to the lazzi tradition, and so does my favorite film character of the past year, Wall-E. If you've yet to see this Chaplinesque animated character, I urge you to do so - as research for your trip to The UN Inspector. If we've done our job right, the lazzis in our play will come as organically and beautifully from character as Wall-E's travels on a futuristic earth (the Vacuum Vignette is a great example).

OUR FIRST CAPTION CONTEST

2008-08-26T17:10:00.003-05:00

Ladies and gents, the first in what may be a returning feature on Next Theatre's blog - the caption contest. If you post suggested captions for the picture below, I'll post more pictures.

For your pleasure, Interim General Manager Melanie Esplin (left) in conversation with Denise Robinson, wife of Board VP Neal Robinson. Please supply a caption!

SPEAKING OF JEFF AWARDS

2008-08-26T15:59:00.004-05:00

Congratulations to the cast and crew for John Patrick Shanley's DEFIANCE, which was nominated for a Jeff Award for Best Production!

Believe it or not, this is Next Theatre's first nomination for Best Production in 20 years! That nod came in 1987 for The Normal Heart, and won.

Big kudos, too, to Jim Rank, one of the fabulous ensemble members in THE AMERICAN DREAM SONGBOOK, who was nominated for Best Actor in a Revue.

You can find the full list of 2007-08 Equity Nominees here.

[For those of you wondering where Heather Raffo and 9 PARTS OF DESIRE was on the list, you're not crazy: the show, which we could only run for two and a half weeks downtown, did not play the minimum number of performances to be eligible for Jeff consideration. We knew this would be the case when we programmed the show, so your kudos will have to be enough!]

And of course, the honor roll of friends who did great work elsewhere last year includes:

Joe Dempsey (star of the upcoming UN INSPECTOR) - nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Play
Jacqueline Williams (artistic associate) - nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Play
Lee Keenan (husband of the fabulous Chelsea Keenan) - nomination for Best Lighting Design

AWARDS CONTROVERSY

2008-08-22T16:16:00.002-05:00

As most readers of this blog know, every fall, a group of dedicated theater-lovers gather to salute the best plays they've seen on professional stages... these are the oft-beloved, oft-criticized Joseph Jefferson Awards, Chicagoland's closest equivalent to New York's Tony Awards, or London's Olivier Awards, or LA's Drama Critics Circle Awards. Next Theatre Company and its artists have been fortunate to receive many of them over the past 27 seasons... and this year's nominations are coming out on Monday, August 25. (Check their website for an update that day!)

Because of Chicago's love of the underdog, and its embrace of the storefront-to-stardom narrative, the Jeff Awards have been remarkably egalitarian for the past 39 years... almost to a fault. Which is to say, the best-funded, most professional world-class theater competes each year against the teeniest theater that can hire a single Equity Actor. But it's one of the things I've always loved about the Jeffs.

Not any more.

Starting this coming year - the Jeffs' 40th anniversary (and coinciding with MY 40th year, by the by) - the Jeff Awards will be tiered. "Large" companies (Steppenwolf, Goodman, Chicago Shakes, and a few others) will not compete with "Medium" companies (like Next) in the Best Production or Design categories. They will, however, all compete in the acting categories together.

This is a difficult muddle to wade through.

When I was asked for my opinion on this issue by the Jeff Committee (they were very inclusive in the decisionmaking earlier this year, to their great credit), I argued that a tier-system in the design categories was an alright idea. For example, last year Keith Parham's light design for ADDING MACHINE - which cost $500, featured about 60 light instruments, and was executed by a Master Electrician and one other person in about 10 hours - competed against (and lost to) John Culbert's design for MIRROR OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD at the Goodman. I'm guessing, but I'm pretty certain you can add a zero after every one of our figures to estimate what the Goodman expended on that design: $5,000, 600 light instruments, and 10 or more personnel working on it for 100 hours or more. And often, the Jeff Committee's love of the underdog means that major productions at places like the Goodman or Steppenwolf are ignored - and that feels ridiculous to me. My only real complaint with the split is that it'll make the ceremony a lot longer.

The main argument most folks have against the tier system, forcefully argued by Chris Jones in his blog for the Tribune, is that it denigrates the awards received by the "Medium" theaters. I hear that complaint, but I'm not sure I buy it.

After all, it's only theater people who care about the intricacies of the Jeff Awards - even local foundations and corporations couldn't care less. Most of them barely know that there is a difference between the Jeff Awards given to the professional theaters in the fall, and the Jeff Awards given to the non-professional theaters (i.e., those that don't hire Equity professional actors like we do) in the spring. And trust me, people outside Chicago are absolutely ignorant of the various awards programs. I routinely get emails from out-of-state colleagues asking why Next didn't get any nominations in the spring awards. And that bugs me. Next Theatre is an Equity company, we invest a lot of money in our professional actors, and we are proud that we compete with other Equity companies in the fall.

What bugs me more about the entire awards controversy, the tier system, and so on, is that the Jeff Awards are pretty much the only awards in town. (I am told by sources close to Gay Chicago Magazine that their After Dark Awards are being phased out - those were the only other major awards we had.) Because every other theater community of note in this country - Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, you name it - has a critic-adjudicated awards program.

Don't misunderstand me: Chicago needs the Jeff Awards, and they should live on for another 40 years and more. The Jeff Committee are Chicagoland's uber-theater-audience; the most dedicated theatergoers in the country, and they love and support all of us. The Jeff Awards are like American Idol for theater, but with only the most-practiced 0.0001% of theatergoers getting to vote. Yes, I mean that as a compliment.

But critic-adjudicated awards programs are qualitatively different, and offer something else to the outside world. While the Jeff Committee members are Chicago specialists, the critics of our major media outlets are hired because of the breadth of their knowledge. Our best critics are in touch with what's happening theater-wise in New York, London, LA, Minneapolis and Moscow; they share the critical and theoretical backgrounds of our best artists; their opinions are vetted by editorial staffs and subjected to the rigor and response of the public.

I'll try to avoid making the sound of sour grapes, but here's an example: our production of Paula Vogel's Long Christmas Ride Home in 2005 was heralded by the critics ("It will fill you with faith in the theater" - TimeOut; "Impeccable and heart-breakingly tender" - Sun Times, "Astonishing in its artistry" - Windy City Times, etc.), but not only didn't get any Jeff nominations... it wasn't even Jeff recommended. Which meant the rest of the Jeff committee did not attend, and the production wasn't eligible for nomination. Of the 21 productions I've produced at Next in my tenure, Long Christmas Ride was one of only two not to be recommended by the Jeff committee. (I agree with their other decision wholeheartedly.)

And that's fine - that production was very gutsy, and very tough for many audience members to take. But the critics recognized its artistic achievement, and a critic-adjudicated awards program (the LA Drama Critics Circle, the NY Drama Critics Circle, etc) would have recognized it.

I had breakfast last week with a former Chicago theater critic who shall not be named here, and I asked him about this glaring lack in our otherwise worldly theater community. He told me there had been attempts over the years to start one because the critics do recognize they could offer something exciting in addition to the Jeff Awards... he also said some other things I won't repeat on this public blog. But mostly, he claimed there were not enough top-tier critics in town to make an appropriate circle.

I certainly don't agree. From the area's dailies to many of its weeklies and radio commentators, we've got some of the savviest critics in the country. Let's add something world-class to the Chicago theater scene: a critic-adjudicated awards program.

"THE COMEDY SHOULD BITE..." AND OFF WE GO!

2008-08-13T16:56:00.002-05:00

While you blog-readers are happily basking in the summer sunshine, lazily biking up and down the lake, planning another trip to Ravinia or Grant Park, I'm already hard at work getting ready to make you laugh... that's right, folks, the 2008-09 season at Next Theatre Company just started on Monday night.

What, you didn't know?

I'm not surprised. Monday night was first rehearsal for THE U.N. INSPECTOR, Nikolai Gogol's hilarious 1836 satire about government corruption, brought to 2005 London by my British colleague David Farr (where it premiered at the National), and brought to 2008 Chicago by Victory Gardens' wonderful playwright Jim Sherman.

We'll get some photos up here from rehearsal, but in the meantime let me tell you: that first read-through was a hoot and a half. After hearing design presentations, the cast of 12 (watched by a group of about 25 donors and Board members - ask me how much you have to give to get into that select group!) tore into the script with abandon. Leading the cast are the wonderfully funny (and born for their roles) Joe Dempsey, Susan Hart and Bill McGough as, respectively, Michael Murphy, the wife of the President and the President.

For the egg-headed among you (or those who don't like outdoor classical music), check out this wonderful National Theatre website which has enough dramaturgy about the world premiere production to choke a horse. Or at least an actor.

See you at the theater!

BEING AN ACTOR'S HARD ENOUGH...

2008-08-04T10:56:00.003-05:00

...without the kind of indecencies one puts up auditioning. Here, Artistic Associate Joe Wycoff has posted an eye-opening rant about just some of the poor treatment he's received at the hands of some of Chicago's best companies. He posted this originally on his Facebook page, and it spread like wildfire around the theater community here, generating a lot of gripes over warm beers I suspect. Our local industry paper, PerformInk, picked it up and put it on the front page last week. But for those of you who don't get PerformInk, here it is. (And I'm happy to say, Joe told us before it posted how NONE of it applies to Next Theatre!):

There is a prominent theatre in Chicago for whom I no longer audition. One long, hot summer I was called in to read the same material for the same people - not scenes with different pairings, but monologues - five times. I would arrive at the audition space to find no signage and no staff. They would wander out ten minutes past my scheduled time and ask if I could wait fifteen minutes or so. They loved to send me sides that were just a few pages shorter than the full script. Friendly as they were, they quite obviously saw nothing wrong with running a shoddy audition, which led me to decide that I just didn't need them, and that's a shame. Don't get me wrong, actors are a study in screw-ups, but the world is full of audition advice for actors. Who tells the house? I do, that's who. And so, for the edification of any potential auditor, the Top Six Ways You Screw Up My Audition.

1) No time. If you have asked for three minutes of audition material, do not schedule three minute slots. Give yourself enough time to ask a question or two, accommodate the inevitable late or chatty actor, and catch up if you get behind. If you want breaks, schedule them. If you are late, please tell me. Please do not stop for lunch when you are behind. Please do not have a five minute chat with your buddy about the last show you did. If your auditions always seem to run behind, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. Please try to stay on schedule and do not waste my time.

2) No clue. How many times have I spent precious pre-audition minutes wandering around a building or a city block because the auditors didn't put up any signage? Too many. Then you are behind schedule, and I am coming in frazzled. Post something – instructions with arrows and diagrams.

3) No bodies. You cannot run an audition by yourself. Stop trying. Get someone to be a proctor, someone outside the room to let people know what's going on, and maybe reshuffle the schedule to get you back on time. Get someone inside the room to fetch things if you need them. If you need readers, get them, and let them read over the material beforehand. There is nothing worse as an actor than preparing for an audition only to have the person opposite you misread, drop cues, and generally c*ck-block your audition.

4) No sides. I have been to auditions where there was only one set of sides, and those had to go into the room with whoever was reading. Bring enough sides. Have them organized and numbered so that we do not waste time shuffling paper. (See Proctor above.) If you send me sides beforehand, do not send me thirty pages when you will only want to see one; then I squander my prep time on material that you will never see. And make sure that you can read your own photocopies and scans before you send them out.

5) No manners. I'm not talking about giving actors lattes and backrubs here, I'm talking about common courtesy. As actors we attend a mix of auditions, some with handshakes and laughter and song before we start; others where we get straight to business – and that's fine, but you are the host of this little party, and we look to you for cues as to what is appropriate behavior. I have walked into auditions where none of the auditors spoke a word to me for the duration of my stay. Conversely, I have found directors accompanied by an entourage who chattered and snickered and milled about. Please treat us with the same respect any other potential employer would show any other potential employee.

6) No plan. These days I try to schedule callbacks for the afternoon or evening because of too many morning callbacks in which it was obvious that the auditor had no idea what he was looking for or how to find it. Many a time I have arrived in time for the morning Side Hunt - release the hounds! As the first audition of the day, I have been asked to cold read a scene with an intern while the next two auditioners were outside getting to run through the scene together. I have been asked to "try doing this piece without words, but make each word clear... I'm not sure what I'm looking for here..." I don't mind experimenting or trying different things to see how actors work together. I do mind being the test case for an audition plan that you will refine later in the day.

And one last note: headshots cost money. There are houses that ask me to bring one to every audition and callback. I have sent these theatres a headshot at least once during the year. I know they have enough shots of me to paper the Sistine Chapel, but they still take one from me every time. And they still call me at the wrong contact number.

Don't. Please don't.

MEET NEXT THEATRE'S NEW MANAGING DIRECTOR KEVIN HECKMAN!

2008-07-29T12:51:00.003-05:00

I am delighted - really, really delighted - to announce that the Next Theatre Board of Directors has selected Kevin Heckman to be the company's new Managing Director, beginning next week. Kevin's appointment concludes an 8-month search, and guarantees the return of my sanity.

Although I'm the public face of the theater that most of you know, the truth is that most theater institutions of any size are run by a dual-leadership paradigm: an Artistic Director guides the company's artistic vision, chooses the plays and the artistic personnel, and ensures the artistry's successful production. But a Managing Director (or Executive Director; they're both basically the same) ensures the institution's overall health by managing its finances, its fundraising efforts, its marketing, and full-time staff. For those of you in the "know", think of Barbara Gaines and Criss Henderson at Chicago Shakespeare, or Bob Falls and Roche Schulfer at the Goodman... in both those cases, the partnership is responsible for the company's reputation and good health, not just the Artistic Director.

So, welcome Kevin!

Kevin Heckman comes to Next Theatre from Stage Left Theatre, Chicago's like-minded storefront venue, where he has served for six seasons, initially as the Managing Director and most recently as the Producing Artistic Director. Under his leadership, Stage Left has grown significantly in areas of funding, Board membership, and infrastructure. As a theater artist, Heckman has received numerous accolades for directing, writing, performance and design, including a total of seven Joseph Jefferson Award nominations for productions he has helmed. Heckman is an associate artist at Chicago Dramatists and an ensemble member at Stage Left. He has taught acting at North Shore Academy in Highland Park, a school for at-risk youth, and is a contributing writer for PerformInk newspaper where he edited the first four editions of The Book: An Actor's Guide to Chicago. A 1992 graduate of Wesleyan University, Heckman received degrees in theatre and mathematics. He resides in Evanston with his wife Christine.

"The Board is excited by Kevin's commitment to Evanston and his deep understanding of the vibrant Chicago theatre scene. In line with our strategic plan for accelerated growth in upcoming seasons, Kevin's appointment will allow us to build on our solid foundation in Chicagoland and secure Next's place on the national stage," said Board President Judy Kemp.

Given his long experience at Stage Left – where he was passionate about the same kind of work we do - I know that Kevin is going to add immeasurably to this institution's growth. And as an Evanstonian, he's ready to fully integrate Next Theatre into the fabric of our community. If you've read my last few blog posts, you know how important that is!

Regarding his new appointment, Heckman said, "I am very excited to join Next at this critical point in its organizational life. I look forward to building on the strong foundation Jason has created, and helping to bring Next into the top tier of Chicago area theatres." Heckman begins fulltime work on August 5 - and not a moment too soon!

BLAHOPRANI!

2008-07-22T16:18:00.002-05:00

I'm happy to announce that Next Theatre Company has been awarded a $7,500 grant from the MacArthur Foundation's new International Connections Fund to support a research and collaboration trip to the Czech Republic in advance of our War with the Newts production. Congratulations! Or as they say in the Czech Republic, blahoprani!

In October, Adaptor/Director Jason Loewith, Puppetmaster Michael Montenegro, and Dramaturg Celise Kalke will spend a week in Prague visiting its famous Theater Institute, DAMU (one of the world's only puppet universities), and several theaters to explore international touring and collaboration.

RAGTIME, WILMETTE, CENSORSHIP?

2008-07-15T12:07:00.001-05:00

I got a call yesterday from a journalist with the WINDY CITY TIMES asking for my response to the flap (they call it "controversy") over the Wilmette Park District's decision to cancel an upcoming community theater production of Ragtime because of the musical's use of the word "nigger" (a word which my friends in the press will only print as "the n-word").

As I understand it, the Park District - the real producers of the show - didn't realize the historically-based musical used the offensive word until 10 days before opening. Their concern was that the production, which was to play in an outdoor park with amplified voices, could accidentally offend passersby and park-users who weren't attending the show.

The news of the cancellation hit local papers about three weeks ago, and no one really seemed to care until the New York Times picked it up on July 1... and then all hell broke loose. "Censorship!" people screamed... "The people of Wilmette are philistines," others mused, while some even thought the decision was actually evidence of Wilmette's innate racism.

Eventually, the show was moved to an indoor venue, where the musical will play to the satisfaction of the Park District and the artists. (You can read all about it in the Pioneer Press article here.)

Me? It's all a load of hogwash, I say. And frankly, just stupid producing. That's what happens when city governments try to run real arts programs. The Starlight Theatre in Wilmette, which is producing the musical, is a program of the Park District... and obviously the bureaucracy there (if it's anything like the bureaucracy in Evanston) is so complex that the people with the real power haven't bothered to read the scripts of the shows they're producing.

But please, let's stop yelling, "censorhsip!" Try making art in China, or Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall, or Zimbabwe... here in this country, where we are blessed with free speech, the only censorship we've got to worry about is self-censorship.

And that's a subject for another blog post!

