AMERICAN THEATRE: Chicago storefront theatre has a distinct mythology: A group of friends assembles with a dream of turning the theatre scene on its head. Often young and impressionable, they’re confident that Chicago will be the city where all their dreams come true.
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On the one hand, I am all for scrappy theater putting it together and making it happen, on the other hand, I feel like many of the people interviewed who discussed their theater failing due to financial reasons miss the mark on why. Lindsay Bartlett mentions it briefly, with the group 20% doing “women-led feminist theatre.” The reason the Chicago version folded while the Twin Cities version is thriving isn’t just because “a lot of people started doing feminist theatre” but because Chicago audiences have way too many theaters to choose from, most of them tangled up in this idea of administration and management not being “artist enough” to deserve pay, the performers barely getting paid, and “Not In Our House” not being an actually enforceable model. I have heard stories from many people in the Chicago scene of one show getting shuttered due to an abusive director only for that director to move to another fledgling and new storefront separated enough from the first to not know the allegations, and repeat the behavior. Houston has a similar problem with storefront and community theaters and the way they’ve started to slowly move away from it is to stop opening so many “niche” theaters, and start combining their powers. Chicago should maybe evaluate that plan.
How thrill it is to see this topic being brought up and discussed freely. The nervous we all had been through is that all in our mind is a possibility waiting to be realized, but the only important action is that we are trying our best to sell it. No matter who that was you wanted to get them on board, it will be hard. Same situation that the artists are facing. Comparing to what I can do such as sketching, drafting or modeling, they might be facing something even worse. I personally appreciated the article bringing up the awkward relationship between artists and art pieces. My favorite one is “Money and commerce devalue art.”. This is so counter logic but also making the straightest sense. How can you devalue art and how can you value it? Feels like it is an endless loop of thoughts occurring on every artist’s mind.
I think it takes a lot of courage to start out something like this- something that depends on so much public support, not knowing where it will end up nor if it will be successful. I admire people who venture out and do this. Many times when you hear of how big companies started out, it tends to be the same story- they had an idea, a few materials, not a lot of money nor resources but a whole lot of drive and they went from there. As an artist and a creative being, I wish that I had a little more of that in me (a little more trust in the odds being in my favor). I'm just really big on weighing things up, negatives and positives, and thinking way too logically. In these cases, there are lots of negatives, or possible bad outcomes. But as we know, there are a few times when people get lucky and their business just continues to grow. This is risky though because I know that a lot of times, it doesn't work out. So while it is nice to be optimistic and to be hopeful about the future/manifest positivity, I think in these cases it would be a great idea to have a plan b or some form of a safety net to fall into.
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