`This is a fascinating experience,” says American Blues Theatre’s Carmen Roman, with a sigh. Then comes the reality check: “We’re out of our minds to do it in so short a span of time.”
Roman is talking about the hurried, late-summer effort to convert a shuttered greeting card company and onetime U.S. post office into a viable theater.
To have a home or not to have a home-to ramble from one rented home to another from production to production, or to risk the slings and arrows of taking up a permanent shop-is an ongoing dilemma for struggling theater troupes.
Homelessness means independence, but can amount to the metaphorical equivalent of faces pressed to a window pane. To rent is to work yourself in and around someone else’s agenda-that of the primary tenant in most cases-and to find yourself unable to extend the occasional hit. But maintaining a home means producing with enough frequency and success to make the monthly rent.
Remains Theatre productively roamed for years before setting up shop at 1800 N. Clybourn Ave. But after only three years there, the company may soon become homeless once again, if a developer’s plans to demolish Remains’ portion of the space go through.
It’s somewhat ironic, then, that American Blues, a younger troupe with close ties to Remains, is opening a theater in what is hoped will be another instance of neighborhood pioneering. The so-called North Center neighborhood, where American Blues’ new home at 1909 W. Byron St. is located. American Blues will share the space with a new Dancing Noodles Cafe, the artful, tiny chain of spacious, homey eateries that started in Evanston.
“We are already very involved with the community,” says Roman, who shares the title of artistic director of American Blues with actress Kate Buddeke. “We got very involved with Roscoe Village when we did `Monsters II’ at Bedrocks there last season. It’s one way a theater can manage to stay over the top. We’re already planning a cocktail party with the local chamber of commerce, and we expect schools and other organizations to hold meetings in our theater on a regular basis.”
American Blues burst on the scene in the mid-’80s, thanks mostly to the playwrighting talents of cofounding member Rick Cleveland and his directing partner William Payne. Cleveland’s “Dogman’s Last Stand” launched the company in 1987 at Victory Gardens Studio, and director Payne later made high marks by staging an enterprising production of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Hairy Ape.” In another distinctive move, the company also launched the Heartland Project, a program of support for new plays by Midwestern writers.
But in a midlife crisis that seems to hit all young troupes, the company slumped, most notably with the 1988 “Peacekeeper,” which, while still defended by the troupe artistically, left the company with a debt somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000. Several years of soul-searching followed.
“We were determined not to be another company owing tons of money,” says Roman. Retrenchment occurred, a hard-won move to Equity acting contracts was abandoned, and, in the past few seasons, the troupe has produced sparingly, mostly in the form of its innovative Halloween shows, “Monsters” and “Monsters II,” compendiums of original short works and monologues by Chicago writers on the topic of “urban monsters.” Meanwhile, the company eliminated the debt.
“And then we stumbled onto this place by accident and couldn’t turn it down,” Roman says. The troupe was looking for a onetime rental to mount “Food From Trash,” Gary Leon Hill’s sprawling, environmental work, about a treasure discovered at a toxic waste dump, which Payne has been itching to direct for several years. The ex-post office will serve that work, opening Sept. 17, but the company also realized that the building’s slightly offbeat location and warehouse height spelled permanent home at last.
The two-story building features a spacious, factory-like main room whose exposed brick and large, plate glass windows, adorn 4,500 square feet in floor space and 14 feet in ceiling height. There will be room for a small lobby, a box office and upstairs offices and dressing rooms. The troupe’s budget for the year, at an all-time American Blues high of $136,000, will be funded by the troupe’s traditional auctions, fundraisers and grants, as well as new contributions, including some from North Center area businesses. The company signed a 5-year lease on the property.
Rather than change its artistic mission, Roman says the company hopes to augment funds by renting the space frequently to other theaters.
Mere weeks before opening, the theater still looked less than hospitable. Exposed wiring, construction clutter and layers of dust were everywhere. Meanwhile, there was little visible sign of the curved loge of 120 to 160 seats or the large playing area that will face each other from opposite corners in an angular use of the rectangular room.
“If anyone can build a theater from scratch in this town, it’s American Blues,” Roman boasts. “Jim Leaming (actor and handyman) has built three other theaters already,” and, back briefly from a self-imposed theatrical exile in Colorado, actor-designer Leaming is overseeing the hurried construction of this one.
Payne, also on leave from the company, to start a family and teach college in Aurora, will be back as well to stage “Trash.” But that’s proving something of an ironic return: Just last week, while the company rushed through the final stages of construction, Payne accepted another teaching post in Duluth, Minn., and will be available only on a long-distance basis once “Trash” opens.
(Ed Blatchford, a lead actor in the company in the beginning, is also gone, pursuing a Hollywood career that so far has included respectable parts in “The Last of the Mohicans” and “Nowhere to Run” with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Cleveland is in the midst of a three-year stint with the writers’ workshop at the University of Iowa.)
“I wouldn’t put much store in my leaving,” Payne says. “When I stepped down as artistic director, the idea was to let others take the reins. I’m having a great time. I’m just a company member now, and I like that.”
“Trash,” turning out to be a kind of swan song for Payne, is a product of the 1983 Humana Festival in Louisville. Its odd, spectacular original production there-on an especially created theater at an actual outdoor dump, bordered with bleacher seats-has been one handicap to future productions. Payne thinks a more conventional indoor mounting will reveal strengths missed in the original.
“The owner of the dump in the play has been unloading toxic waste for years, and the residents are starting to come down with cancer,” he says. “There are 11 characters, and seven different locations, so it’s a daunting work physically.”
Typically for American Blues, the play is unusual, hard-hitting and slightly bizarre in subject matter. Toxic waste, Payne argues, is still relevant.
“I don’t think the problem has gone away. Ultimately, it revolves around the question of how we want to live. We can create wastes and choose not to deal with them, or we can choose to live differently and take control of our lives.”
He might add that he and his amiable cohorts are hoping that out of this tale of rot and filth will rise a new Chicago theater with a shiny future of excellence still to come.
NORTH CENTER IS A THRIVING URBAN COMMUNITY
North Center, the nickname for the neighborhood surrounding the Lincoln Avenue and Irving Park Road intersection, where American Blues Theatre is about to open shop, is hardly a black hole of urban decay.
But until recent years, its businesses were unpretentious neighborhood enterprises, heavy on daytime utility needs-metal works, pawn shops, a savings and loan, a hardware store. Recent developments indicate the area is part of the sprawling push for younger patrons already visible on nearby Southport Avenue and slightly south on Lincoln Avenue.
Just cater-cornered to American Blues’ new home at 1909 W. Byron St., for instance, is the Picasso Club, 3938 N. Lincoln Ave., a nightspot festooned with swirling, red and black, Picasso-like murals. Nearby is the Planet Cafe, 3923 N. Lincoln Ave., where customers who show up in pajamas are served free coffee. (Many do, apparently).
There’s also a twin bed between two booths to accommodate those hungry for breakfast in bed. And the whole thing is overseen by an 8-foot replica of the robot from “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
The other noteworthy dramatic enterprise is the Avenue Theatre, a tad farther north at 4223 N. Lincoln, which pioneered adventurous theater in the neighborhood several years ago. The latest offering to play this cozy, intimate space: a live, campy film version of the 20th Century-Fox classic “Valley of the Dolls.”