TALKING ABOUT THE CREATIVE PROCESS

2008-07-03T12:22:00.003-05:00

Ever since Lisa Portes gave birth the morning after the first preview of her production of Far Away here at Next in 2004, I've known there's something strange in the water at Next Theatre... it seems like everyone we know is having babies!

So, though this blog is more often about heavyish cultural topics, let's take a moment to celebrate three of the most highly-anticipated productions of the upcoming theater season:

Kimberly Senior Baker, Artistic Associate, due in September - it's a girl, her second, and she and actor-husband Lance Baker are ready!

Melanie Esplin, Interim General Manager (and wife to Artistic Associate Joe Wycoff) isn't screwing around (ahem) - she's catching up to Kimberly by having two babies at once! Our sources tell us that this phenomenon is called "twins". Also due in September. Bravo!

Later in the season, look for the luminous Heather Raffo, writer and star of 9 Parts of Desire, to bring a little bundle of joy to Brooklyn. Sources tell us that she and husband Matt conceived of the idea while in Chicago for the production.

And finally, who is this question mark? Well, all I can say until she gives me permission is that another Artistic Associate has some big news to share, which will get bigger (and more obvious) until some time in January 2009.

YEAR 3 ON THE ILLINOIS ARTS COUNCIL - AND BLAGO-BASHING PART TWO

2008-06-27T10:30:00.003-05:00

Last Thursday and Friday, I was honored to participate in my third and final year as a panelist for the Illinois Arts Council's theater granting program. Each year, I and six other panelists review over 100 applications from Illinois theaters with budgets between $50,000 and $3,000,000, ranging from amateur to professional, rural to urban, and with missions of every conceivable variety.

It's hard, time-consuming work, but I have learned much in my three years on the Council. For one, we in Chicagoland often forget (or might not even know) that every inch of this state is peppered with committed theater professionals and enthusiasts. Places remote to us like Quincy, Peoria, and Western Springs play host to excellent community theater troupes that rival what Chicago proper has to offer. Companies with unique missions like Special Gifts Theater in Northbrook (which puts on plays with disabled kids) or Thresholds (which does work with mentally-challenged adults, often in concert with the Chicago Police Department) blow me away each year with their unique approach to theater as a tool for social change. And of course, the great troupes of Chicagoland, from Redmoon to Writers to Lookingglass, all apply.

And they compete for a disastrously small pool of money.

As you know if you read my blog, last year, the Governor (thanks to his feud with Mike Madigan) savaged the Illinois Arts Council budget with a 40% cut. This draconian, politically-motivated slashing (which happened in the course of the already-started fiscal year for most of us) meant, among other things:

*The cancellation of Next's Saturday Salon Series
*Staff cuts at theaters big and small throughout the state
*The end of outreach programs at small urban companies
*The dissolution of arts-education initiatives in every corner of Illinois
*Less money for artists, who are already severely underpaid

The Governor's new Illinois Arts Council has a budget so small that:

*Illinois now spends less per capita than Oklahoma or Mississippi, states with no national or international arts profile to speak of
*Illinois was one of only three states in the country to cut arts funding in FY08
*Last year's cut was the largest percentage cut in the Council's history

(Visit the Illinois Arts Alliance for more information about last year's cuts.)

And there is worse news coming down the pike.

Although the State Legislature's proposed budget restored most (but not all) of the Governor's cut, Blagojevich has made clear that he's up for even deeper cuts... in FY08, the deficit hole was only $500 million; this year, it's $2 billion.

Soon on this blog you'll see some actions you can take to keep the Illinois Arts Council alive. Make no mistake, folks: more cuts in the Illinois Arts Council mean they oughta just shut the thing down, because it'll be no more than a token... to my mind, Blagojevich should be ashamed of himself.

And frankly, the arts community in Illinois should be ashamed of itself too, and the journalists who serve it. Have you heard anything about it when you go to the theater? Has there been an organized effort to let Blago and his own private Cheney, Senate President Emil Jones, know that they're making a mockery of the newest Tony-winning town throughout the nation?

Let's get angry, let's get together, and let's do something to make sure the state of Illinois isn't the least supportive state in the nation when it comes to the arts.

HAVE YOU SEEN THESE ALDERMEN?

2008-06-17T12:48:00.002-05:00

Nope, neither have we. These folks are invited, free, to every opening night here at Next Theatre Company. Alderman Jean-Baptiste, in fact, never even returned our calls requesting a meeting four years ago; he's been invited to various Next Theatre Company programs and plays a combined total of 25 times. I think it's time for a response from him, don't you?

You can ask these Aldermen why they don't support Next Theatre:

Lionel Jean-Baptiste: ljean-baptiste@cityofevanston.org
Melissa Wynne: mwynne@cityofevanston.org
Delores Holmes: dholmes@cityofevanston.org

(One disclaimer: these folks have never attended Next Theatre under their own names; if any of them have attended as guests of other folks, we don't know about it and would like to hear from them!)

On the other hand, here is The Evanston Hall of Fame:

Mayor Lorraine Morton: a frequent attendee and advisor to the theater
Alderman Cheryl Wollin: a subscriber and supporter to the theater, and dear friend
Alderman Liz Tisdahl: a subscriber, hugely generous supporter and pal-at-the-gym

The Aldermen on the Cusp!

Alderman Steve Bernstein: though we don't see his name on our attendee list (bad, Steve, bad!), he met with us a few years back and has been supportive on the council
Alderman Ed Moran: again, how come you haven't come to the theater? But at least you've made a donation... now come join us!
Alderman Ann Rainey: Ann always thinks of us when there's development in her district (yay, Ann!), but how come we haven't seen you in the theater?
Alderman Anjana Hansen: new to the council, Anjana attended a show last season, and we want her back! Come visit!

TIME FOR EVANSTON TO STEP UP

2008-06-10T11:46:00.002-05:00

I was honored yesterday to be asked by Janet Carl Smith, the Deputy Director of Chicago's Cultural Affairs Department, to join Mayor Daley at a press conference celebrating "Chicago's award-winning theater community." While the event was really a Tony Awards send-off for Chicago Shakespeare and Steppenwolf (the awards are this Sunday the 15th; Chicago Shakes is getting the regional-theater Tony, and Steppenwolf's AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is up for a trillion awards), Janet asked me because the Mayor planned to also honor the city's 3 previous Tony winners - Steppenwolf, Goodman and Victory Gardens - and Next Theatre for its Adding Machine awards. Janet told me she'd stretch the borders of Chicago for the morning just to honor us.

That's right, folks: Next in the company of CST, Steppenwolf, VG and Goodman.

And further, that's right, folks: Mayor Daley honored us as a Chicago award-winning theater.
I'll confess that getting Next Theatre recognized as a "Chicago company" for our metropolitan and national profile has been a goal of my six-year tenure here. And boy, am I proud that we've clearly done it.

But... where was our own city, Evanston? Why hasn't the Mayor recognized our accomplishment? Or our aldermen? Why haven't the Beacon or the Pioneer Press reported on our awards the way the Tribune and Sun-Times have?

Is the answer that Evanston doesn't particularly care about having a national, or even metropolitan profile? Is the answer that Evanston would rather not have world-class culture within its borders? I certainly hope not. We have often received kind words from our local government, and even honored the Mayor last year at our annual benefit.

Nonetheless, as I told industry newspaper PerformInk last week, it's time for Evanston's government, businesses, community leaders and citizens to get off their collective behinds and put together a plan for Next Theatre to have a permanent, state-of-the art theater space in downtown Evanston with foot traffic, a major street marquee, and all the prestige and audience that comes with it:

"I think I was the right person for this theatre at the right time, but I don't think I'm the right person for this theatre now," says Loewith. "We need somebody who can be really passionate about becoming the jewel in Evanston’s crown."

That's not an easy task. While Loewith points out that Next has some supporters-even donors-on the Evanston City Council, a "shameful" majority have never set foot in the theatre.

Nor has the City of Evanston, which is cash poor due to the large, non-property tax paying presence of Northwestern, ever supported Next (or any other Evanston theatre) with more than a couple of grand through the Evanston Arts Council.

"Evanston in the next five years vis a vis Next Theatre is going to have to make a choice," says Loewith. "Are they willing to be a suburb in the shadow of Chicago that offers pottery classes... or are they going to have a world class theatre and be a world class cultural destination?"

"It's going to take a big investment from the city of Evanston to keep this place growing," he adds. "The next theatre leadership needs to invest the next five, seven, 10 years into that quest."

I am proud to leave Next Theatre debt-free, and four times larger (in budget and subscriber base) than it was when I started. But the theater ain't gonna get any bigger or much better without a new home that people see everyday in downtown Evanston.

So to everyone in Evanston - including those who want to "Save Evanston" by sinking the Tower plan - I think it's time to make a choice. Do you want your city to be nothing more than a gentrified shopping mall with nice lawns and lakefront homes, whose main cultural identity comes from Northwestern? Or do you want to assert your own cultural identity, preserving what's special about Evanston's progressive roots by investing in a world-class arts institution in your center?

Tune in next week for the Hall of Shame: the names of your aldermen who have never been to Next Theatre Company, and did not respond to our requests over the past six years for a meeting.

Theater is the art by which human beings make human action worth watching

2008-06-03T11:40:00.003-05:00

"People need theater" is the brave - and to my mind, absolutely true - opening to Paul Woodruff's new book, The Necessity of Theater. I've yet to read it, but much in the New York Times review of the book is worthy of note on this blog.

Woodruff's primary claim, though hardly new (hell, it dates back to Aristotle), is that theater, by promoting empathy, provides the essential underpinning of community. In fact, he says that theater is necessary "to secure our bare, naked cultural survival." It's an argument that my colleagues and I make frequently to inspire our constituencies and to shame our public servants, like Governor Rod Blagojevich, for whom arts funding is a nice luxury when the rest of the budget is balanced.

But I digress. In the past week, I've been reminded forcefully of Woodruff's claims at two magical, mystical theater events that made me part of my community in transcendent ways.

The first was David Cromer's absolutely astonishing production of Our Town. I'll confess that I thought Chris Jones had lost his mind when I read his over-the-top review of the show a few weeks back. But after witnessing Cromer's driven, passionate, unsentimental, brutal and wholly engaging production last week, I realize he was absolutely right.

I knew from all I'd heard that there was an extraordinary "surprise" in the play's third act waiting for me, and though it was indeed extraordinary (I won't tell you what it was - you must go see it), the act's opening was just as thrilling. In what is mostly a bare-bones production, staged environmentally in and around the eaudience, the third act opens in the cemetery of Grover's Corners. Cromer's masterstroke here is to suddenly triple the size of his cast, and surround the audience with these "dead" figures, gazing dumbly towards eternity. When we returned from the second intermission to find these mute refugees from their ordinary lives, we were all struck dumb ourselves... it was the most eloquent, simplest setting I've ever experienced.

I could go on, but the point of the post is that here was a piece of theater that satisfied both my mind and my heart at every moment, thereby enlarging the capacity of my soul to be part of my community. Sounds touchy-feely I know, but it's the truth. I'm in awe of Cromer's achievement; as he brutally intones the work's final words, we watch a "living" young man grieving in the cemetery. We are suddenly aware of those who have left us (they're surrounding us) and those who will follow, and of our ordinariness, and of the miracle of our lives. Wilder's play is first and foremost about community; Cromer's production makes sure you feel community in your bones.

Then last weekend, I celebrated the miracle of life at the wedding of Anish Jethmalani (a wonderful actor who was in Omnium Gatherum here a few years ago) and Michelle Tesdall (the immensely gifted costume designer who did that production). Most of the ceremony was from the Hindu tradition, and it was pure theater (as every wedding is, but to my western eyes this ceremony was exotic): from the costumes to the "props" (many sensory items like sandalwood and rice were blessed and used; Anish rode to the wedding on a gaily costumed horse) to the performers - including a wonderful Hindu "priest" whose chanting filled the fall for over an hour...

Of course, a wedding is specifically designed to celebrate "community" in all its senses: the union of two individuals is consecrated by the gathering of community. And this community, featuring family members of various religious traditions, friends, theater practitioners, and others, was diverse and glorious and united by the performance they witnessed.

I'll be thinking about both these events for a long time, but mostly I'm glad to know that, despite the wondrous miracles of the internet age, simple theater is what's essential to our cultural survival.

(My thanks to Gary Houston for passing along the NYT review of Woodruff's book)

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR?

2008-05-23T12:19:00.003-05:00

Now that the 2007-2008 season has drawn to a close, we can rest on our laurels a bit. Which of these productions was your favorite this year (and can you believe how much we did???)

THE BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED by Keith Bunin, directed by Kimberly Senior

ACTS OF CONCERN by Lisa Dillman and Sarah Ruhl, directed by Tara Mallen and Jessica Thebus (respectively)

DEFIANCE by John Patrick Shanley, directed by Jason Loewith

THE AMERICAN DREAM SONGBOOK by Leonard Bernstein, Michael Friedman, Michael John LaChiusa, Michael Mahler, Kevin O'Donnell, and Josh Schmidt, directed by Jason Loewith

ADDING MACHINE: A MUSICAL in New York by Jason Loewith & Josh Schmidt, directed by David Cromer

9 PARTS OF DESIRE written and performed by Heather Raffo, directed by Joanna Settle

SECRET LANGUAGE by M.E.H. Lewis, directed by Julie Ganey

THINKING BACK, THINKING FORWARD

2008-05-17T11:02:00.010-05:00

Dear friends,

As you may now have heard, next season will be my last with Next Theatre Company. After much soul-searching, I have decided to take a year away from institutional leadership so that I can join my partner in Washington, DC, raise a family (well, a dog), and concentrate on my upcoming freelance writing and directing work.

I have been honored and humbled to lead Next Theatre Company's family of artists, patrons, donors, Board members, and incredibly dedicated staff for six seasons. In that time, we have accomplished more than I thought possible, and it is because of your dedication. Our subscription base and Board membership more than tripled; our income - led by tremendous investment from the funding community - actually quadrupled. Each of the past six seasons ran a surplus; each of the past six seasons saw increases in subscriptions.

And each of the past six seasons gave opportunities for some of the city's – no, some of the country's – finest artists to do work that couldn't and wouldn't be seen anywhere else in Chicagoland. I will always remember choking back tears as shell-shocked audience members left our first preview of In the Blood in 2003; the overwhelming pride I felt when a patron told me our theater spoke to the black experience better than any other in the City after seeing Yellowman; the joy I felt watching peoples' laughter turn to fear and then catharsis as Wendy Robie juggled a five-course meal in Omnium Gatherum; the chills that overwhelmed my body as I saw John Judd's character breakdown in a runthrough for A Number; the tears I shed every time I heard Amy Warren as Daisy beg Joel Hatch as Mr. Zero to "Kiss me"; and just last weekend, seeing patrons, their curiosity inflamed, firing question at Joanna Settle and Heather Raffo during a talkback for 9 Parts of Desire.

I will always remember Next Theatre Company as the place where so much more got done with so much less because of the supreme dedication of so many individuals; as the opportunity where I learned to trust myself as an artist and a producer, thanks to the good will of so many; as the platform for canon-changing work like Adding Machine and the first production I saw here, Among the Thugs; and as a destination for artists and audiences who share my belief that theater can promote awareness and provoke change with more power than any other medium of expression.

Nonetheless, now is the time to put our succession plan in place. That succession plan dictates that I stay on in an "emeritus"-type position for the coming season. I have planned the plays – I'll still be directing two of them – and will be in Evanston through September at least, and again in January and February for the rehearsals of War With the Newts.

Beginning Monday, the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors begins a national search for a new Artistic Director, whose job it will be to keep Next Theatre on its upward path, and take it to another level... one that, I hope, includes a building of our own where we can fully flex our artistic muscles.

I feel confident that I am leaving Next Theatre Company in a healthy and well-regarded place, and I am grateful to each and every one of you reading this for the support that you've given to me personally, and to the theater, in our six-year streak of success.

I am moved, however, to beg one last boon from each of you. In the course of this coming transitional season, I ask that you continue to support the company at the level you supported it for the past six years. If you gave a contribution to the theater this past year, I ask you to give one again, at the same level. If you provided artistic support or advice our guidance to me, I ask that you do the same for my successor. If you have been an audience member, I ask that you stick with us through this coming year. If you have used your influence to keep Next Theatre in the public eye, I ask you not to look away. And if you have simply been one of the many thousands of artists and individuals that make up this dynamic theater community, I ask that you introduce yourself to my successor, and make him or her feel as welcome as you did me.

What we have built together in six years is now a force for the artistic and community good both locally and nationally. It is an opportunity ripe for an artist or producer with energy and commitment. Please give the new leadership at Next Theatre the chance to make good on it by your continued support.

I won't be going anywhere for many months, though - you can't get rid of me that easily! So later in the year I'll be offering some other reminiscences... most importantly, about the great city of Chicago and its vibrant and dynamic theater community, which allowed me to make more and better art than I could have anywhere else in the country.

More soon...

CHICAGO'S BIG IN NEW YORK... BUT ARE WE BIG HERE, TOO?

2008-05-13T14:33:00.002-05:00

Awards season has hit in New York and it looks an awful like the Jeff Awards in the fall... the Tony nominations, announced earlier today, honored AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY from Steppenwolf with seven nods, and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre will be walking away with the Regional Theater Award. As Chris Jones notes in his blog, CST is the fourth Chicago theater to win the prestigious award, making our city the best-recognized of any nationally by the Tony Committee.

