Fighting the Blight
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For the last 14 years Raven has staged its plays in a converted storefront at 6931 N. Clark, a few blocks south of Touhy. But two weeks ago Menendian’s landlord notified him that the building might be razed to make way for a new public school. Joe Moore, alderman for the 49th Ward, says that school officials have yet to make a final decision on where to build. But Menendian has wasted no time in scouting other locations around Rogers Park. So far he’s looked at a half dozen spots, but the cost of building out a storefront would be prohibitive for a company whose annual operating budget is only $150,000. “It could run us anywhere from $25,000 to $250,000 to put in all the electrical wiring and air-conditioning,” says Menendian, “and we just don’t have that kind of money. We didn’t start paying our actors until a few years ago.”
Raven Theatre would be a worthy heir to the Wisdom Bridge facility; for nearly 15 years it’s been the model of a professional neighborhood theater. Menendian started the company in 1983 and two years later moved it into the Clark Street storefront, which he was able to convert for $20,000. The theater quickly made a name for itself mounting high-quality productions of new plays like Preston Jones’s A Texas Trilogy. But over the years Raven has shifted its focus to classics and well-known modern plays in order to develop an audience base among less adventurous theatergoers. Raven’s last world premiere, a musical comedy called The Elvis, was a flop with critics and patrons, but three recent revivals–David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, and Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You–ran a combined total of 18 months.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Newberry.
