Chicago is rife with shows that tie neatly into Pride celebrations this weekend.
Just to name a few, there are comedy revues (GayCo's Swallow Your Pride, The Octavarius' Dungeons and Drag Queens, The Neo-Futurists' 30 Queer Plays in 60 Straight Minutes, iO Improv's Qweirdo), confessionals (the Annoyance Theatre's Don't Act Like a Girl, Glitterati Productions and Pride Films and Plays' The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me), musicals (About Face Theatre and American Theater Company's Rent, Hell in a Handbag Productions' Sexy Baby, Annoyance Theatre's Steamwerkz The Musical) and so-called "straight plays" (Immediate Family at the Goodman Theatre, The Glass Menagerie at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre.)
However, one show that might slip under most LGBT Pride radars is Route 66 Theatre's world-premiere musical Next Stop. One reason is because Next Stop was scheduled to only play four performances (the final two take place June 25 and 26 at Theater Wit.) Another is the way the show is billed.
Next Stop is described as a Chicago-centric show featuring short plays by six Chicago-area playwrights that were later transformed into mini-musicals by composer/lyricist Diana Lawrence. The show starts with a Greyhound bus escape to Chicago, followed by subsequent stories taking place near different CTA El train stops.
"We were big fans of singer-songwriter Diana Lawrence," said Next Stop director and instigator Erica Weiss, who hoped Lawrence would work again with Route 66 after they previously teamed so well behind the scenes on the musical High Fidelity. Luckily Lawrence was also equally keen to collaborate with Route 66 after seeing its acclaimed 2011 production of Caitlin Montanye Parrish's A Twist of Water that Weiss directed.
Parrish sent Lawrence a short play about two teenage women talking about their idealized dream wedding just to see how she might be inspired. To Weiss and Parrish's delight, Lawrence quickly transformed the script into a musical, even though she had never really written a musical before.
"We just loved it," Weiss said. "But it was a short musical and we weren't really sure where we would go from there."
Weiss then got the idea of teaming Lawrence with other Chicago-affiliated playwrights like Alice Austen and Brett Neveu to create more mini-musicals to appear with Parrish's piece. Weiss sent out a CD of Lawrence's music to each playwright and asked them to find inspiration from it for a 10-minute play apiece.
Although Weiss didn't plan it, Next Stop turned out to have plenty of gay characters and content.
"We were completely open to any kind of subject matter," Weiss said, though she did advise the authors to keep the cast size small for each play. "Write whatever you want and we'll find the string to tie them all together."
The writing talent also included LGBT playwrights like Ike Holter and Alex Lubischer (who is also a contributing writer to Windy City Times), while Aaron Carter (who is also a literary manager at Steppenwolf Theatre) contributed a play about the downfall of a closeted conservative politician.
When asked why Next Stop was playing such a short run, Weiss replied that at the moment Route 66 was focused on putting the majority of its resources toward its planned off-Broadway restaging of A Twist of Water in New York later this year.
"We like to think of this really as the first step for what we would like to produce more fully later on," said Weiss in the capacity as Route 66's associate artistic director. "We decided to call this an 'in-town out-of-town opening,' as a kind-of first step toward realizing something more fully—just to give audiences a glimpse of Diana as a musical theater composer."
Route 66 Theatre's Next Stop finishes its brief run at 7:30 p.m. June 25 and 26 at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets are $25. Call 773-975-8150 or visit www.route66theatre.org for more information.
Critical convergence
Theater reviewers and writers from across the country recently gathered in Chicago for the annual regional conference of the American Theatre Critics Association.
From June 12 to 17, these writers took in shows at the Goodman Theatre, TimeLine Theatre, Black Ensemble Theater, Lookingglass Theatre and Theater Wit. There were also meetings, award presentations (playwrights Darren Canady and Caridad Svich were respectively given the Osborne and Primus awards) and panel discussions with distinguished guests.
One such panel, titled "Diversity at the Top," was moderated by Footlights Chicago managing editor Myrna Petlicki and featured artistic directors Chay Yew (Victory Gardens Theater), Bonnie Metzgar (About Face Theatre) and Lili-Anne Brown (Bailiwick Chicago) all talking about their roles, responsibilities and challenges running their respective organizations.
Although the panel was focused on the lack of women and minority leaders of major arts institutions, questions from the critics also brought up topics like the difficulty of attracting minority audiences to become regular theatergoers and the still sometimes controversial practice of colorblind casting.
But what was really illuminating for Chicago theatergoers was a question from conference host and fellow Windy City Times critic Jonathan Abarbanel about how each of the panelists was coping with his or her relatively recent appointments to the top of their organizations.
Metzgar mentioned how she still feels perceived as a bit of an outsider as a former New Yorker, while Brown mentioned that some of her decisions were challenged with a "that's not the way we've done that before" response—despite the fact that Bailiwick Chicago is still a relatively young company and that she was promoted up from the inside.
The panelist all agreed on Yew's assessment that change is difficult, but ultimately necessary if each of their organizations wanted to thrive and grow into the future.