Of course, ADDING MACHINE: A MUSICAL is off-Broadway scooping up handfuls of awards and nominations for Chicago artists - four Lucille Lortel Awards, two Outer Critic Circle Awards, nine Drama Desk nominations, and a mysterious invite to the OBIE Awards on Monday (we're not eligible for the Tonys because we're off-Broadway... but we're not bitter!). But let's not forget Writers Theatre's extraordinary success with CRIME & PUNISHMENT last fall at 59E59 Theatres, the Hypocrites in the same venue, and on and on... this is the kind of season Chicago theater should be having every year.

My only fear about all this hype, though, is that we might lose sight of what makes Chicago theater so wonderful, and why we all love making work here: because we make work for our community. Unlike LA - where people do theater to get into film - and NY - where people do theater to make Broadway cash and film deals - we do theater in Chicago for our neighborhoods, our communities and our audience. We do it because we like having a conversation with our patrons about what's important to them. We celebrate our city through our work. Let's just remember that we don't need to go anywhere else to prove it. If the work travels elsewhere, that's wonderful; but let's not aim to travel. Let's aim to be of service to our community first.

HEATHER RAFFO WOWS THE CROWD

2008-05-05T16:17:00.002-05:00

Whether it's the 200 folks who stayed for the post-show discussion at our preview for 9 PARTS OF DESIRE yesterday, or the young women of Las Caras Lindas, or the donors at the annual Next Era Brunch, or the 150 folks who gathered for our panel discussion on Arab-American theater two weeks ago, 9 PARTS author-performer Heather Raffo is wowing crowds with her charisma, wisdom, intelligence and dynamism.

What was so striking after yesterday's preview was how voracious the audience was to hear from her... it was as if the performance opened a long-yearned-for window into a Middle East we all suspected was there but knew nothing about. We're aware - as Heather told us - that the media feeds us stereotyped images of women from the Arab world: they all wear the burka, they all weep and wail, they're all dominated by horrible men. But Heather's remarkable show, directed with such seamless elegance by Joanna Settle, shows us nine completely unexpected faces of other Iraqi women: lovers, doctors, spiritualists, activists... a mosaic of experience that makes the phrase "eye-opening" inadequate.

And the reason why yesterday's audience was so thrilled watching her performance was that they knew Heather actually had met these women. Although their monologues are not verbatim accounts of interviews, and they are written by Heather with astounding lyricism, they are not fictions. They are women we cannot meet on CNN or in the newspaper... they are only women we can meet in the next two weeks at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through 9 PARTS OF DESIRE.

MORE KUDOS FOR ADDING MACHINE!

2008-04-29T18:08:00.003-05:00

Click here to read about Adding Machine's 9 nominations for the Drama Desk Awards! That's more nominations than any show in New York last season, on- or off-Broadway, with the exception of A Catered Affair. Thanks to you all for making it happen!

The new Elysian Fields scene in the off-Broadway production... different, huh?

(And though we're grateful to Chris Jones of the Tribune for picking this up, alas, it was only 9 nominations, not 12!).

Adding Machine has been extended off-Broadway to August 31, so there's more time to get yourself to New York to check it out!

THREE PLAYWRIGHTS AND LOTS OF AGREEMENT?

2008-04-22T16:36:00.003-05:00

Last night, Next Theatre was proud to produce Political Acts: The Emerging Arab-American Theater Movement, a panel discussion in partnership with Silk Road Theatre Project and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The 90-minute panel featured three extraordinary playwrights: Yussef El-Guindi, Betty Shamieh, and Heather Raffo - Americans of Egyptian, Palestinian and Iraqi descent, respectively.

The conversation, moderated by Simon O'Rourke of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, was wide-ranging, covering topics from the west's perception of Arab women to Americans' need to culturally pigeonhole individuals to the demonization of the other in times of stress.

Despite the fact that these three playwrights come from very different backgrounds (Yussef was born in Egypt and raised in London; Betty is from San Francisco with two Palestinian parents; and Heather (who grew up in Michigan) didn't really relate to her Iraqi heritage until the first Gulf War) as well as different religions, the three agreed far more than I expected.

As a producer, the most provocative question to me was whether they as artists actively promoted an agenda in their work. While Betty contended strongly that all writing is a political act - you either embrace the status quo or rebel against it - Yussef claimed he writes without an agenda. All three agreed, though, that the political resonance of their work had much to do with what each different audience member brings to the table.

In a few days, you'll be able to listen to the entire panel at www.chicagopublicradio.org/chicagoamplified.

THE RED AND BLACK GALA 2008!

2008-04-14T15:46:00.002-05:00

Over 170 red-and-black attired friends joined us at our annual Red and Black Gala last night, raising tens of thousands of dollars for Next Theatre Company - congratulations and thanks for joining us!

A number of you have asked that I publish my comments here; please find them below!

Got a new iPhone.

Yeah, it's pretty great. Got it in August. Birthday gift. Wanted it for ages. Use it all the time. Obsessive, really. It's totally beyond phone! Calendar, notes, email, memos. Forget about stock-checking. Too depressing. But weather, camera, internet. Beautiful crystal display. IPod, of course.

And TEXTING, right? All the time. Check it out:

"Running late!" "Can't talk - at work." "Still waiting on luggage?" "Show fantastic - nice job!" "CU L8R".

Only problem is...

Seem unable to complete sentence now.

Verb-noun construction too complex.

Caught in techno-age.

Send help!

TTYL!

...

Easter Sunday, I had brunch with my friends Angel Ysaguirre and Bob Webb and assorted friends. One of them looked very worried. He told me his attention span had decreased so much in the past three years due to technology at his fingertips that he was actually frightened – he might never be able to read a book again, or watch an old movie, or have a real conversation; he might be leaving the world of human contact. He's a technogeek whose name I don’t remember because he only told me his twitter handle –

Oh, you don’t know Twitter?

Would you like to see me twitter?

(twitters)

I've just told a half million people what YOU'RE wearing.

Twitter is this crazy new thing that's described as "microblogging."

You all know what a blog is, right? I have some thoughts, I write them on my computer, I send them to the internets, and then anyone in the world can read them. It's like having a public diary with potentially unlimited readers.

I must say I've never understood the blog thing. We have one on the Next website. I use it once a week to type up some marketing-inspired "rah rah" Next thoughts... no one reads it.

But that doesn't stop other people from blogging about the most shocking things imaginable. In fact, shock value is the blog's stock in trade. I confess I've been suspicious of blogs ever since an employee sent me an email, and in the signature of the email he had a link that said something like "check out my livejournal" – one of the earliest blogs. So I went to check it out, and discovered that he was trashing me. "My boss Jason is such a pain in the ass" blah blah blah... online. For the whole world to see. This employee no longer works at Next Theatre Company.

Yeah, so I don't like blogs all that much. As a kid I kept a diary, and you know, it was PRIVATE. That’s why we had diaries. Remember the whole lock and key on the book thing? Gone. Now it's all about PERFORMING your diary for the world.

Now, I can understand blogging as performance, but 'microblogging'? With microblogs – with Twitter – you only have 140 characters in which to write a diary entry. That's all that fits on the screen. Needless to say, this puts a limit on the literary merits of the microblog.

Stymied by the texting limit, dedicated Twitterers twitter all the time. Many times a day, some many times an hour. But what does one have to say to the world in so frequent and unfocused a way? I'll tell you. As I speak to you right now, floating all over the internet, hundreds of thousands of technogeeks are telling the world things like (and these are real Twitters):

'off to coffee + a friend's bday party'

or

'Tired, sad, listening to Britney Spears again, lol'

or

'Hace mucho frio aqui!'

OK.

WHO GIVES A SHIT?

Last fall, I interviewed Bart Sher, the soon-to-be Tony winning director (he directed LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA, and the SOUTH PACIFIC that just won the award for most over-the-top NYT review last week) for this book I've been writing. I asked if traditional art forms like theater would come out winners or losers after this techno-revolution we're in. He told me this story:

One woman came up to me after a show at my theater; she's a cancer care nurse. She goes every day into extreme situations in wards where she takes care of patients at the ends of their lives and helps keep them comfortable, and monitors their care, and their treatment... she's got a very, very difficult job. And she told me, 'I love to come to your theater because, when I come and participate in these stories, whether they're classics or new plays, they fill me up and give me the spirit to go back to my job. And I bring those stories back with me.'

So she can see Skin of Our Teeth, or Uncle Vanya, or To Kill a Mockingbird, and have an engagement with other people in her community. She can learn something about her world, she can remember ideas that come from her past, she can have a little taste of transcendence and transformation. And that gives her energy to go back into the world to pass those stories on, to feel connected to other people.

I'm not trying to make it sound 'ooky-spooky', but art has a real function in people's lives. It doesn't have to be our theater. It could be going down to the Art Museum and being filled with a way of looking at the world that gives you sustenance and strength when you’re in your real world. There's a larger way of looking at the world that we must constantly keep challenging ourselves to see, through art.

...

And one of the great things about this country, about the prosperity we've achieved, is that we Americans are constantly searching out these kinds of cultural experiences. We are constantly looking for stories that reflect who we are, where we've come from, where we might be going, in a search for transcendence. Whether it's Project Runway or South Pacific or looking for Cinderella in the Sweet Sixteen, we are on a constant quest for that 'aha' moment when we transcend the real and our imaginations engage.

But what's terrifying in our techno-age is that we've mistaken stimulation for this transcendence. Because it's so available, so ubiquitous, we pursue constant stimulation, thinking somehow that stimulation will lead to transcendence. We've trained ourselves to be in a state of continual PARTIAL awareness... and the big loser in this effort is our imagination.

For example, I've caught myself watching TV with my iPhone at my side. I'm not talking about giving myself something to do when commercials come on. But to give me something to do if, god forbid, the plot of CASABLANCA begins to lag for a moment, or I'm in between special effects sequences on BattleStar Galactica… I can check my email, or look up 'cylons' on Wikipedia, or find out when Ingrid Bergman died, or how many marriages she had or whatever. Or to check the weather (again). Or find out what time it is in Abu Dhabi. And before you know it, I've watched a movie and read a newspaper and checked the weather in Abu Dhabi and I've somehow diminished my cultural literacy and imaginative power.

This is now actually proven to be true. A troubling article in the Atlantic Monthly last fall marshaled an array of recent neuroscience studies that demonstrate how multitasking ('the nightmare of infinite connectivity') is actually dumbing us down while it makes us crazy. The article explains that we've made a journey from the 'Be Here Now' motto of the 60s to 'Be Everywhere at Once' today. And that we are headed for a multi-tasking crash, or an attention-deficit recession.

I'd take that one step further and refer fearfully to my Twittering friend from Easter – in our lust for ever greater frequency of stimulation, we're losing our imagination, too.

...

Anyway, in the midst of all this, a 3 and a half hour play called AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY won the Pulitzer Prize.

HOW IN HELL DID A THREE AND A HALF HOUR PLAY EVEN HOLD MY ATTENTION?

For a time, Next theatre Company was known as the theater that produced socially provocative, artistically adventurous plays under 90 minutes. The chair of the Equity Jeff Awards was dismayed when I told her we were doing a 3-act play next year that might run 2 and a half hours.

I won't tell you which one it is because you might not come.

Hey, it’s OK, I get depressed when I hear a play I'm about to see will be more than 90 minutes and involve an intermission.

It's not just because I expect the show will be bad, either, though we get plenty of that. But because the theater – any art, any form that activates your imagination – actually demands sacrifice. The opportunity for transcendence is of greater, more lasting value than the opportunity for escape – which is the route we so often pursue – or stimulation, which is ultimately a selfish and self-reflective act.

Live performance – the theater – demands something precious, and something which goes beyond self-reflection. Above all, it demands that we stop. That we wait. And that we pay attention – for an hour, or two, or even three and a half. And if we're lucky, the result of our sacrifice will be transcendence.

I asked Mary Zimmerman, Tony-winning director of Metamorphoses, whether she has an obligation to the audience as an artist:

The audience should be engaged and rewarded for the sacrifice they’ve made by diminishing their own presence… sitting in uniform rows in the dark… and not being allowed to speak... and quieting themselves bodily... and not being allowed to eat or drink, not being allowed to answer their cellphones... for removing themselves from the world, and giving me their attention. You need to gratify, and reward, and appreciate that attention and respond to it, fulfill that promise.

Usually, you in the audience give me about 15 minutes to get to you; that's as long as you'll give up on your technology and your worries and your continual partial awareness nowadays, and if I haven't grabbed you by then, you’re lost for the evening.

But if I DO grab you, then you actually, physically, have become deprogrammed. I really believe it. Your concentration isn't split into a hundred different things. How do I know if a show is successful? I know by watching the audience from the back: because when it’s working, YOU ALL BREATHE AS ONE.

And then, if I can keep you breathing together, the last 15 minutes of the play become a GOLDEN TIME, a time when you are really open to reflection, to going beyond yourselves; you are present, you are living the poetics of the piece that we've created... and we can return you to a state of connection, to the poetics of language, to emotional truth, to visual magic… in short, to transcendence.

In my six years at Next Theatre Company, I have watched hundreds of audiences at dozens of productions to see if we've returned them to that place. I have failed, on more than one occasion. I did not repay the sacrifice you made to remove yourself from the world and give me your attention. It is a difficult, challenging thing to do with our repertoire, unique in Chicagoland.

Often we succeed, and sometimes – rare times – we succeed brilliantly. Our production of DEFIANCE earlier this season sold more single tickets than any in the past twenty years. We commissioned five new music-theater works for our last show, THE AMERICAN DREAM SONGBOOK (though I have since learned that producing plays that satirize suburbia IN suburbia is not always a safe bet). And next month, we are bringing an internationally-renowned artist, Heather Raffo, to Chicago with the help of the Museum of Conteporary art to give us the area premiere of her one-woman masterpiece, 9 PARTS OF DESIRE. I promise your sacrifice will be rewarded at that production, more than any other this season.

Oh, and there was that ADDING MACHINE thing, which is getting its cast album recorded tomorrow in New York, and which was nominated for 6 Lucille Lortel Awards for distinction off-Broadway – the most nominations of any show in the past year.

It took us six years of backbreaking work to get to this point.

Somehow, and mostly with the work of the people in this room, in six years we have transformed our humble artists’ station into a thriving and important destination for Chicagoland theater. We have taken a $168,000 budget and turned it into a $670,000. We have taken 300 subscribers and turned them into 12 hundred. We started with four board members and now have 19.

No one gave us a fortune. We didn't do it with easy-on-the-eyes musicals or heartwarming revivals or circus shows or babies and puppies and free ice cream cones or ESCAPE. Somehow, we did it – and YOU did it - with provocative, thrilling dramas, a bunch of flops, a bunch of hits, and a lot more risky pieces in between that didn't do too badly.

I'm astonished to look back at the success we've had, and I'm proud beyond measure of what we've tried to do.

But I'm no fool, and this isn't my attempt at feeding you humble pie – dessert will be here momentarily, by the way. It is the people in this room, and those like them – from subscribers and people who write checks for twenty-five bucks to foundation folks, and Board members – who have made it happen. Yes, it's true that we staff members and artists have insane commitments, and do what we love without a lot of regard for money. We sacrifice a ton.

But it's actually all done in service to YOUR commitment. YOUR commitment to having a theater in your community that takes risks, provides theatrical adventure, and stirs the soul. And demands your attention. And rewards the sacrifice as best it can. YOU believe more strongly than I do that this theater MUST have a place in your community. I'm just a traveler, passing through. But YOU have wished this theater into existence.

I asked Bart Sher how he avoids going to the 'bad place' – that place all we artists go to when we think our work isn’t worth the trouble, that no one’s listening, that the critics don't get it, that the audiences don't care... and here's how he responded:

There are a lot of people who have a lot more faith in the arts than I do. They're not artists, they're in the community: they're Boards of Directors, they're subscribers, they're people who make small contributions, who are very valiant and courageous in their belief in this stuff. So in a way, when I go to the bad place, I just have to believe in them: that they have enough belief in what we're doing, that they love the work enough, and they believe it’s important to their community. Their sense of the missions of these places and what they want in their communities always embarrasses me because it’s so much greater than mine in some ways.

You, and people like you, willed this theater into existence 27 years ago. You have willed it to become bigger and stronger and vital every year. You believe in what we do more than I can, in some amazing way.

And so this gala is all about celebrating you: your commitment to the pursuit of cultural experience that leads to transcendence. For that very rare quest, I thank you. With all my heart. I thank you for being here with me, and I look forward to seeing you at the MCA in May, and at the theater again next fall.

NOTES FROM THE RECORDING STUDIO

2008-04-08T14:45:00.002-05:00

As reported on Playbill.com and in the Chicago Tribune, Adding Machine: A Musical is getting recorded for posterity!

PS Classics, a relatively young label with a mighty catalog, is producing the CD, which will be recorded on April 14 in New York with the off-Broadway cast. Tommy Krasker, head of the label, hopes to release it in early June.

This whole recording thing is new to me, and I've been fascinated to see how Tommy puts it together. And it's big business, too. Even the smallest of recordings, recorded in a single day like Adding Machine, takes many tens of thousands of dollars to pay performers, studio fees, post-production costs, and production... and then there's marketing. It's an unbelievable outlay in a world where people spend less and less on physical CDs and more and more on iTunes.

Since the deal was inked barely a week ago, Josh and I have been collaborating at lightning speed with Tommy on the contours of the album. Things I don't think about any more - the way, for example, our brilliant director David Cromer melded one scene into the next - are actually problems for the recording, so Josh and I have to reconsider the beginnings and endings of scenes. And what about the spoken dialogue? To cut or not to cut, that's been the question all week.

Happily, I think that Tommy, Josh and I have come to some excellent conclusions about how to trim what's unhelpful to an auditor but retain the musical's essential story. You can bet we'll be selling copies of the CD at Next!

