Art by Monet Cogbill.
It still feels a bit surprising that this year was my first year attending an in-person TCG National Conference. When I joined American Theatre originally back in 2020, that year’s annual conference followed all other theatre programming during the early days of the pandemic and moved online. When the 2022 conference in Pittsburgh rolled around, I was off on my adventure covering Seattle theatre. Still, having been around the planning for both of those conferences, and knowing that this year’s conference was to be hosted by my favorite theatre town and home of Chicago, I thought I knew what I was in for.
I was wrong.
My impulse is to call the three-day conference sprawling, but that might be a wild understatement. In any given month, I may wind up at Chicago Shakespeare’s theatre on Navy Pier, or way up north at Writers Theatre, or way down south at Court, or I may attend shows or events at any number of venues, like the Den, the Understudy, the Fine Arts Building, Steppenwolf, or Goodman. That is to say, on any given month, I may wind up all over the city. In just three days, June 20-22, conference attendees had the chance to visit all of those and more, packing in a slew of conference sessions, plenaries, site visits, and performances.
We anticipated this widespread scattering, and accordingly attempted to help folks out by providing a bit of a pre-conference guidebook for those coming into town. For one piece, I reached out to a few artists for a fun look at some folks whose work was onstage during the conference, giving a bit of insight for anyone looking to decide what to see while in town. We also commissioned two pieces from local journalists to help conference attendees and visitors to Chicago get to know the city and local theatre scene a bit better. First, WBEZ theatre reporter Mike Davis introduced readers to the city, giving his perspective on what stands out about Chicago as a recent transplant from Seattle. Then critic and journalist Emily McClanathan provided a thorough neighborhood guide, venturing to capture as much of the robust offerings Chicago has on tap as possible for any folks looking to more deeply explore Chicago’s numerous neighborhoods.
Looking back, I’m not sure how much time folks wound up having to implement learnings from any of those articles, perhaps instead filing away the information for future return trips to the city. Once the conference started, it was jam-packed. I spent my Friday (Day 2) of the conference mainly at the Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago. Every session I attended was overflowing, with one session on exploring models of administrative collaboration, “Beyond the Co-Pro” hosted by Kate Piatt-Eckert, leaving a number of folks huddled in the doorway and hallway outside craning their necks to listen in. It’s so incredibly inspiring for my first in-person TCG conference to feel that energy—that eagerness to learn and evolve, especially when it can be so easy to look around at the field and feel like the industry has ground its feet in the old ways.
Which leads me to perhaps my main takeaway from the conference, a thought that’s been lingering with me in the days since the conference ended: Exactly how are we educating for the future of our field?
I started thinking about this during my first session of the conference, “Mentor’s Project for Designers and Technicians,” an idea-exchanging session seeking to explore how to bring early- and mid-career designers and technicians into organizations at a time when budgets are leading to fewer assistant positions and increasingly exhausted senior staff shouldering more of the work, amid pressure to continue to deliver pre-pandemic quality and scale in a vastly different world. In addition to fascinating arguments for theatres making more concerted efforts to engage more with their local community of artisans, especially with a younger generation interested in hyper-local work that isn’t necessarily tied to major cities, a point was made about how we educate these early-career artisans—or rather, a point about what is missing from that education.
You can look at degree programs that teach the art, how to become a scenic, lighting, costume, props, or what-have-you designer. But when it comes time for those folks to take on more responsibility, say become a technical director or shop head, where exactly is the leadership training for them? So much theatre education focuses on the art, and rightly so, but when artists are thrust into leadership positions, who is teaching them the basics? Does it just fall on the shoulders of the already tired vets in institutional buildings? What about those who are asked to lead without the institution around them, like so many in the Chicago storefront community, who put on that artistic director hat with their friends and years later find themselves with much more responsibility than they anticipated?
These questions continued to percolate during a session on rethinking play selection called “Every Production Is a Moonshot.” Moonshot is a case study-based project that took five Chicago companies and looked at how they made their season selections. It was notable that the Moonshot team said that four of the five theatres didn’t have any documented process for selecting plays, and indeed sometimes it can feel (especially from an outside perspective) like theatre seasons are chosen based on an artistic director’s taste, with cost and popularity and capability somehow mystically factored in. Moonshot was an effort to solidify things, resulting in these theatres now having documentation they can show to their board to explain exactly how the season is selected, who is involved, and how season selections align with the theatre’s values. It’s so fantastic to see these theatres have this opportunity, but I have to ask: Who teaches new artistic directors or early- or mid-career artists who may be starting their own companies about how season selection should work?
I found so much of the conference to be inciting, inspiring, and informative. But if you want to know my honest takeaway, I’m more full of questions than answers—and that’s okay. I came away with a renewed desire to see the industry care for the folks who will rise through the ranks over the next decade. How are you providing for that marketing associate or development associate, making sure they don’t just learn the set-in-stone ways of your company, but are being trained in the best new ideas and techniques? These are the folks who you hopefully will promote in the future, and if we want this industry to move forward, we need to make sure they’re being educated, and not just by the in-house staff that’s already working itself to the bone.
