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Archive, gallery, library, study center, museum... however you picture the place, Chicago's performing arts community needs somewhere to celebrate its past, anchor its present and envision its future. Richard Christiansen, former Chief Critic for the Chicago Tribune, was the first to articulate this need in an essay published in the Tribune last March. In an interview on this week's Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast, he elaborates on that vision.
Christiansen's Tribune essay elicited an enthusiastic response from others, including Columbia College production coordinator, Jason Epperson, who is leading the charge to make this a reality. Epperson has formed an entity, the Chicagoland Theater and Dance Foundation, which now has an impressive advisory board and a website (www.chicagoperformingarts.org).
Last month, with the help of members of his advisory board, including publicist Cathy Taylor and journalist Albert Williams, Epperson organized a forum for interested theatre professionals. Some 40 members of Chicago's theatre community, including representatives of the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, the Newberry Library, and the Chicago Public Library Collections Division, gathered at the Mercury Theatre for a lively exchange.
A number of those who spoke mentioned as models both the London Theatre Museum, which recently came under the umbrella of the Victoria and Albert Museum; and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which is housed in Lincoln Center. I thought a closer look at those two institutions might help focus the discussion as our community imagines a Chicago equivalent.
In London, the recently-closed London Theatre Museum will reopen in March 2009 as the Theatre and Performing Arts Galleries at the Victoria and Albert. Exhibits there will explore "the process of performance, from the initial conception, through the design and development stages, to audiences' reactions." There will be a section on costume design that displays design drawings and actual costumes, and another on set design that displays models, sketches and stage props. Production photographs and archival footage of well-known performers and productions will be housed at the museum, as well as original posters, playbills, theatrical prints and paintings. The museum also produces lectures, workshops and demonstrations - such as a demonstration of stage make-up. Most important to theatre artists is the National Video Archive of Performance, which is a collection of 200 video-recordings documenting important productions in London since 1992. This is the place where researchers (with a letter of reference) can view video-recordings of such performers as Dame Judi Dench in David Hare's Amy's View, as I did memorably some years ago.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts houses an extensive collection of circulating, research and rare archival materials, including the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT). TOFT has been making video-recordings of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theatre productions going back to 1970. Unlike a museum, the Library collection does not include three-dimensional objects such as costumes or set models. But the available materials are nonetheless impressive and useful. As the Library's website exclaims, "a user can examine a 1767 program for a performance of Romeo and Juliet in Philadelphia, study Edwin Booth's letters to his daughter, review the working script for Orson Welles African-American Macbeth, study costume designs from the film Anna and the King of Siam, analyze a videotape of A Chorus Line, or read scripts from current television hits." The library also sponsors lectures and discussions.
So what might a Chicago performing arts library/museum/center look like? A gallery displaying puppets by Michael Montenegro and Blair Thomas, or set designs by Kevin Hagen, Todd Rosenthal and Brian Bembridge? Digital copies of notes from Hubbard Street Dance choreographers, or the letters of Georg Solti, or John Malkovich's script for True West? Videotapes of performances from around the city? A collection of unpublished scripts written by Chicago playwrights or produced by Chicago theatres? Photographs from 1950s jazz clubs? Playbills from the 1960s? Architectural drawings for Chicago Shakespeare Theatre or the renovation of Orchestra Hall into Symphony Center? A space for lectures and panel discussions: David Cromer discussing the evolution of his concept for Our Town, or a panel of musicians from Baroque Band demonstrating the differences between period and modern instruments?
What can we imagine? What can we make happen?
Anne Nicholson Weber
Anne@TheatreInChicago.com
Theatre in Chicago contributor Anne Nicholson Weber saw Jack and the Beanstalk at the Goodman Children’s Theatre and has loved theatre every since. She is the author of Upstaged: Making Theatre in the Media Age, which includes interviews with Tony Kushner, Julie Taymor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Martha Lavey and Sir Peter Hall, among many others, and her work has been published in American Theatre Magazine and other national publications.