ADDING MACHINE LEADS THE PACK AT THE LUCILLE LORTEL AWARDS!

2008-04-01T12:23:00.004-05:00

It is with great pleasure that we announce ADDING MACHINE: A MUSICAL leads the pack with six nominations for the Lucille Lortel Awards, honoring achievement off-Broadway! The nominations are:

OUTSTANDING MUSICAL - Jason & Josh/Producers Scott Morfee, Tom Wirtshafter & Margaret Cotter
OUTSTANDING DIRECTOR - David Cromer
OUTSTANDING ACTOR - Joel Hatch
OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Amy Warren
OUTSTANDING COSTUME DESIGN - Kristine Knanishu
OUTSTANDING LIGHTING DESIGN - Keith Parham

(We should all take some pride in knowing that all those receiving nominations were with the original production at Next!)

Read more about the Awards - and our competition, in this Playbill article, and at the official Lortel Awards website.

The awards ceremony - where the show will have a musical number! - take place in New York on Monday, May 5 at the Union Square Theater... here in Chicago, we'll be opening 9 PARTS OF DESIRE at the MCA - so it'll be one heckuva night for Next Theatre!

RIGHT-WING BIGOTS ATTACK DEERFIELD HIGH SCHOOL

2008-03-25T12:31:00.009-05:00

I had the opportunity to speak with Lora Sue Hauser, the individual listed in the blog below. My post has been edited to correct factual errors; I regret that mistakes were made in the original post. As Ms. Hauser said, we both look forward to further comments and questions on the issue involved.

Recently I had Easter brunch with a friend who teaches English at Deerfield High School. Like others on the North Shore, Deerfield has a long history of progressive education and outreach. Like other high schools across the country, they recently assigned Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prizewinning play Angels in America to AP English students.

But unlike other schools, Deerfield has an angry ex-parent "with years of advocacy" behind her: Lora Sue Hauser.

Although one of her children graduated from Deerfield, another child was put into private school because, she says, Deerfield was not a welcoming place for children with a "conservative" background. Nevertheless, I presume she wants to save the other innocent kids from the work of Satan-worshippin' hom'sexuals like Tony Kushner. I presume that's why she formed North Shore Student Advocacy "years ago" -to address issues like this, lending legitimacy to her campaign against Deerfield.

Lora Sue Hauser is very upset that DHS is teaching Angels, even though it's an optional assignment that requires parental approval. So she's calling it "pornography" to anyone who will listen. Screaming "pornography" when you're talking about literature strikes me pretty clearly as hatemongering and fear peddling (as well as a throwback to olden-time bigotry). Obviously, she disagrees.

NSSA's protest against Angels took the form of an outraged press release, including excerpts from the play's most graphic scenes. She succeeded in stirring up some excitement from right-wing nutballs from all over the country, eager to sink their fangs into the homosexual agenda wherever they can. (She did admit to me she was happy to have the publicity).

Some of the results can be found here, here, here, and really all over the internet.

But if you'd prefer to read the facts instead of apoplectic, apocalyptic fiction, check out this story from the Pioneer Press that lays out the credentials of the teacher, Tony Kushner's personal involvement in the case, and the superintendent's decision to make sure parents of those who chose to study Angels signed permission slips allowing their kids to study it.

Here's what you can do:

Send an email of support to Superintendent George Fornero at gfornero@dist113.org.

Let North Shore Student Advocacy know you won't tolerate hate or ignorance in your state at NSSAdvocacy@aol.com or (847) 651-8646.

The right-wing websites are getting their message out ("It's just like yeast; if you just ignore it, you'll find it engulfing your neighborhood also!"); make your voice heard just as loudly.

Next Communities Tackles Race - WBEZ

2008-03-21T13:31:00.004-05:00

So Senator Barack Obama might be having a tough time lately getting the conversation started in this country about race, but we at Next Theatre - and specifically, Outreach Director Julie Ganey and Next Communities - are doing it on the local level with huge success! Check out this clip from WBEZ's Eight-Forty-Eight if you don't believe me.

Julie Ganey has really built this program over the past three years through her care, talent and hard work, and the interest of the press is testimony to her diligence. For those of you that still wonder what Next Communities is about, the clip explains it all beautifully: what it is, why it's important, and who we're making this work for.

I'm also proud to share the following from one of our major funders of the project:

Thanks so much for taking time to share the 848 clip with us. It was such a wonderful piece and one that not only captured the success of this program but also the essence of what the Woods Fund hopes might come from supporting efforts that use the arts and open conversations to build diverse and healthy communities - in whatever form that might take. We are truly proud of all that Julie and Next Theatre has been able to accomplish during this three-year grant period. Bravo!

Consuella Brown
Program Director
Woods Fund of Chicago

As a reminder, performances this year are:

Thursday May 15, 7pm at Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center

Saturday May 17, 3pm at Raven Theatre in Rogers Park

Sunday May 18, 3pm at Next Theatre Company

All perfs are free/donations accepted/reservations suggested at 847-475-1875 x10 or amber@nexttheatre.org

Sticky Territory: Next Communities tackles race and class

2008-03-14T09:56:00.007-05:00

Is race still an issue in two such liberal, progressive communities as Evanston and Rogers Park? What role does social class play in our "classless" society, as it is often dubbed? How does a community of many cultures and classes get people working and interacting shoulder to shoulder -- and is this even a value we all hold? What is the price of diversity?

This year's Next Communities project is in full swing. After last year's examination of gentrification, development and affordability, we decided to get into even stickier territory this year, bringing folks together to discuss diversity, race, and class issues in our community.

Why this topic, you might ask? Well, I spent the fall speaking with community leaders about what issues they felt were most worth examining, and this is what I heard. We also held an open community meeting at the Evanston Public Library in October, and these were the issues that seemed to rise up from the group that assembled. Also, I must admit, I was really interested in having this conversation, because of my own experiences over the last year or so.

So, I set out to put together an ensemble of community members that could represent our ethnic, cultural, socio-economic and political diversity. I was also looking for a group of individuals who really wanted to have an honest conversation about these issues, and who were willing to sit in a room and truly listen to others who disagreed. It was an interesting process, in part because there is a good amount of profiling and pigeonholing that goes into putting together a small, intentionally diverse ensemble. And guess what? Not everyone wants to spend their Saturday mornings talking about race and prejudice. Go figure. Lots of Rogers Park and Evanston progressive types such as myself were interested in participating, but that obviously doesn't make for a very diverse group. I also came right up against some of my first lessons -- one of which was that my well-intentioned, liberal, Caucasian female agenda that assumed everyone would see the value in a discussion such as this one, was a bit presumptuous. Eventually, though, a brave and hardy group of 16 assembled on a snowy Saturday morning -- a group that included representation from different cultures, ethnicities, classes, and even the Evanston Republican Organization.

Our first workshop began as they all do, with some improvisation exercises to get us playing and relating to each other in unconventional ways. We then talked about why it is so difficult to talk honestly about race, diversity and our prejudices -- that we are all nervous about saying the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong way, or revealing something ugly about ourselves. And we agreed that we would be a circle in which those things could happen, be dealt with honestly, and worked through.

And so we jumped in. We've discussed the appropriateness of a diversity project being run by a couple of white women, institutional racism, where stereotypes might come from and in what ways we might be responsible for them. We've looked at social and cultural privilege, being the "only," balancing assimilation with retaining one's culture, housing and gentrification (again!) and tried to examine our assumptions as honestly as possible. In progressive, basically liberal American communities in the 21st century, our prejudices make themselves known not through racist remarks or actions -- we are past that, in a way -- but through the way we see things. Naomi Wolf refers to this as our "veil of assumptions." We tried to lift that veil, or at least become aware of it when we could. It was hard. We weren't always brave, didn't always get to the deep stuff. But we certainly made some headway.

Margaret Lewis, an accomplished and acclaimed Evanston playwright, is currently writing a play based on our discussion workshops. In a few weeks, the group will come together again to rehearse the piece, which we will then perform May 15th through 18th. Next Communities exists to create opportunities for dialogue in the community about difficult issues. We invite you to come join us and be part of the dynamic discussion.

Performances:

Thursday, May 15th, at 7:00 p.m. at the Fleetwood Jourdain Community Center,

1655 Foster Street, in Evanston

Saturday, May 17th, at 3:00 p.m., at Raven Theatre

6157 N. Clark Street in Rogers Park

Sunday, May 18th, at 3:00 p.m. at Next Theatre

"DATED CURIOSITY" OR "GLITTERING REVIVAL"?

2008-03-04T11:45:00.001-06:00

Unfortunately in my job, I have to read reviews - to figure out marketing strategies, estimate box office take, and get a sense of how the audience will be feeling coming into a show. I say "unfortunately" because some of our "critics" in the weeklies are pretty incompetent at their jobs.

The reviews for AMERICAN DREAM SONGBOOK, while all great in the dailies (the Tribune, Sun-Times, and Daily Herald), have been crazily mixed in the weeklies. That's rarely a surprise because, as I say, so many of those writers aren't too good at what they do. And while I'm happy to be spanked from time to time by the good ones (Time Out's Kris Vire, for example, rightly points out that our failure to find composers of color is a minus for the show), it bugs the shit out of me when a truly brainless boob splatters our show in print.

Of the particular review I'm frothing over today (and I won't name names, or papers), at least an interesting question for this blog came of it. We have heard from some folks - and this particular review - that the first act, Leonard Bernstein's TROUBLE IN TAHITI, felt "dated", or was a "curiosity" best left uncovered.

Um... yes, it IS dated. It was written in 1952. That's exactly why we decided to pair it with a second act... to help us understand how dated that view of the American Dream is, and provoke the audience to wonder what makes up the American Dream today. So, shame on the reviewer who didn't figure that out.

But I'm more interested in the question these comments beg: what makes one revival "dated" and another "glittering"? After all, every revival - especially those that aren't directorially manipulated - is dated. I'm thinking of some of the finest and faithful revivals I've seen around town in the past few years: Frank Gilroy's 1964 THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES or William Inge's 1956 BUS STOP at Writers; Timeline's 1959 FIORELLO! What made them "revelatory" to many? Why do some critics call our TAHITI "dated" and others call it "a shining revival"?

If I've learned anything about audience response to our SONGBOOK, it varies generationally. Those that were married - as Sam and Dinah were - in the 50s tend to fall in the "shining" camp. Those who came of age in the 60s and 70s - especially women - fall into the "dated" camp. That's not a hard-and-fast rule, of course.

In any case, the reviewer I'm thinking about was for some reason enraged by Bernstein's portrayal of 1952 American, and our decision to produce it. This reviewer clearly had expectations about the evening that weren't met... which leads me, yet again, to plead for audiences to know what they're seeing before walking in the door. Especially at a place like Next Theatre Company, where we aim to get you thinking as we entertain you. If you don't know anything about what you're in for, there's a chance you'll turn off your brain and not be open to the possibilities of what we present.

THE BEST MUSICAL OF 2008????

2008-02-27T15:38:00.001-06:00

"Is it too early to declare ADDING MACHINE the best new musical of 2008? Perhaps, but I'm going to do so anyhow, and if something better comes along, it will be a great year for musicals indeed." - TIME OUT NEW YORK, 2/28/08

Next Theatre takes New York by storm!

Joel Hatch and Amy Warren in the New York production

Director David Cromer, me, and composer Josh Schmidt

Stars Amy Warren, Joel Hatch and Cyrilla Baer

Some pictures from our fabulous opening night of ADDING MACHINE in New York! The press has been overwhelmingly positive - read the Times, Variety, John Simon in Bloomberg News, the Star-Ledger, the Sun... you name it! We're bursting our buttons. Thanks to everyone in the Next Theatre family for making this POSSIBLE!

A NEW COMMISSION FOR NEXT!

2008-02-12T15:21:00.000-06:00

Writing to you from dress rehearsals for THE AMERICAN DREAM SONGBOOK, I'm pleased to announce Next Theatre has commissioned New York-based playwright David Johnston for a project tentatively called "The Rapture"! I've been pursuing him since Literary Associate Lila Stromer made me read his play CANDY AND DOROTHY, which I adored, and which went on for a well-received off-Broadway run. He's also the author of the very dangerous, iconoclastic, and astonishing BUSTED JESUS COMIX, which has scared producers from coast to coast (this one included)... but he's an original, compelling voice, and we're proud to be working with him.

Check out his blog and his work here.

We're continuing to work on our commission with Carson Kreitzer, and when I'm in New York for the opening of ADDING MACHINE she and I will be meeting to further discuss the project... and there's one more commission in process that I'll let you know about just as soon as the papers are signed!

POLITICS & ENTERTAINMENT

2008-02-05T12:18:00.000-06:00

There's more than enough happening here at Next these days - technical rehearsals about to start for THE AMERICAN DREAM SONGBOOK, the first workshops for our annual outreach program NEXT COMMUNITIES, and ADDING MACHINE beginning previews on Thursday in New York - but it's primary day, and I'm in a political mood.

My political wish for this year is that we Americans demand a campaign about issues and not about scandals. I want Americans to watch the debate to get a better and more nuanced understanding of the issues we face - not to have a chance to see a candidate slip up, or become enraged, or cry. That's reality television seeping into the gravest and most important of responsibilities we as citizens have.

There are a couple of candidates out there who can help raise the level of political discourse in this country, and I'll be rooting for them... and if they win their respective primaries, I have a feeling we just might have an election season in which voters demand of TV networks, newspapers and websites something more important than "who cried today and why?"

DREAMS OF BERNSTEIN

2008-01-22T15:54:00.001-06:00

Week two of rehearsals for The American Dream Songbook begin tonight, and I can't get Leonard Bernstein's delirious music out of my head... it's a wonderful problem. Our first week of rehearsal has been dedicated to Act One of our evening, which is Bernstein's rarely-heard 1952 jazz-opera, Trouble in Tahiti.

I had a rather stunted musical upbringing, thanks to years under the stern fingers of a classical piano teacher who wouldn't let me learn Billy Joel's "Piano Man." Never able to impress my friends (they weren't into hearing Bartok at parties), I indulged my love of classical music through my godfather, who gave me my first classical music tape (Mozart's Piano Concerto #23, still my very favorite).

My godparents' home was full of delicious cultural artifacts that I still remember vividly, thirty-five years later. Beautiful mortars and pestles (my godfather was a pharmacist), eye-charts with Hebrew letters... and on the wall, the most precious thing a Jewish, artsy kids from the 'burbs could imagine: a framed concert program signed by Leonard Bernstein... with the conductor's baton he used that night, mounted atop it.

The baton's handle was cork, and I could imagine it wicking up Bernstein's sweat as he vigorously led his orchestra through musical peaks and valleys, notes washing over the audience, seeping, flooding, dripping, dangling, rushing... I never saw Bernstein conduct in person, but I watched the New York Phil on TV just to see him leap and prance and weep his way through a concert.

When I now watch Karen Doerr sing "A Quiet Place" in rehearsal, conducted so beautifully by our music director Jeremy Ramey, I feel the same emotional swell that I did back when I was five... and I think of Bernstein's slender, powerful baton.

CULTURAL BRIEFS

2008-01-16T14:46:00.000-06:00

Juno is a delightful movie that is an example of Hollywood casting at its best... a colleague gave me a copy of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife for the holidays and it was one of my favorite reads of all time... American Dream Songbook rehearsals began last night, and wait til you see what the theater will look like!... I was not a fan of John Adams' latest, Doctor Atomic, feeling the libretto was a disastrous post-modern mish-mash of uninspired editing and managed to turn one of the most dramatic events of the last century into a twee curiosity... have just begun teaching Richard III at the Graham School at the University of Chicago to about 25 incredibly-inspired adults, so politics are on the brain... in New York next week for Adding Machine rehearsals I'm planning to see the New Group's production of Mike Leigh's 2000 Years and CSC's production of David Ives' New Jerusalem to consider for our 2008-09 season...

On the Differences between ADDING MACHINE: Chicago and ADDING MACHINE: NYC... (Just a Few)

2008-01-09T13:35:00.001-06:00

When all this talk about ADDING MACHINE transferring to NYC started to materialized, of course we were all excited - but what was this exactly gonna mean? To date, I have never, ever worked on a project that was not the child of some manifestation of a not-for-profit organization (with the exception of the bar bands I played in that drank away the profits). One thing all interested parties should know - the difference could not be more pronounced...

When I put my workload together for the upcoming season, I start the process usually in February, finish flushing it out usually by May or June, and am usually good for gigs until the following summer (essentially one year in advance). This works through the comfort that non-for-profit companies and colleges know the what, when, with who, and how regarding a particular project even before they sign me on, and there is a reasonable calendar of events I can construct with gaps in between for surprises and opportunities. It is the reality of how not-for-profit companies work that make this possible.

In the commercial world - ADDING MACHINE: NYC literally did not materialize into physical focus until 3.5 months ago, when space luckily became available. We were extremely lucky in this as space in broadway and off-broadway commercial venues is booked on a primary/secondary/tertiary basis so that a measure of activity is always maintained. Yes, there had been negotiation and discussion in the form of an option (with details down to the hundredth of a percentile) for a few months beforehand - but the context of that option only revealed a window of dates, nothing specific. Capital had to be raised just as quickly. Schedule and Budgets to my knowledge evolve daily, all in tune with the aforementioned flow of capital. Casting was done all within the last month, as were designer hires. There is always an assumption that timing of events might be moved one way or another. The possibility always existed that what is occurring now would have happened one year from now, earlier, or maybe never. We were given a narrow window of opportunity, and we had to jump on it with all the brute force we can muster. Security, compared to the not-for-profit producing experience, does not exist. Everyone operates from a position of good faith until everything actually happens and things are inked on the dotted line.

