WINDY CITY TIMES Copyright © 2002 Lambda Publications Inc. All rights reserved. Aug. 21, 2002
All publications Front Page Nightspots Blacklines En La Vida Out! Resource Guide Current WCT Issue	STAGE DOOR JONNY   by Jonathan Abarbanel   There will be an orgy in Columbus, Ohio Sept. 12-21: the first National Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival, presenting over two dozen troupes and solo artists from major cities across the country. The folks in Columbus have announced that Chicago's Theatre Entropy will perform Stupid Kids by John C. Russell, Sept. 15-17. Only trouble is, no one in Chicago ever heard of Theatre Entropy. Not Jonny's fellow WCT writers Mary Shen Barnidge and Rick Reed, not gay producers Erik Rosen (About Face) or David Zak (Bailiwick). So Jonny called Frank Barnhart, the Big Kahuna in Columbus, who said Theatre Entropy was formed specifically for the Festival by actor Jon Arndt, a Columbusite who moved here in 1999. He has performed in the Pride Series, and at Stage Left, TriArts (sic) and Chicago Dramatists. Arndt told Jonny there are no plans to incorporate Theatre Entropy or to perform Stupid Kids in Chicago, although neither possibility has been ruled out. Arndt hopes to take the show to other fringe festivals such as those in Ann Arbor, Seattle and Winnipeg. Stupid Kids was a great success in 1998 when staged by Roadworks Productions. The script includes gay, lesbian and straight adolescent characters. The work is the slim legacy of John C. Russell, who wrote it as a student at Brown University, but died of AIDS before it was produced. It's been a success in Chicago, New York and other cities. Lose one...gain one. Just days before the closing last week of the Hattie Callner Theater (home to About Face) in the Jane Addams Center on Broadway at Belmont, theater executive Richard Friedman and two real estate developers announced they had taken a five-year lease on the Broadway Theatre, kitty-corner from the Jane Addams Center. This is the long-time film house that was quickly converted into a live theater venue last year as a home for a local company of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Ill-marketed and mis-produced, Hedwig played only a few weeks. The venue has been dark since then. Friedman and cohorts plan more thorough technical and amenity renovations, although on a modest budget of $250,000. They also will utilize the original name for the theater, the Lakeshore, and are negotiating parking concessions in the high-density 'hood. Friedman plans to present commercial attractions, as well as late-night fare and cabaret (it's unclear if the interior space will be refashioned into more than one theater). What's missing from the formula is anything of interest to Lakeview's swarming GLBT population. The first attraction, opening Oct. 23, is a one-man show by John Powers, author of Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? produced by the same team who mounted Over the Tavern at the Mercury Theatre. Frankly, there ain't much...if anything at all...in either of these shows that speaks to the GLBT community. Lakeview is a youthful, liberal and semi-alternative neighborhood. The Lakeshore Theatre producers probably need to think about that if they wish to be successful. So, there may not be a World Series again this year, as professional baseball once more threatens to shoot itself in the one good foot is still has. But there WILL be a theater season. Actors Equity Association (the union of actors and stage managers) and the Producers Association of Chicago-area Theatres (PACT) have come to an agreement on extension of the contract that governs more than 50 local theater companies. The most recent Chicago Area Theatre contract...yes, they all are CAT houses...expires Aug. 26 after four years, but has been extended for 18 months with salary increases. The relatively brief extension recognizes the fiscal uncertainty of the times. As they have been since the CAT contract was created 20 years ago, negotiations between Equity and PACT were friendly. Victory Gardens Theater is offering a really wonderful freebie: a Sept. 4 season preview with cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and scenes from new works by playwrights Claudia Allan, Joel Drake Johnson, Ann Noble and Douglas Post. It's at 6 p.m. and reservations are required. Space for this free event goes very quickly. Call Laura Wurz at (773) 549-5788, ext. 102, or e-mail: <lwurz@victorygardens.org>.
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