From Chicago: All the World’s a Stage

Around town

This month, Jerald catches us up on a few items you may have missed!

It’s that time of the year again, where we both get to be excited about the upcoming theatre seasons while celebrating the season that was. For us here in Chicago, that means taking a look through this year’s Equity Jeff Award nominations. The Goodman secured 20 nominations for nine productions to lead all area equity theatres, while Mercury Theater Chicago (18 nominations), Marriott theatre (17), Chicago Shakespeare Theater (14), and Drury Lane (14) rounded out the top five.

Some of the nominees for best new work that made their way into our coverage include Levi Holloway’s Turret at A Red Orchid, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s now Broadway-bound Purpose at Steppenwolf, our print story on Nambi E. Kelley’s Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution at Court Theatre, and our Offscript conversation with Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury about Illinoise. You can find full coverage of the nominees from our colleagues at the Sun-Times, Reader, and Tribune. Now, on to news and notes from around the city!

• For the Chicago Reader, Dilpreet Raju wrote about Mud Theatre Project’s work to center voices of those who have been incarcerated. “Prison has a culture of not allowing the guys on the inside to talk about certain things, particularly race and power structures,” Mud Theatre Project founder Brian Beals told Raju.
• WBEZ’s Mike Davis talked to television writer Eli Bauman about how he turned a stint as a Democratic campaign volunteer into the new musical 44: The Obama Musical. “In 2008, Bauman knocked on doors in Nevada as a canvasser,” writes Davis. “Years later, during the Trump campaign in 2016, Bauman decided to pen the musical as a form of artistic escapism.”
• Chris Jones at the Chicago Tribune and Steve Heisler at the Sun-Times spoke with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom about her new stage show at Steppenwolf, Death, Let Me Do My Show, which will soon be a Netflix special. “I think for a lot of [performers], myself included,” Bloom told Heisler, “part of the motivation is about airing trauma and trying to find a mutual weirdness in the world.”
• The Lyric Opera of Chicago has announced John Mangum as its new general director, replacing the retiring Anthony Freud. Mangum, who has been serving as the executive director and chief executive officer of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, will start this fall. Jones at the Chicago Tribune and Kyle MacMillan at the Sun-Time have more. “The big ambitions are to continue to grow in the direction that the company has been growing,” Mangum told the Tribune. “That means maintaining the commitment to world-class opera at the highest possible level while also committing to new works and to growing our audience.”
• In other recent articles for the Tribune, Jones wrote how Paramount Theatre is boosting the fortune of downtown Aurora, Ill., with its new theatre and popular jukebox musical and he provides updates on the construction of TimeLine Theatre’s new Uptown home.
• Over at the Reader, Kimzyn Campbell wrote about how New York Circus Project’s production of Hamlet looked to turn Chicago’s Studebaker Theater into Denmark for a weekend. “Chicago has both a thriving circus and theatre scene,” co-founder Emma Owens told Campbell, “and we wanted to prioritize bringing our show here.”
• For Newcity Stage, Tristan Bruns turned the spotlight on lighting designers, illuminating what goes into these artisans’ work and how times are changing. “When I started in the early 1990s, a typical light plot for an opera would have between six-hundred to a thousand individual lights that had to be focused for each show—that took about 12 hours,” Chris Maravich, lighting designer for the Lyric Opera and lighting supervisor for the Joffrey Ballet, told Bruns. “Now, technology is outpacing everything else.”
• Finally, for the Tribune, Myrna Petlicki looks at how Marriott Theatre’s production of 1776 looks to reflect the U.S. in 2024, starting with curating a cast that looks more like our Congress today than the Congress back then. “It seemed exciting to see those men through the eyes not just of other white men,” director Nick Bowling told Petlicki, “but through the eyes of women and people of color.”

Chicago Chisme

Every month, we check in with Chicago/Midwest theatre artists about what’s getting them out of bed in the morning and keeping them up at night. This summer we’re traveling, reflecting, and continuing to dream big. More below from Walder Platform Award winner Sandra Delgado of La Havana Madrid, plus philanthropy and development expert Carlos García León of Lookingglass Theatre Company.

If you could create theatre in any city, state, or country other than your own, where would you go?

Sandra: Dreaming about Miami, Los Angeles, and London and bringing Latine-centered and music-filled work there.

Carlos: I, of course, always have an affinity to my homeland, Puebla, México. Not that theatre doesn’t exist there, and the theatre I have seen there is truly impressive. It’s more that I wish to be a part of theatre that is welcoming more communities there to have access to art. Finding ways that allow folks, not just those who can afford it, to take time to enjoy the art form. It’s been my experience that my job as a fundraiser is not as vital in México as it is in the States, as the government provides a lot more funding to the arts and culture, but that’s been changing since the pandemic began. Plus to be a part of the incredible culture that México has of storytelling would be phenomenal.

Who is a mentor that has helped you in your career journey so far? What’s the best piece of advice they’ve given you?

Sandra: Without question, Cheryl Lynn Bruce. She directed my first solo show 12 years ago and has been my artistic partner on my musical play La Havana Madrid for seven years and counting. She is full of wisdom, but I’d say I have learned even more by watching her work with actors, designers, and writers. She is gracious, patient, vigorous, brimming with ideas. If she says yes to a project, she is all the way in. And she expects the same of you. If I had to pick a piece of advice, I’d pick her signature sign-off, “Stay strong.”

Carlos: I am blessed to have a couple of mentors in my journey. Joe Peacock now at McCarter Theatre, Ishan Johnson at Boston Lyric Opera, and Carlos Trejo the president of the Chicago Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals: Each has guided me in many aspects of my career. The main takeaways for me have been that, when working towards equity in fundraising, it is always worth taking a risk and never letting the art or those who support the art change your authentic self in this field.

Shoot your shot. What artist or company are you dreaming of working with, or what show are you dreaming of working on? 

Sandra: After experiencing the energy and evolution of La Havana Madrid this past summer, I am dreaming of sharing this slice of 1960s Chicago with New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles. The show’s themes are more relevant than ever, and we all need the joy. 

Carlos: I will admit that I would be a bit star-struck if I were to have any of the telenovela actors I grew up seeing in a show, like Kate del Castillo, Jaime Camil, or Angélica Vale. Personally, I don’t dream of labor and often say that I wish philanthropy would work to end itself. This mostly stems from a problem I have with my profession: the constant reminder to people that the arts matter. Somehow after decades of this field existing, folks need to be convinced year after year, instead of intertwining it with their own beliefs and societal culture. Institutionally, besides the joy of working with a theatre like Lookingglass, I’ve had an affinity for Woolly Mammoth Theatre for all they have done for equity in art.