When I talk to my colleagues in NYC who work almost exclusively in the commercial theatre realm - they often do not know what is happening three months out, let alone a year in advance...it is an entirely different working experience.

Scary? Yes I am scared. Exciting? Yes, exciting. Risky? When we considered all options placed before us keeping in mid what was best for the show - we made our decision with this thought in mind: The greater the risk, the greater the potential for reward. This time, the financial risk is real - we have investors, not grants. This show is funded by people's own money who believe that it will (through its NYC run and subsequent potential in regional markets) pay dividends. And we are moving toward our objective at lightspeed - consider the fact it often takes YEARS for shows to reach NYC. Musicals + plays often have tryouts in several other cities and venues before reaching the big city. We as a team felt we needed to capitalize on the momentum established in Chicago - so here we go...and we're off!

In Scott Morfee (along with his partners Tom Wirtshafter and Margaret Cotter), we have been blessed with a producing team that has the ultimate confidence in and enthusiasm for the show, our working methods, and our desire to improve upon the whole experience while still maintaining our commitment to a economically feasible, produceable entity. They have allowed us time and freedom to explore improving aspects of the show we wanted to address. In all regards, we have been treated with the greatest of respect and confidence - I am most grateful. Such luck in this department is so difficult to come by.

And as of 1/3/08, rehearsals have commenced. All I can tell you is that it is progressing splendidly.

Note: I would be remiss in not saying how grateful I am to Jeremy Ramey (music director), Ethan Deppe (percussion), Ian Westerfer (Shrdlu), our amazing chorus (Rosalind Hurwitz, Toni Inzeo, Steve Welsh, Kevin Mayes, and Jon Landvick), Michael Vieau (The boss) Matt York (set), Jeff Dublinske (sound) and Richard Lundy and Erin Diener (stage management) - all of whom due to the financial realities of transferring the show outside our control were not able join us in NYC. It is the great sadness and reality of the business that the whole family could not have been reunited. Let me just say from the heart I miss you all and cannot wait to work with you all again on future projects.

All best and more later,

J

On Awards, Top Ten Lists, Critics Picks, and the Blogosphere...

2008-01-09T13:29:00.001-06:00

Greetings to you all from the American Airlines terminal at LaGuardia Airport. Its ~3:30 AM and I am waiting for security to open (how glamorous can life get!) and I have just read an email from Chelsea reminding me to contribute to the blog (she gives me little assigments, and I comply). Things have been so busy I have been remiss in my duties - many apologies! Here's wishing Happy New Year to you and yours...

Along with the ol' Happy New Year comes a slew of published newspaper columns titled along the lines of "Theatre Year in Review", "Top 10 Shows of 2007" etc. etc. I had been made aware that ADDING MACHINE has been listed in many of them - and in some instances was placed at the top or near the top of some lists. Of course, I felt deeply gratified as many of my colleagues who worked on that production also feel. I am especially happy for Next Theatre, Jason, the Next Theatre Staff, and the Next Theatre Board of Directors who, in commissioning and producing that show went way WAY out on a limb in almost every respect - technical and personnel infrastructure, expenses, etc. Regardless of what anyone's personal opinions on the show were, one consensus statement (at least from the reviews and published articles about the piece I read) was that Next's production was a courageous endeavor in every aspect and that in itself commands respect. And I was glad that such risk was rewarded by amazingly strong attendance - especially considering that many of the audience members in attendance were new to the Next Theatre experience. To all this I say BRAVO - recognition well deserved!

And what all this attention means to me...

Well, I cut my teeth in the business in Milwaukee WI, where the greater metropolitan area is something like 1/10th the size of Chicago's (I'm sure this is inaccurate). The arts community there, while quite large for a city its size (and along with that very active and diverse) is still small in comparison to that of Chicago. There is one major news publication, and in that respect the town has essentially one marquee critic for each of the artistic disciplines. What this means - there is one critical opinion all productions in the area become dependent on. There is a "year in review" article published regarding theatrical productions, but it often becomes comprehensive of all theatre in the entire state (Milwaukee, American Players in Spring Green, Madison, Door County, etc.) I feel it is correctly assumed that due to the size of the theatre community in Milwaukee, something akin to the Jeff Awards is not necessary. In fact, the anecdote I tell people when asked about this subject (it is pure fabrication) is that if someone thinks you did a good job on a show, they buy you a beer. If they feel your work wasn't up to snuff, you consequently buy them a beer. As this exchange of awards unfolds over any given time period, enough beer is consumed that individual recognition is either significantly impaired or forgotten in the celebration that everyone involved is fortunate to be active and productive in the pursuit of their artistic craft, and in doing so improves the cultural, social, and (I believe this to be true) economic heartbeat of the community they live in. These are the aspects in my opinion that make the whole endeavor worth while - not so much the individual achievement. And none of this has ever really affected me much because I am not big beer drinker. So I guess on "Milwaukee Awards Night" I either end up cleaned outta cash OR I become the designated driver.

What is so great to me about Chicago - the Jeff Awards, and the multiple publications pitting "Top Ten" or "Year in Review" articles against each other - is that so much activity off-loop in every kind of producing venue possible gets attention - through publication, awards - you name it. For those who come from a place that does not have that kind of media support (regardless if you think its fair or not), the ferventness of the Chicago media coverage of theatre is wonderful. This is the kind of attention that in my opinion fuels activity within a community - I tend to believe the impact is more positive than negative. Does the act of anointing 10 shows out of the hundreds of productions that take place each year leave some feeling snubbed - I am sure. Yes, I have read the "top ten" lists and yes, I have read all the postings in response to these articles passionately defending those endeavors given the critical cold shoulder. I love it all - I am so thrilled that people here get so passionate about the productions they saw and support. I love the debate, the discussion, the lines in the sand...everything! From my perspective - at least there is a community of people ENERGIZED about what they have left the comfort of the couch to see and willing to recognize it. Regardless of what people thought about ADDING MACHINE (love it or hate it), I am here telling you I felt glad to be a part of a scene where THE SPARROW, ASSASSINS, TEAPOT SCANDALS, LADY, JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE, THE WOODEN BREEKS...(the list goes on and on) were all up at the same time last winter. How great! In many ways, there is some part of me that wished the response toward ADDING MACHINE would have been even more polarizing just to make the discussion even juicier....

No matter - to all those who loved, hated, top-rated, berated, awarded, or avoided ADDING MACHINE - I love you all! To date, life has seldom been more exciting!

All best,

J

ANOTHER YEAR OF ESCAPISM?

2008-01-02T07:50:00.000-06:00

As reported in today's New York Times, last year was a big one in the movie biz for escapism, with viewers flocking to sci-fi and thrillers so quickly that studios producing "serious" flicks like In the Valley of Elah and Rendition were caught with their pants around their ankles.

My contention - which many folks disagree with - is that those traditionally interested in having their views challenged by the art they consume were so demoralized by the partisan wars surrounding the 2004 Presidential election and its result that they've buried their heads in the sand. Those folks - the fan base for movies like the ones listed above, or for Next Theatre - felt so disenfranchised by the 2004 election that they just started burying their heads in the sand, hoping for better days. That's why a show like Caryl Churchill's Far Away, which we mounted in the spring of 2004 to much success, would be DOA today. A show about the end of the world? Ugh, we're already living it. At least that's what I believe.

Well, my wish for 2008 is that we all find reasons to hope for a better world. That's a great end in itself, and it would do wonders for theater that consistently tries to challenge our views of the world.

SEASON PLANNING TERROR

2007-12-18T14:05:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year when everyone enjoys themselves at parties and stops thinking about work, right?

Wrong.

It's that time of year that I start realizing every other Artistic Director in town is well ahead of me in the season planning game!

A pile of 20 scripts sits on my desk begging to be considered for production, and there's never enough time in the day to read them. I know the rough contours of our 08-09 season, and even a couple of titles, but we're far from decided. It's looking like we'll start the season with a world premiere version of a British script we've been working on for a while (and it's a comedy!), followed by a Chicago-area premiere hot from off-Broadway. I'm holding the February-March slot for another potential world premiere, and then I'm thinking of a mid-century classic for the spring - Tennessee Williams? Eugene O'Neill? That depends on the availability of artists, who are all playing the game of trying to decide whether they should take this job or that one...

Let me know what you'd like to see at Next in 2008-09!

Gearing Up for Adding Machine NYC

2007-12-13T12:39:00.001-06:00

Within a few weeks, rehearsals will commence for ADDING MACHINE in New York City. This is an extremely exciting time for many of us involved, as I personally have never been through an experience of this magnitude involving something I had a hand in writing. I also think this is an important step for Next Theatre as things go FROM being Off-Broadway to Chicago TO being Chicago to Off-Broadway. I am fortunate to be involved and thankful to all who had a part in making it happen. As we go through the process, I'll check in on this blog with my thoughts on the experience and keep you all in the loop regarding this exciting event.

Happy Holidays and talk to you soon!

Josh Schmidt

Composer - ADDING MACHINE

BUT DID IT MAKE SENSE TO YOU?

2007-12-11T16:28:00.001-06:00

I recently had a conversation with a member of the artistic staff here about Sean Graney's production of What the Butler Saw (which just closed down at Court Theatre). She and I disagreed completely and utterly about the show (one of us loved it, one of us hated it, and I won't tell you who thought what), which reminded me of Nora Ephron's fantastic piece from The New Yorker two weeks ago called, "No, But We Saw The Movie":

When they got home that night, she went to get the book. She'd ordered it earlier in the week and meant to read it before they went to the movie, but it was a hard week and things got away from her. This was happening more and more.

Maybe if we look in the book we'll be able to figure it out, she said.

Maybe we'll find out what happened at the motel, he said. Why did it skip forward like that?

He said it's the same in the book.

Who said?

I told you who. The guy I was standing with while I was waiting for you to come out of the men's room. He read the book and he said it's the same deal exactly. The sheriff pulls up and everybody's dead. You never see the scene where they all get shot. Maybe it's because Javier didnt kill them.

Who's Javier?

Javier Bardem. The serial killer.

I thought it was Benicio Del Toro.

Well it wasnt. The guy outside the men's room said there's a scene in the book that's not in the movie. He said Javier goes to see a total stranger in some office, who's never been mentioned earlier. He gives him the satchel of money and he says, Here's your money back, now maybe you'll hire me to do things like this in the future.

Why did they leave that out?

How do I know? Write a letter to the Coen brothers.

She opened the book and started reading from the end.

He does this weird thing with contractions, she said. He uses apostrophes for words like that's and it's but he doesnt use them for dont and wasnt and wont. He doesnt use quotation marks, either.

Who?

Cormac McCarthy.

How am I supposed to know what you're talking about with all these pronouns? he said.

He went to get ready for bed.

I cant believe you didnt know Josh Brolin died, she said.

Well I didnt.

He was lying there in the parking lot.

I didnt see him lying in the parking lot.

Well I didnt see him either, but then his wife turned up and Tommy Lee Jones looked sad, so you knew he was dead.

I thought he looked sad because the mother was dead.

The mother? The mother doesnt die till later.

I thought it was the mother in the swimming pool.

How could you think it was the mother? It was the girl with the beer in the swimming pool. She was wearing a bikini. The mother was about a hundred years old. What would the mother be doing wearing a bikini? The mother dies of cancer. Jesus.

What happened to the satchel of money?

He gives it to a total stranger. I told you.

But in the movie what happens to the money?

She wondered if they'd ever know. Maybe the answers were buried in the caliche, along with some character who had figured in a story toward the end of the movie. She hadnt been able to follow the story about the character who was buried in the caliche because she was busy trying to puzzle out what happened to the satchel of money, but the word caliche stuck in her head. It was pronounced ka-lee-chee. Since they lived in New York City and were not about to go dig a hole in Central Park, it didnt seem like a particularly useful word, but you never know.

He got into bed.

I cant believe you didnt know Josh Brolin died, she said. Who did you think was lying on that slab in the morgue?

The mother, he said.

The mother? she said. The mother?

He was asleep.

GEORGE LUCAS ON MYTH

2007-12-04T17:53:00.000-06:00

I had the wild and woolly opportunity last night to hear George Lucas (yes, the Star Wars guy) speak for about an hour to the Economics Club of Chicago. The event was surreal in every way - about 1500 folks in black tie (1400 of them Captains of Chicago industry, 99 of them starstruck 12-year olds, and me) listening to Chairman Bill Daley asking Lucas where he got the idea for the light saber colors (the answer: the good guys had cool colors, the bad guys had warm colors, and "Sam Jackson asked for purple").

So that clearly tells us that businessmen shouldn't interview artists, and we'll avoid the reverse. Nonetheless, George dropped a couple of pearls, one of which I wanted to share.

Daley framed the conversation in his remarks by calling Star Wars and the Indiana Jones films as a new American mythology, or actually, Lucas' contemporary American adaptations of classic myth-based stories of fathers and sons, revenge and forgiveness, sin and redemption, etc. Daley asked Lucas to expand on that idea, and he said the following, which I boldly and badly paraphrase:

We return to myths for our stories to remind us of what's important to our generation, and to let the next generation know what we expect of them.

Well said, George.

IS BROADWAY WORTH THE PRICE?

2007-11-27T16:11:00.001-06:00

Terry Teachout had an interesting article in last weekend's Wall Street Journal:

The Price of the Ticket
It costs a lot to see a Broadway show. Is it worth the expense?
November 24, 2007

Time for a pop quiz inspired by the stagehands' strike that shut down most of Broadway. Who said this - and when did he say it?

"It is not for nothing that New York is the place where the critics are the most powerful and the toughest in the world. It is the audience, year after year, that has been forced to elevate simple fallible men into highly priced experts because, as when a collector buys an expensive work, he cannot afford to take the risk alone: the tradition of the expert valuers of works of art, like Duveen, has reached the box office line. So the circle is closed; not only the artists, but also the audience, have to have their protection men - and most of the curious, intelligent, nonconforming individuals stay away."

That quotation is from "The Empty Space," an influential book about theater by Peter Brook, the avant-garde British director whose celebrated version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," set in an all-white space and played by actors who walked on stilts and swung on trapezes, was one of the most admired Shakespeare productions of the '60s. Mr. Brook wrote "The Empty Space" 39 years ago, when the top ticket price on Broadway was $11, $64 in today's dollars. Nowadays it will cost you anywhere between $51.50 and $121.50 to see "Young Frankenstein" - unless you're prepared to fork out $450 for a premium-priced weekend seat.

Speaking as one of the simple, fallible New York critics Mr. Brook had in mind, I feel obliged to ask: Is Broadway really twice as good today as it was in 1968? I recently looked up the theater listings in the Nov. 23, 1968, issue of The New Yorker. Zoe Caldwell was starring in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Lee J. Cobb in "King Lear," Dustin Hoffman in "Jimmy Shine," James Earl Jones in "The Great White Hope," Lotte Lenya in "Cabaret," Donald Pleasance in "The Man in the Glass Booth" and Maureen Stapleton in "Plaza Suite." You could also see new plays by Brian Friel and Arthur Miller, as well as the long-running original productions of "Fiddler on the Roof," "Hair," "Hello, Dolly," "Mame" and "Man of La Mancha."

Case closed? Well, maybe not quite. As I look back over my pre-strike Broadway reviews of the past year or so, I find lurking amid the dross a fair number of memorable shows, including Tom Stoppard's "Coast of Utopia" trilogy and "Rock 'n' Roll," the Manhattan Theatre Club's unforgettable revival of Mr. Friel's "Translations," the Roundabout Theatre Company's "110 in the Shade" and "Pygmalion," John Doyle's perception-changing rethinking of Stephen Sondheim's "Company" and Frank Langella's sensational star turn in "Frost/Nixon." I would gladly have paid a hundred bucks to see any one of these shows -- but would I have paid $1,800, not including dinner, to go to all of them with a date?

That last number came to mind as I read Mr. Brook's discussion of the high cost of playgoing in 1968. Even then, the curious, intelligent, nonconforming middle-class New Yorkers celebrated in "The Empty Stage" could still afford -- just -- to visit Broadway often enough to feel that they were keeping up with American theater. Now they're more likely to go once or twice a year, if that. Broadway is no longer a meaningful part of their cultural lives.

To read the rest of Terry's article (which takes in the issue of the strike discussed in this blog), click here.

DEFIANCE EXTENDS... BUT IS IT BETTER THAN DOUBT?

2007-11-20T15:26:00.001-06:00

We've all been hearing wonderful, wonderful comments from patrons about our production of DEFIANCE. Thanks to them - the patrons who have been telling their friends to come - we'll be extending the production to December 23 - a two-week extension risk we've never taken!

Let me know what you think about the show here - all views are welcome... but the biggest debate I've heard is about whether DEFIANCE is as good a play as DOUBT... what do you think?

STAGEHANDS STRIKE - WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?

2007-11-13T11:53:00.000-06:00

Alright, I'm afraid that this blog entry won't make me many friends in the union world, but...

Back when I was a young and naive aspiring theater professional, I was an intern with the General Management office at the Public Theater in New York. They were the original producers of A CHORUS LINE, and produced it on Broadway for fourteen years after its sucess downtown. One of my duties was to take a weekly report up to the company manager at the Shubert Theater on Broadway while the show was playing.

The company manager, Bob, had been with the show since it started playing on Broadway, and he was a very kind, gentle guy who took me under his wing and would often give me backstage tours of the show, even as it was playing - what a thrill for a 19-year old, talk about starstruck!

