Photo by Stanley Kubrick via the Library of Congress
I went into this project — to write an article about “international theater” in Chicago — convinced that the international theater scene here was positively flourishing nowadays. After all, a good number of companies are working to bring to Chicago audiences to works reflecting the cultures and theater traditions (historic and contemporary) from nearly every part of the globe.
But then I started looking at the history of the thing, and I discovered that international theater in Chicago not only has deep roots here — nearly as deep as English-language theater — but it was probably even more vital several generations ago, when local playhouses in Chicago’s immigrant districts offered productions in a broad range of “foreign” languages. If you were looking for a night at the theater in Chicago around the turn of the last century, you could have chosen between shows in German, Yiddish, Czech, Italian, Russian, Lithuanian, Swedish, or Norwegian. And, of course, English.
Discussions of theater were also highly popular in the many foreign-language newspapers in early Chicago; within the half-century following the Civil War, the archives of the Chicago Foreign Language Press contain more than 850 articles on the subject (1).
However, my primary task here is to write about the present, about the living and still very robust international theater in Chicago. Although there is a wide variety in terms of size, age, and production histories, what these companies have in common is that their missions stipulate a focus on a given region and culture, and in some cases language. The companies can be organized into four broad categories: African, Asian/South Asian/Middle Eastern, Latino/Latin American, and European. Needless to say, each of these represents a huge swath of the globe, and naturally within each category are found groups with more specific regional or national focuses.
As seen in the editorials and articles in the FLPS archive, a common theme in the early years of theater produced by different ethnic and linguistic communities in Chicago was the call to action, with newspapers extolling the value of theater to educate, broaden minds and — significantly — reinforce and celebrate cultural identity. These sentiments continue to hold true today in the many groups that represent nations and regions from Africa to Scandinavia and from South America to South Asia.
© Teatro Vista.
CHICAGO LATINO THEATER
Chicago has recently been called “a hotspot for Latino theater companies” (2), which is not surprising given the roughly two-million-strong Hispanic community in the Chicago area. After a lull about a decade ago, Latino and Latin American theater here is presently enjoying a genuine boom, with more than a dozen companies actively producing shows in English, Spanish and Spanglish citywide. Some very Big Names are involved, notably Henry Godinez (who co-founded Teatro Vista and is now an artistic associate at the Goodman). One of the earliest companies, Juan Ramirez’s Latino Chicago, operated from 1987 until 1997, when their theater — housed in an old firehouse, ironically — burned down. Chicago’s longest-running Spanish-language company is Teatro Aguijón, founded by Rosario Vargas and Augusto Yanacopulos, which was born in Uptown in the late 1980s and in 1999 moved into their current home on Laramie Avenue.
Rather than “international,” the Latino and Latin-American theater scene in Chicago might be more accurately termed “transnational,” given how much back-and-forth is common within the Latino community and its theater groups. Of course this phenomenon is also seen in other communities and with individual artists, but arguably it is more pronounced and more of a defining characteristic of the Latino theater scene — a scene that’s so big, in fact, that it deserves a separate article. Fortunately, Raúl Dorantes (founder of Colectivo el Pozo, and a playwright Godinez has described as “very gifted”) has written one, titled “The Boards Speak Spanish,” which I have translated to English for the Spanish-challenged (3).
© Black Ensemble Theater.
AFRICAN AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN THEATER
Outlining the history of African Americans in Chicago theater in a 2011 Playbill article, Robert Loerzel observed that “from the Emancipation Proclamation up through the civil rights movement a century later, blacks fought to find a place in theaters run by whites. And they struggled to win roles that went beyond offensive caricature. Chicago was one city where blacks forged a theater of their own” (4). The first one was the Pekin Theatre on the Near South Side, established in 1904 by Robert Mott. The Pekin and successors like the Regaland the Savoy focused mainly on vaudeville-style revues, though by 1921 a fully-staged musical was produced featuring the songs of Eubie Blake. Today, African Americans make up the city’s largest demographic group (for the moment, with Latinos coming up fast), and a number of theater companies produce shows which explore the African American experience, taking advantage of what The New York Times recently termed “the rise of a new generation of black theatergoers” (5).
The most firmly established and accomplished of these companies is perhaps the Black Ensemble Theater(BE), founded in 1976 by actress and playwright Jackie Taylor. With a nod to Robert Mott and the South Side roots of Chicago’s Black theater, BE specializes in musical theater, and moved into a beautiful and purpose-built permanent home in Uptown in 2011. BE’s mission also includes a strong emphasis on playwright development.
