Aug. 7, 2002
All publications Front Page Nightspots Blacklines En La Vida Out! Resource Guide Current WCT Issue	STAGE DOOR JONNY by Jonathan Abarbanel The Chicago Comic Opera Company has drastically scaled back plans for its debut production, just weeks before the scheduled opening at Theatre Building Chicago, Aug. 22. For the better part of a year, company founder and artistic director Morry Matson has promoted the fact that the new, all-gay opera troupe ("the first in the USA") would open with a double bill of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial By Jury, and George Gershwin and B. G. DaSilva's Blue Monday. The little-known Gershwin rarity is a one-act blues opera written for the George White Scandals of 1922, requiring an African-American cast. It was cut after the Broadway opening night. Matson promised a live, 18-piece orchestra as well. Now, Matson has announced there will be no Blue Monday at all, and no orchestra. Trial By Jury alone will be performed Aug. 22-Sept. 1, with piano accompaniment. The G&S is a delightful one-act operetta, but not nearly the event that Blue Monday would have been. In addition, Matson has lost announced director Stephen Rader...an established and reputable name in the gay and musical performance communities...and has replaced two cast members. Volunteer performers from the Windy City Gay Chorus still will round out the cast. Matson minimally explains the drastic changes as "a reflection of the dip in the economy." But Matson arrived in Chicago only last year, without local credentials or a local base of support. Almost immediately, he announced an artistically ambitious program; one that could not generate sufficient earned income (at least 50%-60% of its cost) in a 150-seat house at Theatre Building Chicago, not with two large casts and a live orchestra. He has discovered that one cannot raise the considerable funds necessary on a smile and energy alone; that Chicagoans want to see your work first, and know what they will be getting for their donated dollars. Jonny certainly will see Trial by Jury, which is one of Jonny's favorite Gilbert & Sullivan delights. Jonny well may be that annoying person in the audience who sings all the words along with the cast. And Jonny wishes Morry Matson and the Chicago Comic Opera Company a very solid future after a precarious beginning. But Jonny reminds Mr. Matson that one must walk before one can run, and that even not-for-profit theatrical troupes must have realistic business plans. Our Windy City Radio colleague, the very funny yet intelligent Jim Bennett (and cute, too, when he's not doing strange things to his hair), currently is live on stage with Celeste Pechous in Pushed, their own sketch comedy with a decidedly GLBT perspective. Catch them every Saturday at 10:30 p.m., through Aug. 31, at the Playground Theater, 3341 N. Lincoln Avenue. Also sounding off this month are actor and writer Edward Thomas-Herrera, actor and director Mark Gagne and publisher Carrie Kaufman. The three out artists are performing their own solo works in the Live Bait Theatre Fillet of Solo Festival, Friday nights at 7:30 through Aug. 23. All three are in Sampler #2: Image, Bodies and Risk. Gagne, a founder of The Free Associates, is interim managing director for About Face Theatre. Kaufman is the owner and publisher of PerformInk, the theater and film industry trade paper (for which Jonny also writes). After nearly two years on hiatus, the award-winning Raven Theatre Company reopens in two weeks in a new, $2.5-million home in Edgewater, and with the first Chicago professional revival of Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room since the original production at the Goodman Theatre. The Raven house will have two theaters, of 160 seats and 60 seats respectively, in a former grocery store at 6157 N. Clark St. (at Granville). The late playwright and activist Scott McPherson was the life-and-death partner of fiercely committed activist and editorial cartoonist (for WCT and other papers) Daniel Sotomayor, who predeceased Scott. In his far-too-short career, McPherson worked with the Chicago Theatre Project, Victory Gardens Theater and the Goodman Theatre among others, and saw one of his plays produced for TV by the local NBC affiliate (which took a brief flyer on original drama). A pithy, funny and compassionate drama, Marvin's Room was McPherson's response to the AIDS crisis, although it's not about AIDS. It's a subject McPherson new well, as both he and Sotomayor died of AIDS-related illnesses. McPherson's last and most profound play, Marvin's Room has held the stage for a decade and appears likely to grow in reputation at theaters across the country. It runs at Raven Aug. 18-Oct. 13. Hard to believe that those prancing, dancing, nancy boys at Bailiwick have been singing and swinging dick for a year, but it's true! Naked Boys Singing celebrates its first anniversary Aug. 26. There will be a gala performance with a reception to follow, at the special price of $50/ticket. Bailiwick, arguably Chicago's premiere GLBT theater, marks another anniversary a week earlier: the 20th anniversary of the company. Those of you with long memories...yes, Jonny remembers these things from when he was just a little boy...will recall that Bailiwick was founded as a classical theater company by current artistic director David G. Zak and six others. The troupe still does the odd classic...such as Our Town or the upcoming take on Shakespeare, Hamlet Dreams...although it's more likely these days to celebrate the classic nude. Whatever, the anniversary gala Aug. 20 features Alexandra Billings, Christopher Moore, Suzanne Petri, Brooks Robertson and quite a few others in scenes from Bailiwick's greatest hits, among them Animal Farm, Pope Joan, Gypsy, The Christmas Schooner, Bonnie and Clyde, True West, Son of Fire and Corpus Christi. Tickets are $50-$100, including pre-show reception at 6 p.m.; (773) 883-1090.	Celeste Pechous and Jim Bennett (here MCing an HRC comedy benefit) star in Pushed.
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