My mind might be a bit fuzzy on the details here, but... on my second visit, he took me to the green room, which was pretty empty since the show was going on... except for four musicians who were sitting there with their instruments playing cards. I asked the company manager why there were in the green room while the show was actually going on.

Bob explained to me that these four musicians were "ghosts" (I think that was the term)... the Shubert Theater was, of course, a union house, and by union contract, any musical at the Shubert had to have a pit orchestra of at least 16. Unfortunately for the Public Theater (the nonprofit producers of the show, who had moved it at their own expense to Broadway), A CHORUS LINE was written for an orchestra of 12. So the Public was forced by union rules to hire these four "ghosts" every single night - for the 14 years the show ran, 8 shows a week - to sit in the green room with their instruments and play cards.

I don't know how much the musicians' union gets for its members nowadays, but let's estimate that, in today's dollars, each of those four musicians was making $1500 each week. Four of them costing $6000 each week. Add in social security, medicare, union pension and health, and the bill to the Public Theater was probably closer to $9000 each week. The show ran on Broadway from 1976 to 1990 - so I'm estimating that those four "ghosts" cost the nonprofit Public Theater 6.5 million dollars in today's money.

As nonprofit producers, the Public Theater would not have lined individuals' pockets with that extra $6.5 million. They would have pumped that money back into new productions and new plays; they would have paid actors better than they could usually afford; and likely, any of you who saw that production would have paid a little bit less per ticket.

Now I know this is a complicated issue, and the stagehands aren't the musicians, and everyone deserves to share in the good fortune of a show that makes it big, and goodness knows that the producers of MAMMA MIA are indeed trying to line their pockets and won't pump additional money back into your hands or those of struggling artists. But the core issue is the same - the stagehands' union wants to keep rules in place that pay its members to sit around and do nothing. But times have changed, and much of Broadway these days comes to you courtesy of the nonprofit sector... and all of Broadway is far too expensive.

The stagehands' union - like the musicians' union - is still operating under antiquated rules that come from the glory days of Broadway in the early part of the last century - when there were dozens of Broadway shows of all sorts, and unions provided important protections against unscrupulous producers. But nowadays, the producers work based on a very different economy, and there is absolutely no reason you, as the consumer, should pay for stagehands to sit around drinking coffee because of ancient rules.

This is what it boils down to: in a Broadway house with "flies" (where scenery can be raised and lowered from far above the stage), producers are forced to hire a union fly-man even if a show doesn't use scenery that's raised or lowered (like AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, where the set doesn't change). That stagehand gets paid to do absolutely nothing. To persuade the union to give up these ridiculous rules, the producers have offerred a 16% wage increase. Doesn't sound bad to me.

In what other industry in the country - a hospital, an automotive factory, a delivery company, you name it - does a union have the power to put employees on the payroll for doing nothing?

If you've got a different opinion, post it here! I'd like to understand why I should change my mind.

SECOND CITY-ITIS, PART TWO!

2007-11-06T15:02:00.000-06:00

Did you see the "Theater 101" article in last Friday's Tribune? If you ever wanted to see an example of Second City-itis at its most virulent and ridiculous, read Beth Franken's intro, right on the front page of the On the Town section:

You lucky such-and-so. You just happen to live in the most exciting theater town in the nation. They even know this in the Big Apple, which is why the New York papers write about Chicago theater in such a patronizing but secretly envious way: They're threatened by us!

I could not have been more embarrassed. Are we so threatened by New York that our major daily needs to squawk it to the universe? Can't we just be proud of our wonderful theater community and leave it at that? Must we compare ourselves to New York at every opportunity? And if we must compare ourselves, let's not look like simpletons while we're doing it. If the New York papers write about Chicago theater in a patronizing way (which I'm not sure I agree with at all), it's because of moronic leads like this one.

WILL YOU BE FAMOUS?

2007-10-30T16:27:00.001-05:00

I loved this from the Sunday New York Times article, "She's Famous (And So Can You)", about internet phenom-turned-Hollywood-celebrity Tila Tequila. As we get closer to The American Dream Songbook, I'm more and more fascinated by fame as the new American Dream.

It's routine to dismiss these people, to sniff from the sideline about the depths to which the culture has sunk. Misses Hilton and Tequila may represent, respectively, leisure-class and working-class variants of the same feminine caricature, a real-time Betty Boop. And yet each, in her own way, has divined truths about the marketplace that academics and industry are still laboring fully to comprehend. Each has understood the wacko populism of the cybersphere and pitched her ambitions to capitalize on what Joshua Gamson, the author of "Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America" calls "a shift from top-down manufactured celebrity to a kind of lateral, hyper-democratic celebrity."

"Because of new technologies, we get to see now what happens when people have the option of making up their own celebrity," Mr. Gamson said. "We've gone from 'Oh, my God, they're so much better than I am,' to 'Oh, my God, they're so good at making themselves up.'"

We've gone from dazed idolatry to another and more familiar form of identification. Fame, when not concocted by Hollywood and available to only the genetically gifted few, takes on softer contours. It becomes less an exalted state than a permeable one, available to those from classes and cohorts that, in the days of the studio monoliths, the gatekeepers of the star-making machine kept at bay.

By the standards of the new "Jackass" landscape, traditional stardom, with its career building stations-of-the-cross, its rigid talent requirements, its "Entourage" shtick, seems clunky and out of step with a culture so much more fluid now that a hit record - like the recent Internet sensation "I'll Kill Her," by Soko - could emerge from a young French woman’s bedroom and MySpace page.

Who says any longer that one must be able to sing or dance or emote in order to attract an audience or, anyway, a batch of new friends in the ether? Who says that only winners win? As reality TV, with its durable affection for flame-outs, car wrecks and actual losers, has made abundantly clear, even after the tribal council has voted you off their tropical island, you’re still welcome in our homes.

When Jake Halpern set out to write "Fame Junkies," his book about what is now a universal obsession with celebrity, he was surprised to uncover studies demonstrating that 31 percent of American teenagers had the honest expectation that they would one day be famous and that 80 percent thought of themselves as truly important. (The figure from the same study conducted in the 1950s was 12 percent.)

"Obviously people have been having delusions of grandeur since the beginning of time, but the chances of becoming well known were much slimmer" even five years ago than they are today, Mr. Halpern said. "There are an incredibly large number of venues for becoming known. Talent is not a prerequisite."

DEFIANCE rehearsal

2007-10-24T17:44:00.001-05:00

Osiris Khepera and Steve Pickering rehearse on the set-in-progress.

SECOND CITY-ITIS

2007-10-23T17:05:00.001-05:00

At first rehearsal yesterday for DEFIANCE, we held a small reception for friends and donors, one of whom is the mother of a prominent actor on the national scene (he was formerly a Chicagoan and returns on occasion to play roles locally). She and I were discussing the prospects for future productions of our world premiere THE ADDING MACHINE: A CHAMBER MUSICAL, and I was telling her that things were looking indeed quite good for an off-Broadway production in February of 2008.

Most of the responses I've gotten from colleagues and friends locally about this news have been ecstatic: That's wonderful! Wow, how great! etc... But this woman's response was uncharacteristic and quite refreshing:

"New York, New York, New York! Why does everyone care about New York?"

Indeed!

Since moving to Chicago from New York eight years ago, I've been struck by Chicagoans' unusual case of Second City-itis: a strange disease, the symptoms of which include intense envy of New York's cultural bounty, and simultaneous disdain for it. So, while Chicagoans will be quick to "diss" anything that comes here from there (especially if it has that intellectual, "New York-y" tone to it), we are quick to show our immense and jingoistic pride when anything we make goes there.

I've always found our thinly-veiled envy of the New York scene distasteful, like this woman I spoke to yesterday did. One of the things that brought me to Chicago was its self-reliance and rightful pride-of-place: unlike LA (where people make plays to get movie deals) and New York (where people make plays to become theater celebrities), Chicagoans make plays because they believe in making plays for their community. That's why our community is so generous, so wonderful to work in, and so robust.

So the envy of New York, and those who "make it there", is patently absurd. Let's just celebrate who we are and what we do, and get back to work! We're the city that works, right?

Now this is not to say that we shouldn't send productions to New York, nor that New York producers shouldn't visit here more often to sample the talent available. Goodness knows, if THE ADDING MACHINE: A CHAMBER MUSICAL runs in New York just for three months, it will make about fifteen times what it made for the authors here. And more offers will pour in, and the Next Theatre will be playing a major role on the national stage... and that's all exciting and wonderful, because the truth is (and I know I won't be popular saying this): New York is the center of the theater universe. There are just more extraordinary artists there per capita, and more people paying attention to what they do. And that means there's a lot more money for those artists when they make it big.

But that doesn't mean that it's a better place for me to make theater. And that doesn't mean that we in Chicago have to feel we're in second place. I don't derive my value from who I am in relation to someone else; I'm my own person. Chicago should do the same. Chicago is a great, great theater city; it needs not compare itself to any other city.

STUBHUB COMES TO BROADWAY; IAC CUTS STILL STANDING

2007-10-16T17:47:00.000-05:00

You might have heard that StubHub, the nationwide scalper's outlet, has opened a storefront just blocks from the ballyhoo of Broadway, enabling ever larger numbers of wealthy suburbanites to purchase ever-more-expensive center-orchestra tickets to musicals with tired television stars. (See the New York Times story here.)

Given that a night on Broadway for a family four can already easily cost a thousand bucks, this latest news is both a little troubling and a little heartening. To be sure, it's nice to think the demand for Broadway shows might be as great as that for playoff tickets (you may have heard that a ticket to see Ian McKellen in King Lear in Los Angeles was resold online for $1,700).

But it's also distressing to hear yet again how Broadway is no longer the province of serious theater. It's not surprising, of course, but sad just the same, because of the trickle-down effect... while Broadway prices easily top $100 nowadays, their off-Broadway counterparts are up to $65, $75, and even $85. If off-Broadway became the home of serious drama after Broadway abandoned that role, what happens now? If a family of four can't see an off-Broadway show for less than $500, where will serious drama thrive?

I'd say the regional theaters like ours, but then I think of Governor Blagojevich's line-item veto of Illinois Arts Council funding over the summer. (You can read here what PerformInk thinks his motivation was; I happen to agree and think it's shameful.) We live in such an advanced society, with so much wealth around us and the stock market tacking on records every week... so what's happening to our culture?

She's Always Got Something Hidden Inside

2007-10-09T17:34:00.001-05:00

Next presents week 48 of 365 Days / 365 Plays Festival
on 10/11

Let me just take one moment to admit something freely and unabashedly: I've done a few 365s by now, and I think I'm just starting to get the hang of them. This is my third time, and doing a couple of them helps! Let me explain...

I first took part in 365 Plays/365 Days Festival by acting in The Mill Theatre's contribution to the festival, Week 12. It was a wild and dizzying experience, doing that play -- written January 29th and called "The King Slept Here," I played a military Sergeant who yells orders at a couple of lazy Privates, who both happen to have the nasty problem of hearing ghosts on the battlefield. Back then I didn't get it. All I knew was that Suzan-Lori Parks, the inimitable master playwright that she is (you know, the kind who even makes up her own words and stuff! Kinda like that dude Shakespeare used to do) had written a short play every day for a year. "Every friggin' day?!," I thought the first time I heard about it. "Yup, wrote 365 of 'em," turned out was the answer. What I didn't know -- or, it turns out, yet understood -- was what writing 365 Plays in as many days means. I think I first glimpsed some insight when the company for which I am Artistic Director, Sandbox Theatre Project, took on Week 34 of the festival. It turns out when you write that many short plays in that period of time, you don't just write what you know, but you write what's there. Week 34 taught me that each one of these plays has a little secret meaning buried just beneath its surface.

Ms. Parks wrote all of these 365 Plays between November 2002 - November 2003. And, if I may be so bold as to point it out: you might remember that America did something sort of important on March 20, 2003.

Week 34 of the 365 Festival (July 2 - 8) contained seven really exciting and eclectic plays. By this point I began to see these plays as reflecting a writer struggling through the kinds of questions and opinions and thoughts and feelings she had on a daily basis. Week 34 had the rare fortune of containing a play that had been written on a national holiday. The play on July 4th, called "The King's Head," was a bunch of numbers sitting around waiting to hear when they were to get their heads chopped off. And it clicked! In a way that makes perfect sense. What is freedom, really, other than the ability to do stuff without worrying about getting your head chopped off? And there was that King again (remember, from January 29th, "The King Slept Here"). And then for the play dated July 6th, "Treasure," out came that same military leader again. An amazing array of reoccurring characters litter Ms. Parks' 365 Plays: a King, a military leader, an Electrocutioner (and his daughter), A Man Coming Home From The War, and more.

Then I discovered it: She's Always Got Something Hidden Inside.

So, how to start Next Theatre's contribution to the 365 Festival, Week 48? I began by looking for what was hidden. The first thing I noticed was that all of the character's names were purposively un-characteristic: "Package Woman", "1st Other", "Man", "Non-American Woman", etc... I can't help but think there's some meaning in this. For such an inventive playwright, this seems odd. Except for when you realize that she's coming to the end of her run. Week 48 (out of 52) marks a descent toward the finish line. Four more weeks and she's done. A month. I wonder if maybe Ms. Parks might have found benefit in generic names, possibly a comfort in non-specificity? There's a lot of space between us and them, especially when we keep them known as "Them". October 12th's play, "Analysis," finds two characters standing over "another deep hole" in the ground, staring down into it -- interestingly, in this play the characters are merely differentiated on the page by separate dashes and line-breaks, not even names! -- wondering what the hole might be made of:

"-I brought a sample.
-Of the hole?
-Yep.
-Wassit made of?
-The hole?
-Yeah.
-Space.
-Deep."

Maybe it's the space in between the letters and the words she writes that provides all the depth? I happen to think there's something in that.

If there's one thing I've learned about these 365 Plays... She's always got something hidden inside them.

We sure do hope you can join us on October 11th, so you can tell us what you find hidden inside them. Trust us when we say they all have a lot of space. And it's deep.

CHICAGO'S OTHER AWARDS

2007-10-09T15:30:00.001-05:00

Last night, I was proud and humbled to be part of the other big award show in town, the AFTER DARK AWARDS, at the Lakeshore Theater in Lakeview as a benefit for Season of Concern, the theater community's response to HIV/AIDS. Hosted annually by GayChicago Magazine, the After Darks honor achievement in theater of all sorts (professional and nonprofessional, conventional and the farthest fringe) as well as cabaret. It's a raucous, wild party, as nearly 80 individuals and theaters are honored with awards in numerous categories... and it comes without the competition that other award shows have. Modelled after the OBIE Awards in New York, the After Darks salute outstanding achievement, and in any given category there may be two, three, four, or (as in the case Outstanding Ensemble last night) nine winners.

Last season's production of THE ADDING MACHINE: A CHAMBER MUSICAL was honored with two awards - one for Outstanding Song Score, and the other to Keith Parham for Outstanding Lighting Design.

But many other Next-affiliated artists celebrated achievements from last year, including:

David Cromer (Director of THE ADDING MACHINE) for his direction of COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA
Kevin O'Donnell (Composer for the upcoming AMERICAN DREAM SONGBOOK) for Outstanding Season
Gregory Anderson (Understudy for BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED) and Linda Gillum (Director of ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST) for Outstanding Ensemble - THE BEST MAN
Carmen Aiello (Former Casting Associate) for Outstanding Ensemble - MARATHON '33
John Judd (Salter in A NUMBER) for Outstanding Performance - COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA
Tommy Rapley (Choreographer for the upcoming AMERICAN DREAM SONGBOOK) for Outstanding Choreography - DORIAN
Micky York (Former webmaster) for Outstanding Musical Direction, HAPPY END
Lee Keenan (Lighting Designer for THE GOD OF HELL and THE MISANTHROPE) for Outstanding Light Design - CARAVAGGIO

Congrats to all for an astonishingly rich 06-07 season!

MORE RESPONSES TO BUSY WORLD

2007-09-27T15:06:00.001-05:00

Chime in - which do you agree with?

I rarely send out notes after attending the theater. But I was compelled to write and thank you - a thousand times over - for giving local theatergoers the extraordinary gift that is your production of "The Busy World Is Hushed." It is everything a remarkable evening of theater could and should be - thoughtful, emotionally gripping and exquisitely mounted.
I spent 17 years on the Jeff Committee and was the Variety correspondent here during the 1990's and by the time I left both of those posts - exhausted and rather depressed - I had all but lost hope of there being any kind of future for serious playwriting in America. But one transcendant evening such as you have provided instantly restores some hope. You have all given Chicago something to treasure and remember for a long, long time.

Regards,
Lewis Lazare
Marketing Columnist
Chicago Sun-Times

My friend and I were disappointed by the play. There are a few things I would recommend tighting or righting...

First, there is a boring lull in the first act... the theological conversations back and forth. Theological language tends to be stilted, staid and boring... in these conversations it was not lively or interesting, because it is not clear what the speakers are really struggling with. What is the heart of their struggle? Secularism? An enlightened Christian expression? Disagreement with traditional Christianity? As a theologian and pastor, I found this the most boring - and potentially the most exciting - conversation, because of what was lacking...

Second, it is not clear how the minister has - and has not - dealt with her husband's suicide. Her closed-ness is obvious, but why is she closed? Can we see more of her own human hurt and her tenderness - rather than just her ranting at her son and righteous proclaiming of her gospel?

Finally, it is not clear why the son thinks his mother's faith is false or dishonest. It is disingenous to have him critique her, yet not really say why he thinks she is phony... Something was missing for me there too. . . .

Thank you for hearing my comments. I have enjoyed plays at Next for several years, and hope to continue enjoying them in the years to come.

