How Jim Shiflett built the church of off-Loop theater

Performing Arts Feature | Chicago Reader: If you had founded a small professional theater company in Chicago before the mid-70s and wanted to open it in a storefront, you couldn’t have done it without the risk of getting closed down by the city. Before that, you had to call yourself a “club,” as Playwrights Theater Club did in 1953 when they rented a former Chinese restaurant on LaSalle Street. Or you could call yourself a “cabaret,” as Second City did when they rented a former Chinese laundry on Wells in 1959. If you were part of a troupe of like-minded theater artists and wanted to rent temporary space from a multitheater venue, you couldn’t do it because there was, at that time in Chicago, no such thing.