Other major groups include Congo Square Theatre Company, which describes itself as “an ensemble dedicated to… transformative theatre, spawned from the African Diaspora as well as other world cultures” and eta Creative Arts, as well as the more Africa-focused groups MPAACT (Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre), whose mission is “to develop, nurture, and sustain Afrikan Centered Theatre, an artistic expression grounded in the many cultures and traditions of the Afrikan continent and its Diaspora,” and Muntu, which presents both traditional and modern interpretations of dance, music, and folklore from African and African-American sources.
© Akvavit.
EUROPEAN AMERICAN THEATER
The European Repertory Companyis perhaps best-remembered for its legendary production of “Agamemnon,” which opened in 1995 and ran for more than two years. The company is now defunct but its co-founders, Bulgarian theatre artist Yasen Peyankov and British director Dale Goulding, continue to be active in Chicago theatre: Peyankov is an ensemble member at Steppenwolf and Goulding co-founded Bluebird Arts, which seeks to build ties between U.S. and European theatre.
With an emphasis on Eastern Europe, TUTA (The Utopian Theatre Asylum) aims to promote seldom-produced European playwrights. According to the company’s research, nearly half of their audience do not use English as a primary language. Theater professor and critic Cheryl Black describes the company as having produced “a diverse repertory of Eastern and Western European plays in its twelve year existence, attracting a small but passionately devoted audience and garnering a critical reputation for productions that combine the highest caliber artistic achievement with cogent social and cultural critique” (6).
Trap Door Theatre began more than twenty years ago as a wandering troupe, presenting avant-garde works in theaters and festivals in Europe and then bringing the best of what they found back to Chicago audiences. They claim Eastern European roots and eventually came to set up a permanent home in Bucktown, where they continue to produce Euro-centric theater, host visiting companies and artists from the Old World, and tour when the occasion arises.
Chicago has long been a major home of the Irish diaspora, a group that unfailingly celebrates the formidable literary achievements of their countrymen. For two decades, the theater side of this was shouldered by a company with the nearly-unpronounceable name of Seanachaí (the Gaelic word for storyteller). The group has won plenty of awards for productions of works by Irish playwrights both contemporary and less-so, and has recently changed their name to the apt and descriptive Irish Theatre of Chicago.
A more recent entry in Chicago’s Euro-theater derby is the five-year-old Akvavit Theatre, co-founded by Swedish-American theater artists Chad Eric Bergman and Bergen Anderson. Named after the favorite adult beverage of the Nordic world (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, & Sweden, mainly), Akvavit is dedicated to producing works by contemporary Nordic playwrights. The company draws on deep Scandinavian roots in the Midwest and is known for a unique and darkly comic style that has been described as “slightly foreign, quirky [and] unexpectedly relatable for American audiences” (7).
Though we might not exactly think of British theater as being “foreign,” it in fact is that, and as such this section should include a mention of the very dependable and lauded Uptown-based Steep Theatre Company, whose mission and description statements don’t actually stipulate a British focus but whose work in recent years has showcased contemporary British playwrights such as Simon Stephens and John Donnelly. (By the same reasoning, a passing mention of the excellent Chicago Shakespeare Theatre is also in order. And there it is.)
© Rasaka Theatre Company.
ASIAN, ASIAN AMERICAN, AND MIDDLE EASTERN
The overall youngest members of Chicago’s international theater club are those which represent perspectives from Asia (in its broadest sense) and the Middle East. What these groups might lack in organizational longevity they make up in the impact and relevance of their work.
Silk Road Rising, for example, came about as “a creative response to the attacks of September 11, 2001,” an event co-founders Malik Gillani and Jamil Khoury describe as presenting “unique and urgent challenges for artists of all backgrounds, and inspiring us to educate, promote dialogue, and heal rifts through the transformative power of theatre.” The company’s stated purpose is “to counter negative representation of Middle Eastern and Muslim peoples with representation that was authentic, multi-faceted, and grounded in human experience.” Writer Steffi Lau identified SRR as being part of the “new wave” of Asian theater in the US, theater which is “inclusive of many backgrounds, especially those with a South Asian perspective, which historically has had a small presence in Asian American theater” and which attempts to move beyond “narrow definitions of who is Asian American” (8).