If you were unable to attend the conference, HowlRound has a growing collection of recordings from the weekend. If you’re short on time, I selfishly encourage you to check out the conversation between multi-hyphenate arts journalists, including our own Gabriela Furtado Coutinho and TCG Rising Leaders of Color Amanda L. Andrei and afrikah selah, alongside Regina Victor and Adrienne Brown. American Theatre also hosted a Theatre Futures conversation with theatre leaders Martine Kei Green-Rogers, Jocelyn Prince, PennyMaria Jackson, and Charlique Rolle sitting down with Ford Foundation’s Lane Harwell to envision the future of theatre. Both conversations can be found on HowlRound.
As for us, our conference coverage isn’t done yet. You can follow our continuing coverage of the conference, including additional reflections on conference sessions, on our 2024 National Conference home page.
Now See This
In addition to warmer weather, July is bringing with it the return of the Physical Theater Festival, now reaching its 11th edition. The festival, running July 13-21 in Chicago, offers nine days of international, contemporary, visual, and physical theatre, with award-winning work coming to town from Brazil, France, the U.K., and Mexico, alongside other national and local performances, workshops, and more. Below you’ll find a teaser for Macacos, a performance from Brazil by Clayton Nascimento, who brings a heartbreaking history of slavery, prejudice, exclusion, and violence to the stage.
Around Town
Gabriela catches us up on a few items you may have missed!
This summer is wildly hot and busy, making well-curated festivals one of the best ways to pack in your theatre. Founded and led by Alice da Cunha and Marc Frost, the 11th annual Physical Theater Festival is sure to be a hit, with last year’s shows reaching 90 percent total capacity. Even with so many feasts for the senses brought by the artists, da Cunha, Frost, and I agreed, looking at the upcoming festival, that we’re most excited to listen to the audience. “It gives us fuel,” da Cunha told me.
- Looking around at our recent American Theatre coverage, late last month we published a conversation I had with the Playwrights’ Center’s new producing artistic director, Nicole Watson, about the state of new-play development and letting process lead the way.
- Now online from our Spring issue, reporter Crystal Paul covered La Liga Teatro Elástico’s visit to Chicago as part of the Chicago International Puppet Festival. Her story covers how La Liga worked with local Chicagoans to create a collaborative, community-focused production of La Bestias Danzan or The Beast Dance, a puppet-beast ritual, dance, and story celebrating the role of the wolf in the natural ecosystem.
- Jerald Raymond Pierce spoke with playwright Joshua Allen as he returned to Chicago to stage the world premiere of The Prodigal Daughter, the third installment of his Grand Boulevard Trilogy set on the South Side of Chicago.
- TCG has announced the 2024 Rising Leaders of Color cohort, featuring six early-career Chicago-based theatre leaders: India Nicole Burton, Nora Carroll, Tiffany Fulson, Jamal Howard, Willow James, and Sierra Rosetta. Through June 2025, they will participate in professional development workshops, events, and meetings.
- For WBEZ Chicago, Mike Davis analyzed how the Illinois performing arts sector is “slowly staging a comeback” from the pandemic. With jobs not yet back to pre-pandemic levels, Davis looked at the economic impact of climbing back up, mid-size organizations struggling, and the Illinois Arts Council shifting funding models to ensure more flexibility in spending grants.
- In a feature on the now-iconic costumes in Six, Chicago Sun-Times writer Stefano Esposito spoke with 2022 Tony-winning designer Gabriella Slade, who Esposito said “researched Tudor architecture, stained-glass windows, and portraits (very little original clothing remains from the period)” and synthesized modern pop queen looks.
- On June 7, an exciting jazz opera came to Hamilton Park, celebrating Paul Robeson’s global impact, wrote Erica Thompson in the Sun-Times. Created by Lasana Kazembe and composed by Ernest Dawkins, multimedia production Paul Robeson: Man of the People made its debut on May 31 at the Cabaret in Indianapolis.
- Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones penned a pre-Tonys piece on the “guessing game” for best musical, the derivative nature of some pieces, and this year’s snubs. Said Jones, “It’s a great shame that (Maria) Friedman’s brilliant conceit for Merrily will almost certainly beat out Jessica Stone, the director of Water for Elephants and an artist who forged the best ensemble performance of the entire season.”
- Several beloved Chicago actors have been booking big national tours! Most recently, Larry Yando, known for his Scrooge at Goodman Theatre’s annual A Christmas Carol (as well as a number of classical roles around town), has been cast as the scathing Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
- We’re seeing some Chicago companies restructuring and parting ways with longtime collaborators. Chicago Shakespeare recently told the Tribune, “Leadership shared with board and staff a restructure of several areas of the theatre to position CST for its future,” resulting in “several changes to roles and responsibilities, including the elimination of the Creative Producer position,” a role formerly occupied by 20-year CST leader Rick Boynton.
