Many Chicago theater artists face the same dilemma. Is it best to preserve personal artistic integrity and accept the poverty and creative isolation that may result from that choice? Or should one try to become a happily sold-out commodity, crafting a commercial product in the hope of reaching huge audiences and reaping large financial rewards?
You can almost see that dilemma at work in the faces of the actors and directors involved in such ambitious young Chicago companies as Roadworks (currently enjoying being the flavor of the month in Los Angeles) and the Lookingglass Theatre Company, just back from a small national tour of “The Arabian Nights.” Both cursed and blessed by its association with sitcom star David Schwimmer, the talented and accomplished Lookingglass ensemble members come and go from the West Coast, wrestling with their personal and creative goals as they try to to map out a future in a Midwestern city where the troupe does not have its own permnanent home.
So it’s perhaps not surprising that the Lookingglass crowd see themselves reflected in “George,” the troupe’s latest show, which opens Friday at the Theatre Building. Adapted by John McCray from a French novel by Henri Troyat, with a title that roughly translates as “The Dead Seize the Living,” this original work revolves around a mediocre writer who decides to plagiarize a dead man’s manuscript. Propelled into celebrity, the morally challenged writer loses himself in the face of success — even forgetting that the novel was not his own. When his adoring fans want more product (which, of course, he cannot provide), the writer finds himself stuck between honesty and abject failure.
“He ends up on the brink of a difficult choice,” says the director of the production, Shirley Anderson. “Does he want success or himself? And what’s the difference anyway?”
“For many people,” says Anderson, “that’s a big hairy question.”
These days, there are many hairy questions for Lookingglass — an eclectic theater troupe known for its highly physical performance style and fondness for the theatricalization of non-dramatic sources. Top of the list is the question of a home. Co-artistic director David Kersner says that he hopes the company will no longer be itinerant by next season. Nothing has been confirmed, but there are strong indications that Lookingglass may wind up in the new theater complex being built at the corner of Halsted Street and Chicago Avenue.
Kersner is also preoccupied with developing the second year of Lookingglass’ subscription base (250 or so and counting) as well as counting the bills from the tour of “The Arabian Nights” that, although highly successful on the artistic front, did not bring in that much money. “The purpose of the tour really was to gain some national attention so we could strengthen ourselves at home in Chicago,” Kersner says.
That’s one of the paradoxes of a Chicago theater company — sometimes you have to leave town to be accepted in your home as a nationally viable entity. However, most of the Lookingglass originals are still committed to the troupe.
Mary Zimmerman, one of the major creative forces in the troupe who now works often at the Goodman Theatre, will be proposing a new show for Lookingglass’ 10th anniversary season next year. And don’t count out the friendly Schwimmer, whom Kersner says may well be appearing in Lookingglass’ next production, an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot.”
Wouldn’t that be a sell-out, packaging Dostoevsky to sit-com groupies and ringing in the cash at the box office?
Not at all, says Kersner, because Lookingglass cares more about integrity than celebrity, regardless of the cost. “We just try to tell really exciting stories,” Kersner says. “Half of our fun is to keep reinventing ourselves.”
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The company known as LiveEnt is of considerable significance to theater in Chicago, not least because of its commitment to the renovation of the Oriental Theatre, which will become its new permanent Chicago home. Founder Garth Drabinsky has been laying out his development plans for the shows that will follow “Ragtime,” which has opened recently on Broadway and will be coming to Chicago this fall.
“Fosse: A Life in Song and Dance,” a collection of reenactments of the famous choreographer’s work conceived by Richard Maltby Jr., is now slated for Broadway in January 1999. (Although the show will play Boston and one other city this summer, Drabinsky said last week that he has no current plans to bring the piece to Chicago soon.)
Drabinsky is also developing “Pal Joey,” a reexamination of the classic Rodgers and Hart musical (with a new book by Terrence McNally), and “Parade,” an original musical directed by Hal Prince with a book by Alfred Uhry. Then there are a treatment of the Dr. Seuss stories (to be entitled “The Seussical”) and “The Sweet Smell of Success,” an adaptation of the 1957 film that will feature the music of Marvin Hamlisch (and lyrics by Craig Carnelia) and a book by John Guare. Drabinsky (who led a media tour of the Oriental construction site on Monday) says that Nicholas Hytner has just signed on as director of “Sweet Smell,” which is expected to be ready by the year 2000.
So although Drabinsky says that the Oriental Theatre may sometimes house other tenants, it looks like LiveEnt plans to be consistently producing in the historic Chicago venue into the next millennium.