Another group that formed in the first decade of the new millennium is A-Squared Theatre Workshop, whose mission is to create opportunities for Chicago’s Asian American theatre artists and to bring to the stage “stories that accurately depict the Asian American cultural identity and experience” in productions that reflect “the diversity of Asian cultures present in the Chicago area.” The group’s best-known work is My Asian Mom, conceived by A-squared co-founder Mia Park and produced in various different iterations over the past few years.
Centering more on the Indian subcontinent, Rasaka Theatre Company terms itself “the Midwest’s first South Asian American ensemble.” Their often playful outside-the-box attitude was on display in a notable 2013 production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing recast as a Bollywood musical. Rasaka is currently a resident company at Victory Gardens.
INTERNATIONAL VOICES PROJECT
For a good sampling of what is possible in Chicago’s international theater, put the International Voices Project’s upcoming series of staged readings at the Victory Gardens Theater on your calendar. The mission of IVP is to bring a broad global perspective to Chicago theater audiences, and as such, beginning on the 15th of this month their series of readings will include scripts from Chile, Syria, Sweden, Cuba, Norway, Poland, India and Canada. You’ll also have a chance to hobnob with people from some of the abovementioned companies, as collaborating groups include Rasaka, Akvavit, and Trap Door.
What’s next? Well, if you have read this far, you clearly have an abiding interest in international theater — so act on it! Nearly all of the theater companies named above are currently producing shows, and by following the links below you can begin planning your season. Enjoy!
Author’s note: I am sure that this article fails to mention some important groups and noteworthy individuals. I apologize for this and invite you to add a comment below with any information that might be useful for future writing on this subject.
NOTES
(1) “The Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey was published in 1942 by the Chicago Public Library Omnibus Project of the Works Progress Administration of Illinois. The purpose of the project was to translate and classify selected news articles that appeared in the foreign language press from 1855 to 1938. The project consists of 120,000 typewritten pages translated from newspapers of 22 different foreign language communities of Chicago.” Online archive maintained by the Newberry Library [http://flps.newberry.org]
(2) “Chicago a hotspot for Latino theater companies” by Silvia Foster-Frauin, Extra News, April 17, 2014.
http://extranews.net/chicago-a-hotspot-for-latino-theater-companies.html
(3) “The Boards Speak Spanish” by Raúl Dorantes, El BeiSMan.
[www.elbeisman.com/article.php?action=read&id=564]
(4) “Early African-American theater in Chicago” by Robert Loerzel, Playbill, January 2011.
[http://www.robertloerzel.com/articles/stage/black/black.htm]
(5) “Change Sweeps Through Black Theater in Chicago” by Kelly Kleiman, New York Times, July 7, 2011.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/us/08cnctheater.html]
(6) “Milena Markovic’s Tracks: May God Look Upon Us” by Cheryl Black, Slavic and East European Performance 27, no. 1, Winter 2007.
(7) “Mishap!” by Gwen Purdomz, Time Out Chicago, February 24, 2014.
http://www.timeout.com/chicago/theater/mishap
(8) “Asian American Theater’s Next Act” by Steffi Lau, Hyphen: Asian America Unabridged, Issue 18, Summer 2009
[http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/magazine/issue-18-action/asian-american-theaters-next-act]
THEATER GROUPS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE
A-Squared Theatre Workshop
http://www.a-stw.org
Akvavit Theatre
http://www.akvavittheatre.org
Black Ensemble Theater
http://www.blackensembletheater.org
Bluebird Arts
http://www.bluebirdarts.org
Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
http://www.chicagoshakes.com
Colectivo el Pozo
http://www.colectivoelpozo.org
Congo Square Theatre Company
http://www.congosquaretheatre.org
eta Creative Arts
http://www.etacreativearts.org
International Voices Project
http://www.ivpchicago.org
Irish Theatre of Chicago
http://irishtheatreofchicago.org/about/
MPAACT (Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre)
http://www.mpaact.org
Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago
http://www.muntu.com
Rasaka Theatre Company
http://www.rasakatheatre.com
Silk Road Rising
http://www.silkroadrising.org
Steep Theatre Company
http://www.steeptheatre.com
Teatro Aguijón
http://aguijontheater.org
Teatro Vista
http://www.teatrovista.org
Trap Door Theatre
http://trapdoortheatre.com/history/
TUTA (The Utopian Theatre Asylum)
http://www.tutato.com
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Mark Litwicki. Writer and theater artist, has worked in the U.S., Japan, Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba. Member of Akvavit Theatre and artistic associate of Colectivo el Pozo.
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