- In a Chicago Reader roundup, Kerry Reid shared insights on this year’s Rhino Fest (running until June 30) and the return of Erin Kilmurray’s the Function (which ran through June 14). “The Rhino ‘24 is the biggest ever because in some ways we are still responding to the pandemic,” Curious Theatre Branch co-founder Jenny Magnus told the Reader. “We set ourselves to try and include as many productions as possible.” This time, that means six venues in six neighborhoods will present over 50 performances.
- In a Reader profile of About Face, Reid wrote, “New work and adaptations have been a hallmark of the company through several artistic directors.” Said founding co-artistic director Kyle Hall, the company’s name and mission reflected calls for “a turning of the tide—changing perceptions and the direction of discourse by, of, and about queer lives and experiences.”
- Otherworld Theatre’s newest fantasy, Garters: A Queer Immersive Romantasy Play, “boils down to two long-lost friends trying to figure out who they are, either to each other, or to the Court, or to themselves,” said lead performer Kira Nutter in Matt Simonette’s piece for the Reader. An intimacy director themself, Nutter shared working with the show’s intimacy director Becca Schwartz has been a generative experience.
- For the Chicago Reader, Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel interviewed Esho Rasho, a Chicago-based actor and writer whose new solo play, Dummy in Diaspora, ran at the Den earlier this month. “I feel like, especially in my adolescent years, I was witnessing my life like it was an art piece,” Rasho told Mikhaiel. “It’s kind of cringey to say, but I think that’s how Dummy in Diaspora came about.”
- Sandra Treviño, in the Reader, reported on the transformative work of Water People Theater to teach young students broadcasting and journalism. “Through games and theatrical dynamics, we reinforce human values, social values, responsibility with our community, respect for others, respect for ourselves, and the importance of information and truth,” Rebeca Alemán, Water People Theater founder and executive director, told the Reader. The students’ first news program, NOTICIAS KIDS News, premiered on June 8.
- In NewCity Stage, Sharon Hoyer previewed Chicago Tap Theatre’s Can You Hear Us Now—the Queer Tap Dance Revolution, which ran earlier this month. “It was not really seeing myself as a non-binary queer person in the tap world as a kid and wanting to create that visibility for other tap dancers,” Chicago Tap Theatre associate director Molly Smith told Hoyer.
- Also in NewCity, Tristan Bruns highlights Chicago company Gender Fucked Productions, a nonprofit producing performances, programs, and workshops for queer and trans artists. “We knew that the name would get that point across,” founder and artistic director Dawn Heilung told NewCity. “Plus, in the community, a lot of people use that language to talk about their art, or their drag, or their life, or to express their feelings.”
- Over in Detroit, SaMya Overall writes in Outlier Media about Wayne State University’s 148 theatre students. Though they’re less than one percent of the student body, Wayne State seems invested in the future of these students, with a state-of-the-art theatre opening last year, complete with a 3,200 square foot stage.
- Detroit is also in the midst of its own busy theatre times this week, with GhostLight Arts Initiative’s inaugural Detroit Impact Arts Conference (through June 26), which features a keynote speech from Dominique Morisseau, fresh off her TCG conference closing plenary appearance. Immediately following the conference will be the fourth annual Obsidian Theatre Festival (June 27-30) showcasing Black stories and storytelling in the city. Sydney Waelchli and WDET have more information on both events here.
Chicago Chisme
Every month, Jerald and Gabriela 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 Anna Rogelio Joaquin, an artist and educator working as the school programs manager at the Goodman, and Aileen Wen McGroddy, co-artistic director of Chicago’s TUTA Theatre and director of Martin Crimp’s Attempts On Her Life (through July 14).
If you could create theatre in any city, state, or country other than your own, where would you go?
Anna: Escola de Teatro Popular in Brazil comes to mind. Their work is so fiercely rooted in coalition building and popular education.
Aileen: I would want to create theatre in Taiwan, to give myself the opportunity to fully live and work in a language that I spoke as a child but has eroded as an adult. My family there has never seen my work, and I would love the chance to share this version of myself with them while learning about a different ecology of live performance.
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?
Anna: I could fill a library with advice I treasure from Kelly Howe, but one career-related gem of hers I think of often is to focus less on the nouns of what you want to be and focus more on the verbs of what you want to be doing. The two are sometimes—but not always—aligned.
Aileen: I assistant-directed and movement-directed with TUTA’s founder Zeljko Djukic on several shows. His work is relentless in its pursuit of precise point of view through work with text, physicality, music, design, everything. I learned from him that each hour of rehearsal requires an hour of director prep, and that getting “off book” as a director allows you to truly be in the moment with your collaborators.
Shoot your shot. What artist or company are you dreaming of working with, or what show are you dreaming of working on?
Anna: I would enjoy collaborating with fellow Fil-Am artists at CIRCA-Pintig one day. They’re currently gearing up for the inaugural Chicago Filipino American Theatre Festival, and I hope to write about it!
Aileen: I have been brewing up an aggressive version of The Music Man for the past few years. In the last scene, under threat of violence, a con man conducts the worst children’s band we have ever seen, but the townspeople love it and make it their own. This piece is a perfect exploration of the willful delusion of Americana, with a dose of nostalgia to make it all go down easy. Any takers?