David Neff

The first audience review for BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED is in!

2007-09-17T17:46:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Father Jim Heneghan from the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish for letting us reprint his letter below!

"Jason,

I saw the preview performance last evening of "The Busy World is Hushed." I found it to be very provocative and troubling as these three characters sorted out their own personal journeys to find some inner connection and personal peace, I have thought about the play since I left the theatre last night, we talked about it all the way home. There were parts of each character that were both very revealing and very loathsome, however, their dance of intimacy and manipulation was incredibly powerful and painful to watch.

In some way, this weekend's scripture is the story of "The Prodigal Son," and I can not stop thinking of this template for the play... each is prodigal for some reason... and seeking to return to a sense of love and acceptance after their own personal journey of pain and power... yet their weaknesses were very visible and vibrantly portrayed.

...

The play has stirred a lot within me about truth, faith, relationship and love... but the longing and hunger that we all seek in some connection to something greater than ourselves...whether it is a faith based "ghost" filling the guilty void for Hannah, a sense of self that is longing to be discovered as for Thomas or a sense of intimacy which is given from a family but shattered to be reformed with death as for Brandt. It was an incredible play of substantial performances and I can not say I "enjoyed" it in a traditional way, but it was a play that has stayed with me throughout the evening and the day.

Great theatre leaves one with questions and glimmers into the soul of the heart...

'The Busy World is Hushed" has this power and provocative nature and I was so grateful to have seen this prior to the opening... it is interesting to have a "clean slate" without a critic interpretation. I was grateful to see the play and even more grateful for the questions and concerns it has evoked within me. It is a powerful evening and a well done, well acted and well performed... thank you."

Please leave any comments you've got below!

BUSY WORLD playwright Keith Bunin comes to Next!

2007-09-13T14:34:00.002-05:00

As a special, last-minute treat for our audience, BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED playwright Keith Bunin comes to Next this weekend to share in the opening festivities! He'll be watching the show Saturday, joining me for the post-show discussion on Sunday, and attending Monday night's opening. Make sure to introduce yourself and thank him for giving us this wonderful play...

THE BUSY WORLD begins previews!

2007-09-13T14:28:00.001-05:00

Last night was first preview for THE BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED by Keith Bunin, directed by Kimberly Senior, and what a great show it was! We played to a small house (thanks in part to the strange Wednesday night show, and the Jewish holiday) of about 60, but a magnificent mix - about 25 subscribers, about 20 artistic associates and friends of the company, and about 15 single-ticket buyers who'd clearly heard about the show in the media.

The actors were immediately buoyed by a lot of laughter early on (much more than any of us expected), and by the time we got to the climax in Act II, you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. Our curtain call was so short that the audience tried to bring the actors back for a second call...

We take a couple days off now to accomodate one of the actors' schedules - ironically enough, he's off to the wedding of an Episcopal minister! - and will be back Saturday and Sunday with two more previews before opening on Monday night. This is one of the most angst-provoking, exciting parts of the process for me, as I force myself to ask patrons how they enjoyed the play on their way out. What a great boon for all of us to get such glowing comments afterwards.

One subscriber in particular said this to me, which was very interesting and meaningful. I paraphrase:

We've been subscribers for four years now, and your first two seasons were terrific. We thought last season you lost your way a little, but we decided to come back... and this production of THE BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED proves we were absolutely right. It's a wonderful play, thought-provoking, beautifully acted and designed... a fantastic show!

Please post your thoughts here about the show once you've seen it!

Faith, America, and THE BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED

2007-09-10T14:56:00.000-05:00

From yesterday's NEW YORK TIMES... what do you think?

GOVERNOR CUTS ARTS FUNDING BY 30%

2007-09-10T14:24:00.000-05:00

In FY00, Illinois Arts Council funding was $22.7 million. In the year just ended, it was $20.6 million. This summer, the General Assembly final proposed an increase, to $23.2 million. The Governor's budget vetoed that amount and cut funding to $16.2 million.

The Illinois Arts Alliance (run by Executive Director Ra Joy, who has just joined the Board of the Next Theatre Company) has this to say:

"WHY INVEST $23.2 MILLION TO FUND THE ILLINOIS ARTS COUNCIL?

* To promote equal access to the arts for the citizens of Illinois. With funding from the IAC, people in every legislative district throughout the state benefit from valuable programs offered by arts organizations. With increased government support, meaningful programs - that are often free or offered at a reduced price - will continue to benefit every community.

*To strengthen the economy of local communities and attract tourists to Illinois. Convention & Sports Leisure International reports that over the last seven years, non-profit arts organizations have had more than a $10 billion cumulative impact on Illinois' economy, providing jobs for more that 34,000 residents and attracting nearly four million tourists to the state annually for arts activities.

* To renew and revitalize local downtown development. Cities such as Crystal Lake, Waukegan, Joliet, Rockford and Naperville have revived and rebuilt their downtowns by restoring old theaters, opening new storefront galleries and offering festivals and art walks that bring the community together in the downtown setting.

* To enhance the quality of life for citizens. The arts preserve and enhance our cultural heritage, strengthen our sense of national, state and community identity, bring families closer together, and make communities more desirable locations to live, work and raise a family.

* To invest in local community groups and organizations. The arts are currently under-funded. Every year the Illinois Arts Council receives worthy grant requests of almost $6 million that go unfunded. In order to expand the creative infrastructure that exists in Illinois, the Illinois Arts Council’s budget must be increased. $24 million (only $2 per person per year) is needed to support the requests of a higher number of worthy applicants and increase the number of awards given by the Illinois Arts Council.

BACKGROUND

The budget approved by the legislature on August 10, 2007 increased the Illinois Arts Council's budget by $3.2 million bringing us very close to our goal of $23.2 million, or $2 per person, per year in Illinois Investing $23.2 million, or $2 per year, in FY2008 (less than half of 1% of the state’s overall budget of $53 billion), would allow Illinois to leverage its existing cultural assets and continue to enhance the quality of life for all Illinois residents. A $23.2 million investment in the Illinois Arts Council will ensure that Illinois’ creative industry remains competitive."

Next Theatre Company received over $20,000 last year from the Illinois Arts Council, and anticipates a grant of $24,000 in FY08. If the Governor's veto stands, that grant will be substantially reduced, and we at the Next will have to make painful programming cuts.

A BIG DAY FOR NEXT THEATRE!

2007-09-06T18:42:00.001-05:00

Executive Director Lisa Fulton and I are proud and thrilled to announce the following six Joseph Jefferson Award nominations for Next Theatre artists and productions in the 2007-08 season!

THE ADDING MACHINE: A CHAMBER MUSICAL, Best New Musical
David Cromer, Best Director of a Musical, THE ADDING MACHINE

Joel Hatch, Best Actor in a Musical, THE ADDING MACHINE

Amy Warren, Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, THE ADDING MACHINE

Keith Parham, Best Lighting Design, THE ADDING MACHINE

Toy DeIorio, Best Sound Design, FROZEN

A full list of award nominees can be found here.

I'd like to take a quick moment also to remember some of the extraordinary work that did not get recognized by the Jeff Awards committee, including Jeff Still's remarkable Menelaus in HELEN; Linda Kimbrough's MISS WITHERSPOON; the incredible production and total design team behind all of THE ADDING MACHINE, lassoed by Production Manager Jim Davis and Resident Stage Manager Richard Lundy; Jeremy Ramey's extraordinary Musical Direction of that show; and the courageous and knee-wobbling performances created by Laura T. Fisher, Jenny McKnight, and Joseph Wycoff in FROZEN. It was an exceptional year throughout Chicagoland theater as the award nominees suggest, and an exceptional year for us at Next.

I'd like to also take a quick moment to recognize the Artistic Associates at Next whose work was nominated elsewhere. Goes to show what a tremendously talented group of artists, staff, artisans and technicians we have working for us:

Allen Gilmore in the Ensembles of ARGONAUTIKA and JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE (and Featured Actor, JOE TURNER)

David Cromer for Direction of a Play, COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA

Michael Montenegro for Puppet Design, PUPPETMASTER OF LODZ

Thanks to all of you who have made this celebration possible. What a year it's been, and what a wonderful season lies ahead!

AND SUDDENLY, THE FALL SEASON IS UPON US!

2007-08-14T12:47:00.000-05:00

i was at a meeting last night at the Chicago Humanities Festival with colleagues from Steppenwolf and Congo Square Theatre Companies, and it turns out that all three of our theaters begin rehearsals for the 07-08 season TONIGHT! What happened to summer?

Whatever happened to it all, with rehearsal beginning tonight, the fall 2007 cultural season is upon us. With it come fond memories, high expectations – and serious artistic anxiety. Our world is evermore falling prey to what's been called "continual partial awareness" – we're competing for your attention alongside 550 cable television channels, late-summer blockbuster movies, a seemingly infinite number of blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos… and who's counting the voicemails and emails you’re downloading from your BlackBerry as you read? What hope does our ancient, clumsy, grounded-in-gritty-reality form of theater have in such a universe?

I mean, you’ve got to buy the tickets ahead of time, arrange schedules with your friends, drive on over to the theater, walk in the door… and then, as Mary Zimmerman told me, we ask that you silence yourself. You silence yourself bodily; you remove yourself from the technologies that aid you; and you sit in the dark, in the presence of friends and members of your community and artists… and then the play begins.

The start of the season is a special time for me and my fellow artists because it gives us a chance to make the case once more that what you'll get at the theater – if we do our job right – is an opportunity for transcendence… we take you back to the garden, we take you back to the campfire, we ask you to release your cares for two hours so that we can tell you a story the way stories have been told since the dawn of recorded human history. And if we both succeed (you in releasing your cares, us in holding your attention), we've given each other a gift that lasts well past when the curtain falls.

So tonight, we go to first rehearsal for Keith Bunin's THE BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED... and look forward to six weeks of opportunities this fall to give our audience a special experience of transcendence.

IS "AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY" THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN PLAY?

2007-08-08T14:35:00.001-05:00

I had the good fortune last night to see Tracy Letts' new play AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY at Steppenwolf. The show has gotten a lot of heat and a lot of praise, and a number of subscribers and colleagues have said to me, "I can't wait for you to see it so I can hear what you think!" [Some of you know that Tracy's first play, KILLER JOE, had its world premiere at Next in 1993 (I had nothing to do with it; all credit's due to the wonderful Dexter Bullard, former director of the Next Theatre Lab).] So I'm happy to weigh in on the big question:

Is AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY the next Great American Play?

Short answer: I'm not sure yet, but I'm leaning towards YES. Our Great American Plays tend to be family plays, so imagine a continuum from OUR TOWN through DEATH OF A SALESMAN, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, BURIED CHILD, and FENCES. I don't know if AUGUST deserves a place on that list yet - that's history waiting to be written - but does the play boldly point the way towards a new of thinking about American drama? Possibly. Will it be remembered as a significant milestone in our theater? Probably. Is it comparable to the last 12 Pulitzer Prizewinning plays? Absolutely. And better than many of them.

Long answer: Let's face it: as theater artists, we're a bit in the wilderness right now. I can't think of any play since ANGELS IN AMERICA (the Pulitzer-winner in 1993) that's both told us who we are as a culture and pointed a way forward. (There are plenty of plays that do a good job of telling us who we are - or who a portion of us are - as a culture: look at the twelve Pultizer Prizewinners that came after it.) Whatever gets called the "Next Great American Play" better do both: it better tell us who we are as Americans, and show us what might lie ahead. As Bart Sher, Artistic Director of the Intiman Theatre in Seattle (and director of LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA) told me:

Maybe it’s more recent, and maybe it’s over the last two years, but I do think that there’s an exhaustion about where America might feel like it is. We’re exhausted by the struggle between the right and the left, we see no clear sense of where we’re going, and there need to be more artists engaging the question of who we are right now to take us to some next place. It’s in kind of this “held state”, late in the Bush Administration, where we really don’t know who we are as Americans anymore because we’ve been so damaged by the struggle from 1990 to now, between the right and the left, it’s had a very devastating impact on the culture. And people are holding on, and people have deep belief and faith, but it’s not so guaranteed.

That's where artists are incredibly important. Artists are growing and developing communities, and finding more and more of who they are. But there’s no guarantee, if they don’t go back to those communities and work, if they don’t keep investing in what they’re making, if they don’t keep experimenting and trying things, if they don’t keep hoping for something to lift into to a bigger place... there's no guarantee the culture will survive.

So, does AUGUST tell us who we are as a culture, and does it point the way forward?

For the first 3 and a 1/4 hours of AUGUST last night, I was convinced I was in the presence of a remarkable feat of the former... that the play - perfectly cast, forcefully acted, directed with exceptional deftness and written with astonishing wit and intelligence and sensitivity - was one of the best dysfunctional-family plays I'd seen. And that's great, and that's all it needs to be for me to say to everyone that they oughta get out and see it before it closes.

But I wasn't sure it had anything to say about what lay ahead until the last 15 minutes. And at that point, for me, the character Violet Weston (embodied by the amazing Deanna Dunegan) became a metaphor for America right now. Strong to a fault, exercising her power because of the hardships she'd suffered as a child, and now dramatically, desperately alone. Her ability to exercise absolute power over her family led to a moral slippage, an almost tragic slippage, that she could not halt. When Letts has Violet retreat in the final moments of the play into the waiting arms of Johnna, the Cheyenne housekeeper - who embodies a simultaneous spirituality and utter clarity of purpose: she's there for the paycheck - it felt like a sucker-punch to the gut. Johnna accepts Violet for the flawed and ultimately vulnerable woman she is... but does she do it just for the paycheck?

I guess I've seen enough theater (and film, and television, and art, and on and on) in the past few years telling me that we're a culture in crisis - that we can't solve the rift between left and right, between greed and charity, between fear and strength. I already know that. So a play like THE PAIN AND THE ITCH (also at Steppenwolf, and also a play I truly loved) addresses those issues beautifully, hilariously, and dangerously - but ultimately doesn't tell me something new.

Something about AUGUST felt new to me, though. I'm still trying to figure out if it's a cautionary tale or if it points the way forward more optimistically, but I do think Letts has accomplished something rare. He has engaged me emotionally and intellectually on that most familiar of topics - the family - and made me feel like it was a metaphor for what it means to be an American right now, and what it might mean in the future.

I'm eager to hear your thoughts.

OTHELLO IN LONDON; OTHELLO IN GLENCOE

2007-07-31T16:11:00.001-05:00

I'm back from a long-awaited vacation to Europe, where for two weeks I mostly avoided theater at all costs! But on my way back, I decided one really shouldn't leave London without having seen at least one piece of drama.

So I trundled across the Thames and waited for returns at the Globe, the architecturally-faithful recreation of the stage where most of Shakespeare's plays had their world premieres. And I got in to that afternoon's production, OTHELLO, directed by Wilson Milam, and starring Tim McInnerny as Iago and Eamonn Walker as the Moor.

The next morning I flew back to Chicago, and found myself almost 24 hours later in Glencoe, watching OTHELLO at Writers' Theatre, directed by Michael Halberstam, and starring John Judd as Iago and James Meredith as the Moor.

Comparing the two - as I was asked to do frequently - was absolutely fascinating, and said something different about London audiences vs Chicago audiences, British actors vs American actors, and British Shakespeare vs American Shakespeare. But what was most telling about the experience was what it taught me about fitting the play to the stage.

Off the bat I'll say that both productions were thoroughly engaging, very well-acted, relatively free of directorial "concepting" (this moreso true of the Globe production), and quite powerful. But they were nonetheless extremely different. And most of those differences could be ascribed
to the different theaters in which they took place.

Michael's production at Writers was designed for his intimate space: a cut-down cast and cut-back script, great simplicity of presentation (in terms of design, props, and the like), and a slow and considered delivery of the lines. Played straight as a domestic tragedy, this production held a gravitas and quiet intensity that fit exactly the Writers mission, audience, and physical environment.

By contrast, the Globe production was designed to keep the attention of 1000 groundlings standing in the hot sun through an afternoon. Every opportunity for humor was exploited, the full cast and live musicians entered and exited all over the space, and the dialogue was played about three times the speed (perhaps in part because the British presumably "hear" Shakespeare with greater facility than American audiences, but at least in part because an outdoor space like the Globe is not one conducive to quiet consideration of poetry). I've never seen an Othello that celebrated the sheer physicality of its performers like this one.

So which approach paid off better? Comparing the first "acts" (i.e., acts I, II and II), the Globe's production ultimately held the attention here better, because the first three acts of Othello benefit from a large cast and large space in which they may perform. The night scene before Brabantio's house, the convening of the Venetian council, the arrival in Cyprus... these are the kinds of scenes where a large blank canvas like the Globe is a perfect setting. The Othello-Roderigo subplot is a classic example of hilarious comedy dropped in the middle of a tragedy, and played better within the physical and emotional environment of the Globe production. At Writers', the Othello-Roderigo scenes felt out of place, almost - Iago could easily have accomplished what he wanted without the distraction.

But in the second "act", when the action truly becomes the domestic tragedy Michael envisioned, you see how Writers' production pays off. Whereas, at the Globe we are suddenly drawn into a quiet contemplation that doesn't quite fit what's come before, at Writers', the shift in the action makes utter sense... could OTHELLO be performed in any other way? It suddenly seems we're watching the Moor's madness for the first time. (Michael's interesting decision to break up the scene in which Iago truly infects Othello with thoughts of Desdemona's infidelity was a part of that power.)

All in all, I feel lucky to have seen and experienced both productions, and so soon one after the other. But mostly, I feel like I learned a very important lesson about making sure you fit your production to your space.

