Perhaps the major difference between Chicago theater today and 30 years ago is that back then you had to pick up the telephone and call, or visit the theater box office in-person, if you wanted to purchase a ticket.
Advertising and marketing, too, relied on old technology—print, radio, TV, mailings—rather than Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Word-of-mouth was the best form of advertising ( as it still is ), but it was a lot slower going around.
By the early 1970s, Chicago could claim several pioneering "gay" theaters, among them the Godzilla Rainbow Troupe ( 1971—'74 ) of Garry Tucker ( aka Eleven ), who introduced Theatre of the Ridiculous, genderfuck and the midnight curtain to Chicago; the Artemis Players ( mid-1970s ), a lesbian oriented women's theater company; and the Drama Shelter ( circa 1972—'80 ), the storefront theater of lovers Daryl Hale and Ron Hitchcock.
The Drama Shelter did some straight plays but made its fame on gay fare, notably the plays of Robert Patrick. By decade's end Rick Paul's Lionheart gay theater ( 1979—'94 ) assumed primacy, eventually producing more than 100 plays by writers such as Jeff Hagedorn, Lawrence Bommer and Nicholas Patricca. Hagedorn earned a footnote in drama history by writing the first play produced on the subject of AIDS, One, which premiered in Chicago in 1982.
Chicago's world-famous off-Loop Theater industry was roughly in its third wave, or very close to it, by 1985 with a reliable level of acting and production, a growing number of theater companies and—fortunately—a growing theater audience, too, many of whom had reached adulthood during the 18-or-so-years since off-Loop Theater was born in the late 1960s, much of it out of the political turmoil of the times. In 1985, Steppenwolf Theatre Company—the very icon of cutting-edge energy with its so-called "scratch and sniff" style of theater—won the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, thereby setting the troupe on a short path to Establishment status.
Steppenwolf was the first local company to win the Regional Theatre Tony Award, but four more would follow: Goodman Theatre 1992, Victory Gardens Theater 2001, Chicago Shakespeare Theater 2008, Lookingglass Theatre 2011, thereby cementing Chicago's status as the finest theater city in America. In 1985, the League of Chicago Theatres could boast of having 116 members presenting some 1,000 annual productions. The theater troupes sold some 2.65 million tickets. Today, the League has more than 200 members throughout Chicago and the six collar counties, with dance troupes and opera companies among them, selling more than 5 million tickets a year.
In 1985, Chicago's theater industry was only a few years into an innovative contract developed by Actors Equity Association and an association of Chicago theater producers. Called the CAT Contract ( for "Chicago Area Theatre" ), it offered a flexible sliding scale of minimum salaries for actors and stage managers, based on the seating capacity of the playhouse. Sounds like a no-brainer, but it was a new idea at the time, an experiment which worked brilliantly. The CAT Contract, which remains in use here, practically jump-started the growth and development of Chicago's Off-Loop Theater movement into an industry. CAT became the model used over and over by Actors Equity for smaller theaters across the country.
In 1985, Chicago's theater community—and it was at that time a smaller and tight-knit community—began to suffer the first loss of artists to AIDS. Highly visible among those who died were playwright Jeff Hagedorn, and popular actor J. Pat Miller and stage manager Tom Biscotto. In memory of Miller and Biscotto, about 200 friends gathered one afternoon at Victory Gardens Theater and created a humanitarian fund for those in the theater community suffering from AIDS-related illnesses and personal hardships. The fund couldn't pay the high costs of medical care, but it could and did pay rent and utility bills, buy groceries and clothing, and fly in a loved one. The Biscotto-Miller Fund flourishes today as the chief giving program of Season of Concern, the theater industry charity created several years later. The Fund will be honored Oct. 26 at a 30th-anniversary gala at the Steppenwolf Theatre.
As Chicago's off-Loop theater industry grew, the pioneer troupes were succeeded by a number of LGBT companies, among them Theatre Q, Zebra Crossing, A Real Read ( an African-American group including Byron Stewart, Sanford Gaylord and C.C. Carter ) and the Pansy Kings, a mid-1990s vaudeville-style showcase for gay male performers that nurtured a number of important artists such as solo performers David Kodeski and Edward Thomas-Herrera, video artist and poet Kurt Heintz, novelist Robert Rodi, writer Dave Awl and songwriter Eric Lane Barnes. Alexandra Billings of Transparent fame has her roots in the 1980s Chicago theater community as well.
The progress of the last 30 years has been so significant that Chicago LGBT artists and troupes scarcely need special theatrical identities today. Out theater artists and managers are integrated in every possible facet of Chicago's booming theater industry from producers to ushers, playwrights to prop masters, and academics to theater critics.
Among Chicago theaters today that self-identify as LGBT-specific are About Face, Pride Films & Plays, GayCo and Hell in a Handbag. An additional number of troupes boast female-centered identities without being specifically lesbian.
Chicago has been the birthplace of a number of nationally prominent works that reflect LGBT history or issues, such as David Dillon's much-produced Party; Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife; Patricia Kane's Pulp; the Alfred Kinsey musical comedy Dr. Sex; Claudia Allen's Hannah Free ( also adapted into a feature film starring Sharon Gless ); and Loving Repeating, the Gertrude Stein musical fashioned by Frank Galati and Stephen Flaherty.
The late Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room—first produced at the Goodman Theatre in 1990—may be the single most important LGBT work to emerge from Chicago. Although not gay in its story, the play was McPherson's passionate and profound response to the AIDS crisis that took his life too soon. It was made into a movie in 1996 and starred Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton.
Long-time partners Steve Scott and Ted Hoerl are integral longtime contributors to the theater scene, Scott as an associate producer at Goodman Theatre, along with teaching positions, and Hoerl as an actor and director.
Of special note are Malik Gillani and Jamil Khoury, co-founders of the Silk Road Theatre Project, who are respectively of South Asian and Middle Eastern ethnicity. Openly a couple, they rapidly are becoming nationally known for the diverse range of sexual and nonsexual issues raised by their productions, and for fostering growing recognition of diverse Asian theater artists and audiences.
Perhaps the most important thing to recognize is that most of those who were young, eager and making theater in Chicago in 1985 still are here today making theater in all capacities. Some have moved up the ranks to become artistic directors or managing directors of our important theater companies, others have continue acting or writing careers, perhaps adding some teaching along the way. Their legacy of commitment, creativity and just-plain-endurance continues to energize and inform those who have followed … and it's every bit as true for dedicated audiences as it is for the theater-makers. We remain blessed in Chicago with the best on both sides of the footlights.
Jonathan Abarbanel not only is a long-serving Windy City Times theater critic, but also reviews for WDCB Public Radio every Sunday morning and teaches theater at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Part of this story is adapted from an essay in the book Out and Proud in Chicago.
