Theatre News Wire

Gorilla Tango Theatre (GTT) is pleased to announce that in addition to its current Bucktown location (1919 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago IL 60647), GTT will own and operate the Skokie Theatre (7924 Lincoln Ave. Skokie, IL 60077) as of April 2012.

Over the last year GTT has been gearing up for expansion of its extremely successful for-profit business model locally, regionally and nationally. To that end GTT jumped at the chance to purchase the Skokie Theatre. "It's a beautiful venue in a great area, " states Dan Abbate, GTT Owner and CEO. "We will run Gorilla Tango's Skokie Theatre in a similar fashion to our Bucktown venue: where we seek out and help produce shows directed at very specific markets. We are currently seeking individuals and groups interested in producing these marketable shows in a profitable manner in this world-class venue. We of course will concurrently run our own programming at Skokie, focusing on our successful "By Kids For Kids" shows (where young artists work with directors to produce original performances which they co-write and perform in) as well as a variety of our original parodies."

"The Village of Skokie is pleased to welcome Gorilla Tango Theatre to Downtown Skokie. We expect the Skokie Theatre to thrive under the leadership of new owners Dan Abbate and Kelly Williams who will surely provide the community with exciting, creative entertainment options," comments Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen. "The Village is not directly assisting the new ownership with financing, however; the efforts of Village staff were integral to securing project financing and staff provided the new owners with guidance through the purchase transaction. The Skokie Theatre is an important component of Downtown Skokie's revitalization, along with the new Oakton-Skokie Swift station and the Illinois Science + Technology Park, and will serve to attract more people to Downtown Skokie's restaurants, shops and service businesses." Dan Abbate thanks the Village of Skokie for their support throughout this process and adds, "An additional thanks to North Shore Community Bank who made the financing of this project go incredibly smoothly."

With no creative agenda (just a profit driven one - producing shows to targeted markets), GTT focuses on the creation and maintenance of a profitable and sustainable producing model for both itself, and its in-house and outside producers. GTT's focus on producing has begun to spill into film with two fully financed productions already slated to shoot in 2012. Says Abbate, "We are very excited that the Skokie Theatre is also a fully functional movie theater where we can premiere our film projects, as film and distributable media is part of our growth plan for the upcoming years."