The return of Chicago theater (theater everywhere, really) since the pandemic continues to be a white-knuckle experience for many companies. Last Friday, 35-year-old Lookingglass Theatre (winner of the 2011 Tony Award for best regional theater) announced that they were putting all programming on pause until at least spring 2024 and cutting their staff by over half. (Their current production of Matthew C. Yee’s country-and-western musical, Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon, concludes its run on July 16.)
Lookingglass’s announcement comes on the heels of national news that the venerable Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles has halted its programming for the foreseeable future. Earlier, Oregon Shakespeare Festival started an emergency fundraising drive to be able to produce its current season, and Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut (once under the leadership of Joanne Woodward) did the same. Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven gave up its permanent home last year. Southern Rep in New Orleans shut down permanently last summer. Recently, Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle, dedicated to staging literary adaptations, also announced they were shutting down after 33 years. (Book-It’s artistic director from January 2020 to spring of this year was Gus Menary, who is the former artistic director for Chicago’s Jackalope Theatre.)
Locally, as I feel like I’m mentioning in every column now, we’ve lost a slew of theaters since 2020. These include Sideshow, BoHo, Interrobang, Eclipse, Underscore, Aston Rep, 16th Street, New Coordinates (formerly known as the New Colony), House Theatre of Chicago, First Folio Theatre (which shut down earlier than planned this year), and Victory Gardens Theater (which won the regional Tony Award in 2001 and whose board has said that they will no longer be producing their own programming—what will happen with the Biograph space remains an open question). Additionally, several companies have given up their spaces, including Prop Thtr and Windy City Playhouse.
Some of this is a long-overdue reckoning with the reality that the old non-Equity model of production puts company leadership at high risk of burnout. For many smaller companies, as Gabriela Furtado Coutinho, associate Chicago editor for American Theatre, noted in a recent article, “The desire to tell beautiful stories is still there, but the funding to support fair and livable compensation is not.”
But Lookingglass always seemed to have the magic touch, and I’m not just talking about their ability to create breathtaking ensemble-driven pieces out of nontheatrical sources, as they built on the “story theater” legacy of the late director and playwright Frank Galati, whose most prominent successor and acolyte is probably Lookingglass ensemble member Mary Zimmerman. (Zimmerman’s Tony Award-winning production of Metamorphoses, first produced at Lookingglass in 1998, certainly helped build the company’s national profile.)
They took over space in the old Water Tower pumping station on Michigan Avenue in 2000 and built out a flex-use venue perfect for their high-flying shows. Sometimes literally so—circus arts have been a key component to their stagings for decades, as demonstrated by Lookingglass Alice, a work created by ensemble member David Catlin which the company has remounted from time to time. (Their very first production was the Carroll-inspired 1988 show, Through the Lookingglass, which gave the company its moniker in the first place.) In their announcement, Lookingglass artistic director Heidi Stillman and board chair Diane Whatton hinted at “exciting news” to be announced soon about that perennial favorite.
The decision to hit the pause button, according to the company statement, is based in part on the fact that “audiences and donations have not returned to 2019 levels.” For now, in addition to trying to raise $2.5 million to address budget shortfalls, Lookingglass is planning to “re-envision and renovate the outer lobby space in the Water Tower Water Works building in partnership with the Chicago Public Library” in order to create a new community gathering space. (This project will use funds already received through the state.) They’re also launching a “new comprehensive school-based initiative,” and promise to remain committed to developing new work.
Sarah Slight named artistic director at Raven Theatre
Meantime, Raven Theatre continues to move ahead with new leadership. Sarah Slight, who has served as interim artistic director since the departure of Cody Estle in late 2022, is now in the role permanently.
Slight’s background is as a dramaturg; she worked in that capacity for Raven on productions of Sharyn Rothstein’s Right To Be Forgotten and Melissa Ross’s The Luckiest. New play development remains a strong interest—though she won’t be directing any of them in her Raven role. Slight, like the late Martha Lavey at Steppenwolf before her, is the relatively rare instance of an artistic director who isn’t coming from a stage direction background.
Raven’s focus, in addition to new work, has long been on contemporary American classics. “I am absolutely planning on continuing the commitment to new plays and revivals that sort of make Raven’s artistic identity in the community,” says Slight. “One of the things I was most excited about coming into Raven is the commission program that exists here. To have a theater of this size that has playwrights on commission is pretty impressive. As a new-play dramaturg, I’m so excited to be able to commission writers and work with them on the development of new plays.”
One of those playwrights is Joshua Allen, author of the “Grand Boulevard Trilogy,” which kicked off at Raven in fall 2021 with The Last Pair of Earlies and continued this season with October Storm. The final as-yet-untitled piece of Allen’s triptych will go up in May 2024 and will be set during the 1919 race riots. The other plays for next season include the world premiere of Paul Michael Thompson’s brother sister cyborg space (also a commission), and a revival of Lucille Fletcher’s 1972 suspense thriller, Night Watch, directed by Georgette Verdin. (Fletcher is perhaps best known for writing Sorry, Wrong Number, which started as a radio play and was turned into the 1948 noir classic starring Barbara Stanwyck.)
“I’m interested in revivals in the way that they can speak to the current moment and that feels very aligned with the mission of Raven,” says Slight. “Since I’m not a director, I love connecting with directors and asking them, ‘What do you want to do, and why?'” Verdin showed herself a dab hand at psychological thrillers with her staging in fall 2022 of Paloma Nozicka’s Enough to Let the Light In with Teatro Vista.
Slight also notes that, since Raven owns their two-venue space in Edgewater (created out of an old produce market) outright, it gives them the opportunity to create “a cultural hub, a community space.” (Raven was founded in 1983 by the husband-and-wife team of Michael Menendian and JoAnn Montemurro, who spearheaded the move to the current venue in 2002. The two were dismissed by the board several years ago, long before Slight came into the organization.)
“I would like to examine what our community would like from our space aside from the theatrical programming, utilizing the resources of our building,” says Slight.
Raven’s managing director, Markie Gray, who came on board during the 2020 shutdown, left this spring. Slight will be working with acting managing director Cole von Glahn while the board searches for a permanent replacement for Gray.
Farewell to Michael Vieau
Chicago actor Michael Vieau died on June 29 at 52. Known for his screen appearances in film and television projects, including Public Enemies, The Dark Knight, and Chicago P.D., Vieau was also a beloved veteran of Chicago theater, winning a non-Equity Jeff Award for principal performance in a play for his 2004 performance as Stanley Kowalski in Raven’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Vieau also worked regularly with Factory Theater in their early days, and he and Factory cofounder and former WGN radio personality and film critic Nick Digilio were nominated for a non-Equity Jeff for their 1998 Factory play, The Vinyl Shop, adapted from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (a couple of years before the John Cusack cinematic version came out).
Digilio paid tribute to Vieau in a long Facebook post, noting that his old friend “was fiercely loyal, wildly opinionated, solid in his convictions, and wasn’t afraid to tell you like it was (whether you agreed with him or not). He was wildly knowledgeable about the arts, sports, politics, business, cars . . . shit, everything. He was also UNBELIEVABLY funny, a masterful storyteller, and more entertaining than anyone else in the room.”