New Models and the Four Ages
Posted on | November 26, 2008 | 4 Comments
Kris asks – “Do we have too many theatres?” And Adam says, “Only if we’re all trying to do the same thing in the same way, artistically and organizationally.”
The last time I started thinking about this issue, my attempt to get a handle on who, exactly, we are as a community resulted in the Chicago Theater Database. The past year of working on that project has lent me a little perspective and while I don’t have an answer for you, I think I have a better phrasing of the question.
Nick and I want the CTDB to be a non-partisan and non-judgmental tool for theatre artists and enthusiasts, and as such its function and its goal are one and the same – a comprehensive map of the local theatrical landscape. But you can’t spend any amount of time starting into the heart of darkness that is our aggregated numbers and not seriously rethink one’s personal ambitions for a life in Chicago theatre and our collective goals for the community as a whole. So if there’s a “secret agenda” to the CTDB, it’s this: to help us move into the Fourth Age of Chicago Theatre.
Chicago began as a stop along the way west for touring companies – think Jack Langrishe from Deadwood. Chicago’s attraction for these itinerant players grew as the city became larger and more wealthy. A few troupes may have set up shop for longer stays, but our theater was almost exclusively imported and transient – as were our stars, like Joseph Jefferson. The work on the stage, too, was a double-import – productions travelling from the East Coast came West, but were themselves almost always imports of what was popular in Europe. And more often than not, the European playwrights of the period tended to rely on the tried and true method of copying the characters, format and structure of commercially successful predecessors.
Local theaters started growing up here when they started growing up everywhere, with the rise of the Regional Theatre model. Supported by subscribers, they were (and are) a home for local talent and local audiences alike. Founded on a non-profit aesthetic and supported by the subscriber/donor model, Regional Theatre’s noble goal was to establish theatres where no theatre had been before – and it was (and is) a great vehicle for bringing celebrated artists and works to your doorstep. But the “localness” tended not to extend to the work itself – the focus was simply to be theatre in Chicago, not necessarily theatre of Chicago.
This localization set the stage for the next generation, who took access to theatre in their city for granted, and perhaps felt entitled to be part of the artistic conversation. Setting up in church basements and disused commercial and industrial spaces, Storefront Theatre was the next step in a progression from commercially-based to community-based theatre. The work started to reflect local artists more completely – young, visceral and profane artists produced young, visceral and profane plays and performances. Limited budgets meant “intimate” environs and stripped-down stagings. For maybe the first time, the focus was on the work itself, with little thought going into profit or organization. Anybody could do it, and it seemed like everyone was.
Up to this point, we have a pretty compelling generational recreation myth. Regional Theatre rose up like the titans to take the throne of Commercial Theatre, and Storefront Theatre rose to take on Regional Theatre. Of course, this is an oversimplification – there were local troupes back in the 19th Century and touring shows still do big business. But that story really falls apart when you look at where we are today: while our storefront Zeus is slugging it out with our regional Kronos, suddenly Ouranos is back in a big way in the avatar of Broadway in Chicago.
But the allegory breaks down even further: in the Greek creation story, Ouranos, Kronos and Zeus represent huge shifts in values and reflected a fundamental change in the way the world operated. In that context, Steppenwolf – the undisputed hero of the storefront movement – isn’t Zeus, it’s Hercules: a demigod with one foot in a new artistic model of ensemble-driven theatre and the other foot in the non-profit, board-and-subscriber-directed model of regional theatre. And just like the Hercules myth, when Hercules achieved enough, the Olympian gods just up and made Hercules a fully-fledged god like one of them. And just like that, Hercules’ had no one to fight with. I’m not making a value judgment on Steppenwolf’s work at all – I like a lot of it – I’m just saying that if you’ve spent anytime inside the offices (as I have), look at their donor roles, or see that their budget is more than four times the next biggest local non-profit theatre, you have to realize that somewhere along the way they became a Regional Theatre. And so it is with any Storefront Theatre – there is some intangible point where it stops thinking of itself in one way and starts thinking of itself in another way.
And this is where we are today. The storefront movement has thus far failed to become a bonafide transformational model because we have no concept of what defines us beyond “small” and “underfunded.” We have no idea what success looks like for Storefront Theatre that doesn’t involve becoming a Regional Theatre (or, much less likely, a Commercial Theatre). And if you don’t know who you are or what you are trying to achieve, you can’t make the decisions that will take you there.
