PROTECTING SMALL THEATERS

December 21, 2003

Chicago Tribune

What's in store for small theaters?

Michael Phillips, Tribune theater critic.

It's a fact of Chicago cultural life. You can't pass an empty storefront in this town without thinking: "Wow. I'd love to see a play in there." There's a place for rent like that in my neighborhood, in between the dance studio and the coffee shop. There may be one in yours.

As the off-Loop theater scene emerged in recent decades, audiences got used to seeing Chekhov in a former grocery store, Lillian Hellman in a converted brake shop and improvisational comedy in an ex-bakery. They got used to it, and got to love it. Chicago is not alone in this regard. But among major American theater centers, it is supreme. Storefront theater -- some of it up to city code, a lot of it not -- helped make Chicago what it is today. It is a theater capital borne of a sense of unlikely but widespread possibility.

Years from now, 2003 may be remembered as a year not unlike 1999, a year in which the city cracked down, hard, on small theaters operating without a license. Fine. Inarguable. A theater must be in compliance with the city's municipal licensing code. Though plenty of city laws fall under the category of "selective enforcement," no producer can justify whining when the enforcers pay a visit.

But getting up to code is another matter. According to just about everyone who has produced in this town, from folks straight out of graduate school to distinguished, necktie-wearing administrators, the process appears designed to prevent storefront theaters from ever opening at all.

Unless the city streamlines the process by which a small theater can open its doors legally and affordably, 2003 may be remembered as the year the pendulum swung too far -- and Chicago theater never quite recovered in full.

"We all started at storefronts," says Second City executive producer Kelly Leonard. "We have to maintain the legacy of storefront theater in Chicago. But in addition to making sure the theaters are safe, and sanctioned properly by the city, we have to get the city to realize this is a different form of entertainment. And it needs to have its own set of rules and permits governing it."

Cash machines

According to the advocacy-minded League of Chicago Theatres' figures, live theater in Chicago generated $347 million in total economic impact in 2002. (The League's study was co-commissioned by the Illinois Arts Alliance Foundation.) That's a lot of money. And that's another reason to take seriously this matter of how easy, or difficult, it is for a new theater to get going.

This year's biggest theater story wasn't a theater story at all. It was a nightclub story. The Feb. 17 fire at the miserably overcrowded club E2, in which 21 people died in a stampede for the exit, spurred city inspections conducted by various departments all over town.

On Nov. 21 a slew of North Side Chicago theaters got zapped in a mighty public way. That night, a Friday, Department of Revenue inspectors hit three dozen establishments -- all kinds, a Laundromat, a bowling alley and nearly two dozen addresses DOR officials believed to be active theaters. Most of them weren't. Many had been closed for years, or weren't performance venues at all. They were business offices, in no need of a license.

Five theaters were issued Cease and Desist orders that night. TimeLine Theater, Playground Improv Theater, Artistic Home and Profiles were found to be operating without a Public Place of Amusement license, or PPA.

A fifth theater, WNEP, had what the city refers to as a counterfeit license on the wall, and has vacated its rental space. (Playground Improv is moving into the old WNEP space at 3209 N. Halsted St.)

Heavy-handed approach?

Many in the theater community wonder: Why the Friday night shutdowns?

"I don't understand the theatrics," says Artistic Home's director Kathy Scambiatterra. "I mean, what's wrong with a 30-day notice?"

League of Chicago Theaters executive director Marj Halperin concurs. "Shutting theaters down on a Friday night, in the middle of a performance -- what does that accomplish?"

The deal, according to DOR officials, is this: a 30-day notice is generally slapped on license-holders who may be out of compliance on some code issues. Cease and Desist Orders are issued when there's no PPA on the wall. At present the city has 395 up-to-date PPA operations, including clubs, theaters and banquet halls.

But there's a larger issue, Halperin says. "The licensing and code compliance process is confusing, convoluted and cumbersome. It actually serves to deter compliance, and therefore deter safety. Make no mistake: If you run a business, and your business is a theater, you are responsible for following the law and having your venue safe for the public.

"However, at some point when you have a process you can't figure out -- and repeated calls to the city and trips to the various departments and months, if not years, of effort don't bring you the answer -- then what do you do?"

Sense of fear

Maybe you don't stay. Artistic Home co-founder John Mossman, who is married to Scambiatterra, warns that "a sense of fear permeates the entire theater community now, and local actors leave much easier for L.A. than they used to. And while the Chicago community there speaks fondly and with nostalgia about their time here, they ain't coming back. They are aware that it is not nearly the hospitable place it once was. . . . You need to be a huge risk-taker and have a lot of dough to start up a theater these days.

"And that is a rare combination in our community."

