Professional theaters associated with universities always face a dilemma. Like petulant adolescents, they often want to state their independence. But when they reach maturity, they gain a new appreciation for the old parent. Just like Mom, it can provide support, respect and a fan-base with a lifetime emotional connection. And it usually has all the money.
So it has gone with the Court Theatre, which spent years asserting its identity separate from the University of Chicago. But it’s now looking to come home to an institution it never quite left. “We really want to strengthen our relationship with the university,” says Charles Newell, the artistic director of Court. “Over the last 10 years, there’s been a lot of benign neglect.”
“We see it as a win-win situation for both sides,” says Dawn Helsing, the theater’s newly acquired executive director.
That’s very different rhetoric for a theater that once was very concerned it would be perceived as a student-driven theater. From the Buffalo Theatre Ensemble at the College of DuPage to Pegasus Players at Truman College, that’s something theaters invariably worry about. It’s tough to get professional respect if people think you’re merely a training ground. Audiences are a bit like hospital patients–it’s fine to have students around, but before they spend their hard-earned money, they need to know the salaried staff are in charge.
As the leaders of Court see it, they fought and won that battle years ago. “We’re clearly the professional theater on the campus of the University of Chicago,” says Helsing. After all, the U. of C. doesn’t even have a formal theater department.
The bottom line? In concert with the Smart Museum of Art, Court wants improvements to its physical plant. Maybe that means a shared lobby on the Guthrie-Walker model from Minneapolis. Maybe it means an expansion to its current theater. Maybe it means a whole new building altogether.
Court has a case. With only 250 seats–and no fly or wing space–in its theater, Court is tiny by the standards of major non-profit regional institutions. And when it has a hit show–such as the current arresting, counter-intuitive version of “Man of La Mancha”–that means people get turned away on Friday and Saturday nights.
Worse yet, there’s no outside scene shop and limited costume facilities. That means sets have to be built on stage, during which no show can take place in the theater. Ergo, Court is chronically under-used.
Regular visitors to Court also will notice that since the new U. of C. parking garage has been built on the corner of West 55th Street and Ellis Avenue, the newly obscured Court Theater has lost a lot of its visual pop. These days, you can walk right by it and not notice a theater.
Clearly, something needs to be done to make the arts more visible in that corner of Hyde Park.
Not so long ago, of course, Court was spending most of its time talking about expanding outside Hyde Park–maybe even leaving Hyde Park for a downtown location.
Newell says that “it doesn’t have to be an `either-or'” and he points out that Court’s past foray with “My Fair Lady” to the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts exposed the theater to a whole new audience. Later this month, Court is presenting the Mabou Mines performance group in concert with the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Still, Court is talking more and more about Hyde Park–and the surrounding areas on the South Side–and joining the university to bring in guest artists, involve students, create new programs and build the university audience. Much planning is under way. And much chatting about a new theater. Of some stripe.
It makes excellent sense. Hyde Park is the rare kind of place willing to support, say, a heady production of something by Buchner or Euripides.
That is very much what Newell says he wants to do: “taking a strong aggressive look at classical texts.” Such shows tend mainly to attract only serious fans of the performing arts.
And while Hyde Park invariably presents some tough geographic barriers to people who reside on the North Side, they’ll find their way there. If the shows are really worth their while.
And if Court were to produce something soon by Harold Pinter–the newest Nobel laureate–there might well be some of his peers in the audience. There aren’t many theaters that could say that.
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cjones5@tribune.com