Look at the models discussed above: before Commercial Theatre became the domain of big, consolidated promoters based in New York, you had tiny stock companies running the length and breadth of the country trying to do exactly one thing: make a living by performing plays. All decisions were geared toward that: costs were kept low. Actors were hired to play “lines of business” – character roles which appeared in almost every play (eg. the romantic lead, the ingenue, the clown, the villain), and they had to buy and maintain their own costumes. Scripts were picked solely for their marketability (and were dropped or retooled if they failed), and companies would have as many as 45 plays ready to perform at a moment’s notice. Design was minimal – you had a forest backdrop, a country home backdrop, and perhaps a cityscape and you used those for whatever was needed. When audiences dwindled, the companies packed up and moved on.
With Regional Theatre, the primary beneficiary is seen as the local community. The aspiration isn’t financial, but a sort of communal spiritual enrichment, reflected in mission statements which promise to “contribute to the social and cultural well being.” Much effort is put into making partnerships with local institutions, swelling subscriber rolls, and producing work that will reflect the values of the theatre’s locality.
If where you end up reflects what you want, the storefront theatre world is a schizophrenic bunch: there are individual success when particular artists go off to get rich and famous – or at least make a living wage – on their own, or organizational success, where the structure which enables theatre to be produced takes on a life of its own, usually separate from the artistic collective which spawned it. Those of us who work within storefront groups have been living in the shadows of commercial and regional titans for too long. We have an opportunity, as
So what is Storefront Theatre? What are its essential qualities? What -if anything – makes it more than just “commercial theatre on a budget” or “regional theatre on a budget”? Everything else starts to follow that – what work do we do, where do we do it, how does the work get done, how do we pay for it? Being honest about where you want to go – personally first, then as part of a group – will help you make decisions that will save a lot of heartache and potentially a lot of time and money. And if we all can take a long look at where we are, who we are, and where we’re going, we might just get started on building what’s next.
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4 Responses to “New Models and the Four Ages”
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November 26th, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
Excellent summation, excellent turning of the question posed by Kris into one that speaks more to me, that compels me to respond…
So what is Storefront Theatre? What are its essential qualities? What -if anything – makes it more than just “commercial theatre on a budget” or “regional theatre on a budget”?
The specificity of this question could sum up if not the entirety of chicago based theatrospherism, at the very least 2 out 3 posts we pick away at our keyboards.
I would not deem to know the answer to this question, but in the hopes of continuing the conversation I offer some potential hypotheticals…
Storefront Theatre is a theatre that has always attempt to exist despite or in direct contradiction to the effect of the market. Even the small little operations that make big bucks for one or two shows a year, still are constantly putting out productions that are either economic risks or appear to be so. The reason behind the risk could be anything from the profane to something marketed as ‘cutting edge’ (a euphemism that has lose its teeth long long ago).
It is possible that once storefront theatre no longer trucks the majority of its wares in the realm of that which is risky due to effects of the market… that at this point it becomes something else… something that eventually will become either commercial or regional or eventually dissipate.
Although equity companies often concede to slum it up in storefronts or warehouses, I think that storefront theatre has a huge traditional of being non-equity or sweat equity. Equity companies eventually want to be in equity houses. Companies that are non-equity love the idea of more numerous and comfortable seating, but for the most part have not as much use for seating over 50 unless a rave review makes its way into the big papers.
But even as I write this down, I am doubtful that many will agree with this assessment of what storefront theatre is. Something that maybe more folks could agree with? storefront theater that happens in a storefront as opposed to a traditional proscenium space. A storefront often has little lobby or sometimes none. A storefront often has folding chairs instead of comforting fabric seats. A storefront might give its audience some sort of thrill at achieving cultural cache, but rarely a class based societal cache that translated to season tickets at the Step or the Goodman. Storefront has no monopoly on quality, but from objective panoramic view surrenders none to other types of theatre either.
Storefront theatre often requires sacrifice on behalf of all involved. The actors and crew who give up time with their families for little of no money… The audience who give up the comfort/convenience of going somewhere where the parking is hard and maybe the seats are hard and maybe the theatre has no heat or no a/c or maybe the bus runs there only until 9ish meaning that anyone who sees a 2 act there has to walk a mile to get to a busstop and wait 30 minutes for a nite owl route.
Why does the artists and audience commit to this? Because they think that they are in for a possible experience that they either can not get or get with less frequency from other media and other non-storefront performance.
Tonight, I think that is what makes storefront theatre different from commercial or regional theatre.
If storefront theatre is a destination for the artist/audience rather than a stop on the way to commercial/regional theatre then…
The storefront is a temporary site/haven/space where a performance occurs that the economic market deems too risky to happen anywhere else.
-Devilvet
November 28th, 2008 @ 11:51 am
Kudos Dan.
November 28th, 2008 @ 6:01 pm
to see this conversation get worked out in a few different directions…
November 29th, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
This post is deeply, deeply, awesome.
It really got me to thinking.
Excellent work.