Go With What They Know Northlight
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Theatre’s artistic director, B.J. Jones, may have hit upon a strategy that will pull the company out of its $200,000 deficit. Under his predecessor, Russell Vandenbroucke, Northlight concentrated on untested new work, but with Jones at the helm the company has presented more high-profile plays, includ-ing Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive and David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood, which opened this week. Acquiring Broadway and off-Broadway properties with a substantial buzz usually requires a greater financial investment than presenting new work, but in one case the strategy has paid off handsome-ly: Northlight’s critically acclaimed 1998 production of Master Class, the Terrence McNally play about opera legend Maria Callas, generated more single-ticket sales than Vandenbroucke’s entire last season, and managing director Richard Friedman predicts that total ticket revenue from Jones’s first season will top $1 million, up from $700,000 last year.
SweetCorn Ripe for a Move
Live Bait Theater wants to construct a second stage in the south space of its building near Clark and Irving Park. The room has housed a succession of cafes, but Sharon Evans, artistic director for Live Bait, says the company frequently hears from artists and small theater companies who need a 40- to 50-seat venue (the main stage seats about 70). Evans says Live Bait would have to rely on grants to cover most or all of the build-out expenses. “It would cost us about $40,000 to do the job right,” she explains. “Plus we might have more overhead to run a second stage.” The compa-ny hopes to know within a few weeks whether the fund-ing will materialize; plans call for the space to be ready this fall.
