[NEohioPAL] State of the Theater

[Wolveschewtoy at aol.com]

Ok, I guess I'm going to date myself a bit here.
   Back in the late 50's and early 60's (see- I told you so!)  Theater in 
Chicago was almost non-existent. I worked lighting at Encore Theater  in 
Chicago's Old Town. It was a semi-Professional Theater with a pass from  Equity to  
allow pro's to keep their hand in, so to speak. 
   Just down the block a bit was a fledgling group called Second  City. I'm 
proud to have taken lessons there, but discovered that I wasn't great  at 
improv. Loved her Theater exercises though!
   Encore did Musicals mostly, had a 199 seat theater, and lost a  ton of 
money every year. It closed (sold to the Royal London Wax Museum, and do  I have 
stories about THAT!) in 1967. Towards the end, we began doing reviews of  
about 1 1/2 hours, and were making money. Speaks to peoples attention span, I  
guess! 
   Now to the point. 10 years later, Chicago had a vibrant and  extensive 
Performing Arts presence! I wish I could tell you how it happened, but  I was 
away at school, and then in the Marines. I suggest that anyone serious  about 
improving things here find out a bit more about how that happened. I do  know 
that a lot of small theaters sprung up first, and then larger ones  followed. 
Dinner theater was hugely popular! Something about watching from the  same table 
you ate at, and eating desert during intermission I suppose.
   I have only lived in this area for a few years and thought  that it looked 
like you have a great performing arts community here. I guess  that the main 
challenge is in getting the audience attendance up. My guess  is that bringing 
in students from grade school and middle school is certainly a  great start.
 
   Curtiss



**************The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy 
Awards. Go to AOL Music.      
(http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20080214/e4ac49f6/attachment-0003.htm>