The Revolution is now!

2007-07-12T14:54:00.001-05:00

I have a good friend, a theatre artist, writer, all-around smart art-maker, that has informally drafted a number of Chicago companies in to "The Revolution". The Revolution consists of theatre and performance companies pushing the bounds of what theatre is in Chicago, beyond it's extraordinary acting, gutsy spirit and creative use of any empty room plus chairs. It seems that The Revolution requires all that good Chicago stuff, plus an outright challenge to the audience to be an active part of an evening by opening up to the unexpected, the unpredictable, and the unfamiliar.

These performances do what I like best as an audience... they surprise me. And only when I'm surprised... be it by astounding beauty, tremendous physical feat, genius theatricalization of a moment on stage, or simply the impact of silence and stillness amidst spectacle... I am moved. I cannot defend my senses against what I cannot see coming. There is no time to outsmart the play and avoid the emotional impact. Laughter roars, gasps are heard, tears well up.

I will always vividly remember my first show on staff here. Suzan-Lori Parks In the Blood in 2003 took risks with everything from casting and staging to language and content. It tackled both the tremendous politicized questions the surrounding welfare system and everyone who touches it, while at heart communicating as a story about love and loss. And to do it, Parks used rich poetry alongside a baseball bat and a bucket of stage blood. Everything was heightened, stylized, jam-packed with tension and possibility. And it surprised me. It moved me. So much so that friends and I talked late into the night about how the work had stirred us and forced us to question our own ideas and feelings about our new urban environment. It was so much more for us than just a night at the theatre. It felt revolutionary.

But.. Next is dark this month. You've seen what exciting and provocative theatrical events we have coming your way next season... but for now, go see 500 Clown at the Upstairs Steppenwolf. They're part of The Revolution.

THE AMERICAN DREAM @ NEXT

2007-06-27T18:13:00.002-05:00

I've just gotten off the phone with some of the country's most talented and exciting music theater composers - two-time Tony nominee Michael John La Chiusa (Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and many more), Obie-winner Michael Friedman (whose production of Gone Missing was just reviewed in today's New York Times; he also scored the starry Romeo and Juliet in the Park), Jeff-winner Kevin O'Donnell, and our own Josh Schmidt of Adding Machine fame.

We were talking about the American Dream in preparation for our February '08 show, The American Dream Songbook. We'll be producing Leonard Bernstein's little-heard short opera Trouble in Tahiti as the first act of the show; the second act consists of four new songs on the subject of the American Dream by those amazing composers.

Why the American Dream? Bernstein's 40-minute opera was written in 1951, and is a sharp and sassy satire of what he saw as the American Dream. As the trio snappily sings in the show:

Lovely day! Lovely life.
Happily married; sweet little son;
Family picture second to none.
It's a wonderful life!
Up-to-date kitchen, washing machine,
Colorful bathrooms, and LIFE magazine,
And a little white house in Brookline!

(You can watch a clip of this on YouTube from the 2001 movie of Tahiti.)

If this was Bernstein's vision of the American Dream in 1951 - a vision he ultimately found to be a hollow sham - how has the dream changed in 50+ years?

Surely, individuals from across the globe still flock to the U.S. for a shot at the American Dream, but just what is it nowadays? Some of the interesting points our composers brought up this morning were:

-When asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", a majority of 17-year olds now answer, "Famous"... and 70% of those think they will be.
-Starting in the late 80s and early 90s, most Gen Xers believed they'd end up less prosperous than their parents.
-Suburbia as a safe haven was created by the light-rail system in the post-war years; today, the internet is our railroad, and our "communities" are virtual.

Where will these thoughts lead musically?

And more importantly, what do YOU think the American Dream is today? (Who knows... your answer might end up in song!)

POLITICAL THEATER

2007-06-21T14:17:00.001-05:00

Last night I had the opportunity to be part of a panel on Political Theater at the Cultural Center, sponsored by the folks at Stage Left. Stage Left is a small non-Equity company in Lakeview, and we share with them a dedication to plays that raise questions about important social issues... so I was happy to do it.

Also on the panel were Stage Left playwright David Alan Thompson, Congo Square Theatre Executive Director Erin Gilbert, and Teatro Luna co-Artistic Director Tanya Saracho. The Q&A that followed was surprisingly provocative and heated, especially when questions about race and theater came up. As you may know, Congo Square is one of the city's youngest, finest companies that consistently presents plays written by African-Americans, and Teatro Luna is particularly interested in plays written by and for Latinas.

Teatro Luna's cast of S-E-X Oh!

Two questions were surprising in different ways. The first questioner wanted to know why our theaters - and in particular Congo Square and Teatro Luna - didn't produce plays with "universal themes like love or family", and the second questioner wanted to know what Congo Square was doing to push black audiences to traditionally white theaters. Behind their questions were very disturbing views about the racial divide in America.

What lay behind their questions? In the first case, the questioner (a white woman) clearly felt excluded by Congo Square's programming. She had never been to one of their productions (Erin pointed out that their audiences are now 65% caucasian), but clearly believed that a play produced by Congo Square would have universal themes, or that she could see herself in a "black play."

Congo Square's production of Seven Guitars.

The second questioner (a white man) seemed to feel Congo Square, because of its commitment to providing an outlet for underserved artists and audiences, was somehow embracing a separatist mission. He seemed to believe that a place like Victory Gardens (which recently produced a work by Athol Fugard, a white South African writer who has been concerned with race all his professional life) provided a perfectly legitimate outlet for African-American artists and audiences; so why does Congo Square need to do their own thing?

What struck me about the panel afterward was that, even among our enlightened theater audiences in Chicagoland, there is still so much fear and just plain ignorance when it comes to questions of race. And that's what makes it so important for a company like the Goodman to embrace the plays of African-American August Wilson, or for us at Next to produce works by African-Americans Suzan-Lori Parks, Dael Orlandersmith or Lynn Nottage. Even if we can't get as much as an African-American audience in for those plays as we want, we're obviously creating an important dialogue for our white audience, too... they're coming to learn, hopefully, that all the plays we choose have universal themes, no matter the race of their writer.

Next Theatre's production of Fabulation: Or the Re-education of Undine, by Lynn Nottage

The conversation that ensued was spirited and lively, to be sure. You can watch the panel and the questions on CAN-TV 21 on Friday, June 22 at 1:30pm, and again on Saturday, June 23 at 3pm. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

WHAT A MARVELOUS PARTY!

2007-06-11T16:22:00.002-05:00

We've been very busy here at Next Theatre, preparing for the 07-08 season, attending conferences and meetings all around the country, and even reading plays for 08-09... but we're never too busy to stop and thank 160 of our closest friends for joining us at the Red and Black Gala we hosted at Evanston's beautiful Orrington Hotel on May 20, honoring Mayor Lorraine Morton.

It was our most successful Gala to date, raising over $30,000 for the company... thank you!

Captions, left to right
1) Jason Loewith with 2007 Honoree Mayor Lorraine H. Morton and Board President Judy Kemp.
2) Board Treasurer Jeff Emrich and his guest Stephanie Leese.
3) Artistic Associate Joseph Wycoff with wife and Local 365 Coordinator Melanie Esplin and Board VP Neal Robinson.

4) Board Member Jordan Nerenberg takes our Red and Black theme all the way!

5) Board Member Adrienne Voltattorni with friends Tina Mizgalski, Caroline Werner, Pat Defrang and Kathy Jensen.

6) Cabaret voclaist Wendy Morgan belts one for the crowd.

American Theater's Failure of Nerve

2007-05-30T17:20:00.000-05:00

Thanks to local actor Gary Houston, who pointed me to this article from the LA WEEKLY by Steven Leigh Morris, excerpted below.

A few weeks ago, the Pulitzer Prize for drama was awarded to David Lindsay-Abaire's The Rabbit Hole, a study of a marriage in the wake of the freak-accidental death of the couple's child. The play originated as a commissioned work at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California, from where it traveled along the narrow-gauge railroad we now call American Theater. Very few people wrote negatively about The Rabbit Hole. There was, however, a collective "huh?" heard around the country when the Pulitzer was awarded to that play.

When I heard The Rabbit Hole had won the prize, I had to look up my own review of a production at the Geffen Playhouse last year, because I honestly couldn't remember what it was about. The problem is not with my memory. The Rabbit Hole is an emblem of the kind of finely crafted, polished, entertaining, emotionally vivid, mildly thoughtful (but not too heady), palatable and ultimately forgettable experiences that constitute most new plays on our national stages.

I was reminded of the play's Pulitzer win again earlier this month, when SCR presented its 10th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival, a potpourri of seven wonderfully performed readings, workshops and full productions of plays in various stages of development written by very good dramatists, including Jose Rivera, Richard Greenberg, and writer-lyricist John Strand along with composer Dennis McCarthy.On hand to untangle the knots in each work were notable directors, some of them playwrights themselves. On the opening day of the festival, the authors met with literary representatives from about 40 of the country's more prestigious theaters, including Manhattan Theatre Club and Actors Theatre of Louisville, and it was clear that SCR was using the fest as a kind of swap meet - a way to get these plays, and their writers, on the national map with multiple productions.

The festival, hosted by associate artistic director John Glore with literary manager Megan Monaghan, on the surface seemed like a fine thing. What sane playwright could object to having his or her play marketed even before it's finished, or refined by such smart directors as Pam MacKinnon, Bart DeLorenzo and Chay Yew? What producer doesn't want his or her new musical to land on Broadway, then tour the country, then be made into a movie?

None, of course. But what's good for the theaters may not necessarily be good for The Theater.

Much has been written about the politics of this year's Pulitzer selection - particularly on how the committee vetoed more-adventurous works initially submitted by a jury. Unlike in other Pulitzer categories, it's a mistake to use the drama prize as a measure of greatness or as a symbol of adventurism. There's never been a shortage of scribes ready to do the heavy lifting of moving the theater forward in scary new directions with works that challenge the assumptions of the culture and of the theatrical forms we've become used to, but these are not the kinds of works represented in the Pulitzers, or being produced along the regional theater byways, or at this year's Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Of course, money is at the bottom of all this. Money is at the bottom of almost everything: Because of the dire climate for arts funding, the theaters have formed alliances, and those alliances have evolved into chains, like Denny's, and the food they serve tilts toward homogenization. To watch the majority of new plays in the established venues of New York and around the country is to hunger for the kind of electrical charge that, in their times, made Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and August Wilson the buzz of America's coffee shops, cocktail parties and subway lines. Their plays, frequently denounced by critics and audiences, were indispensable to the lifeblood of the culture and its conversations. For that same vitality today, we turn not to the theater but to TV, to the likes of Jon Stewart, George Clooney and Oprah, who, under the weight of colossal commercial pressures, show far more bravery than most of our institutional theaters.

The underlying causes of the blandness in our theater are more nuanced than the obvious "commercial pressures" that everyone talks about. Compounding the problem is an identity crisis. Theater gets so little respect because it has so little self-respect. Among the Pulitzer categories, only the drama prize gets dropped like a date with bad breath - three times in the past 21 years; four times during the '60s. Playwright - and festival participant - Donald Margulies, who won the Pulitzer in 2000 for his Dinner With Friends, calls this "Pulitzer condescension." But if theater wants more respect, it might first try giving greater value to what it does best, uniquely, as theater.

I can't imagine an unorthodox, once-befuddling little play like Waiting for Godot - with its capacities both to turn the theater on its head and to confound half the audience - standing a chance at a festival like this. Here, the playwrights are in consultation with too many intermediaries, even at the formative stages of their plays, just like in the movies. With no marketing strategy in place, Waiting for Godot was eventually produced in every corner of the globe, on the strength of its conviction and literary merit, stemming from the uncompromising vision of an author who wrote in a kind of solitary confinement. Samuel Beckett certainly didn't collaborate with directors, dramaturges or anybody else while he was in the formative process of writing, yet this is now the protocol in American new-play development. As Edward Albee told the Weekly earlier this year, "The big problem is the assumption that writing a play is a collaborative act. It isn't. It's a creative act, and then other people come in."

Next Communities tackles affordable housing; City Council weighs in

2007-05-15T09:44:00.001-05:00

Ah, driving. Environmentally irresponsible, perhaps, yet a great time to listen to NPR.

This morning on 848, Steve Edwards addressed yesterday's City Council vote on an affordable housing initiative. The bill backed by Mayor Daley passed easily. From the Chicago Tribune:
"Daley's plan will require developers to set aside 10 percent of homes in projects of 10 units or more where city land is sold, where a zoning change increases density or alters the designation to residential, or where special city approval is otherwise needed." Read the full article here.

I couldn't help but think of our Next Communities project fast-approaching (performances are Saturday and Sunday here and at Lifeline in Rogers Park) and how incredibly timely our discussion with the audience will be this weekend. Some are celebrating the vote, while other advocates argue that by taking median incomes of affluent and suburban neighborhoods into account when figuring "affordable" rates, these newly designated homes will still not be accessible by those who need them most. And isn't this exactly what we are asking with this year's Next Communities project? How does an area as diverse as Evanston and Rogers Park serve ALL it's neighbors?

I look forward to a lively education and discussion with the very folks living these questions at this weekend's presentations. Let me know your thoughts here and bring your ideas, your questions and your opinions to the theatre this weekend.

SUBSCRIBERS TALK ABOUT FROZEN

2007-05-03T12:35:00.001-05:00

Thanks to all of you who responded to my letter about FROZEN... here are most of the responses, edited a bit. Please feel free to post different opinions!

Your production of this play is THE reason I attend theater in Chicagoland and the reason I will continue to purchase season tickets at Next. Great job!
- Douglas D.

Now that you mention it, it was indeed wonderful.
I thought to myself about midway through that I would gladly come back to seek this one multiple times, and find new meaning and nuance each time.
It was the same feeling I had about thirty years ago when I saw a play at the U of C, and went back about five times to see it again, enjoying it each time.
But in those day I had more time.
Had we but world enough and time . . .
- Kent M.

I think that "Frozen" brings up the issue of why do we really go to the theater in the first place?And I think people go for different reasons--Level one-to have a good time and be distracted from one's daily life--Level two--to be stimulated to think about different issues and ideas--Level three--to be moved emotionally and feel a response to the characters in the play--And perhaps what makes a great play is one that operates on all three levels--Frozen excelled at level two but was perhaps a bit too grim to do well at level one. When it comes to level three, I think Frozen is adept about bringing up a lot of uncomfortable feelings but has a way of jamming them down your throat! While it's great that the writer of Frozen takes us for a descending ride into the pathological mind of a serial killer, the depressed mind of the victim's mother, and the conflicted mind of the psychologist/researcher, he also needs to offer a little light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, the killer finally realizes he did something wrong (unrealistic for psychopaths) but turns his violence into a brutal suicide. Yes, the mother finally forgives and is able to move on in her life but not before handling her daughter's bones. Yes, the psychologist finally admits to herself that she was in love with her associate but one doesn't feel a lot of hope for her character either. In fact, the brutal realities of the play leave one feeling frozen, oneself. And in the end, no matter how long and dark and deep the ride--we need to feel moved--not frozen.
- SusanE

I HATED the play. The previous production, the Mr. Zero play, was also not "entertaining" and also dealt with a rather "downbeat" topic (unemployment as a consequence of mechanization), but I thought it was pretty good. I make this point to emphasize that the issue is NOT whether mindless fluff and happy endings make for better theater and/or better subscription renewal rates.
The reason I HATED the play was that I didn't care! I didn't care about the psychologist, nor the mother nor the serial killer. There was nothing in what any of them said or in what they did that captured my attention. It was just boring yada-yada-yada...
It was like reading a high school sophomore's term paper on "The Abused, The Abusers, and how our systems fail them". I would have had more fun writing the paper myself. At least I could have avoided the pedantic platitudes.
- Don M.

FROZEN IN TIME ...that is really what the play will be for us. We are only vets of two seasons at Next. Since we've live in Oak Park and now Berwyn since returning to the Chicago area 24 years ago, we generally didn't venture beyond Chicago venues for our frequent theatre fixes. However, as we are buffs, Next was on or radar and finally after some regular NU summer theatre and Light Opera trips we were intrigued enough to try some late season Next a couple of years ago. That sold us. Innovative, and extremely well done theatre was the hook. Frozen was the frosting on the cake.
It is moving and draining, incredibly well acted by three truly remarkable performers -- what a three way bang for the buck -- and a play we raved about all the way home last Sunday. Your letter was forwarded to our Evanston friends (recently returned after living over a dozen years in Europe) with a "must see!" note. And while you aren't exactly in our back yard, we're renewing next year, confident that there is more to come from whence this one came -- and the other three excellent productions of 2006-2007.
Kurt and Joyce

Greta and I agree that your production of "Frozen" was outstanding Jason,
It was the type of play that keeps us returning to the NEXT.
Forgiveness is an issue I've experienced through my work as a mediator.
Frozen addresses the issue meaningfully and accurately and makes an important social contribution as well as providing superb entertainment. Congratulations again, Jason and our thanks for a splendid season. - Dick S.

We experienced Frozen last Friday and I feel very compelled to express my reactions. Frozen is a 1st class production in every respect. The casting and directing is superb. The stage set is astounding in placing the viewer in the world of the characters and their struggles. Above all the acting was the best we have seen in a very long time. I don't think it gets any better.
Frozen is also a excellently written play. It seems that, in general, the majority of plays we have seen over the years very often are great productions with excellent actors but lack the depth and authenticity of Frozen.
Jason, thank you for bringing this play and production to the Next. It is the kind of total experience that going to the live theater should be all about.
- Dale L.