Talk to a city alderman or two and you'll likely get a sympathetic, even passionate argument for the value of storefront theater. Ald. Helen Shiller (46th), is one such advocate. She is working on clarifying the language attached to the so-called Theatrical Community Center license, or TCC, designed for small non-profit companies. For years, according to various producers around town who have tried (and failed) to get clarification on permit requirements from the city's Department of Revenue, a fledgling theater producer might hear from Revenue that she needs both a TCC and a PPA, or just one of the two.

The answer, for the record, is: One of the two.

"If we don't do better," Shiller says of laying out small-theater permit requirements, "then we basically make it impossible to do that kind of business."

Inherent conflict

Shiller says there is an "inherent conflict" within the city regulatory code when it comes to storefront theater. "We have the Department of Revenue serving as the regulatory department, doing the enforcement. But they're also the licensing department." So who's going to truly facilitate neighborhood theaters? Who will help them get up and running properly, when the same city department is getting heat from on high to crack down in the wake of E2?

Here's what DOR Director Bea Reyna-Hickey has to say.

First of all, she says, the Nov. 21 inspections "weren't about `interpretation' of the law." The theaters involved didn't have a current license, if they ever had one at all.

She acknowledges that the League of Chicago Theaters delivered to the DOR for approval a handbook titled "Safe, Legal and Licensed." Halperin and her colleagues intend the handbook to aid new and newly code-compliant theaters in determining what's needed to produce in a storefront or some other space. Halperin says she is waiting for Revenue officials to get back to her. In fact she has been waiting for months, and has now hired consultants to help get the thing through city channels and into the hands of the theaters.

Reyna-Hickey says "the city is exploring" some of the League's suggestions for streamlining the permit and licensing process. She's quick to add, however, that she "can't imagine any changes in the code" relating to Buildings, Electrical, Fire, Police, Plumbing and Ventilation in order to accommodate storefront theater activity -- especially in the post-E2 era.

Reyna-Hickey has heard the process isn't easy. But "the reality is, there are dozens of theaters operating that have been able to pass the code," she says. She notes also, somewhat wearily, that the PPA license fee paid by a theater "doesn't begin to cover the cost of the multiple inspections by various departments."

Getting back on track

Meantime the theaters shuttered Nov. 21 are working toward reopening in the new year. TimeLine Theatre managing director Brian Voelker, whose production of "The Lion in Winter" closed three weeks ahead of schedule because of the Nov. 21 shutdown, has a Revenue caseworker who, he says, is "quite wonderful." With the help of Ald. Tom Tunney (44th), he says, TimeLine's scheduled February production of "Paragon Springs," directed by William Brown, may yet open on schedule, in the space TimeLine has been renting for four years, the Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ.

"This location really helped us take off," Voelker says. "We're doing everything we can to make sure we stay here." Getting into compliance may cost up to $10,000, he says, for items such as a firewall and an additional exit.

Artistic Home is working toward getting licensed in time for its originally scheduled February opening of two J.M. Synge one-acts at its West Irving Park Road theater. "I'd love to have an attorney going through the PPA process with us," Scambiatterra says, "but we're tapped out. We're still paying for the zoning attorney."

WNEP has moved its shows over to the Lakeshore Theater on North Broadway. One offering, opening in January, is a play called "Bad Judgement Day." WNEP head Don Hall says it concerns "a church being shut down by the city for safety violations. And then it goes through a series of highly dubious and unethical fundraising efforts to stay alive."

Then he adds: "Good timing, huh?"

An opportune moment

Such is the mood, a little jocular and a little panicky, on the small theater circuit in December 2003 in Chicago. The theaters not presently in compliance have a decision to make. They can go straight, which may not be easy or cheap, but it's the only acceptable route in the eyes of the City of Chicago. Or they can continue to wing it, like so many storied theaters of old, and hope for the best.

The City of Chicago has an opportunity as well. Under Mayor Richard Daley the city has spent millions, wisely, on the notion that live theater is an excellent thing, one of the great aspects of Chicago life. Much of that money has been spent on the big guys, the well-established institutional theaters with national profiles.

But Daley is smart enough to realize what he has underneath all that. The city's diverse neighborhoods are immeasurably better for its storefront theaters. Unless Daley and company want to cut the theater scene off at the knees, the city would be well advised to consider proposals for treating, licensing and inspecting storefronts a little differently. Not less safely, just less adversarially.

From his perch at the Goodman Theatre, which might be called the anti-storefront, executive director Roche Schulfer agrees. "It would be great if the city could sit down and figure out a way to codify public safety and permitting issues in storefronts. These places are a critical part of the artistic life of Chicago. That's the truth." And they don't hurt business at the nearby Cuban restaurant, or coffee bar, or watering hole, either.

If the city takes the long view on this, years from now the pendulum will have righted itself. Years from now, someone dreaming of the next Steppenwolf will walk down a street, spy a "For Rent" sign in a particularly promising window, and think to himself. "Wow. I'd love to do a play in there."

And then do one.

Copyright © 2003 Chicago Tribune Company