Easing the Inevitable
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With a new license, Halperin says, fees might be a little lower (currently they start at $385 and can be waived for nonprofits). Zoning interpretations are still under discussion, but anyone hoping for a break on the building code can forget it. “The mission in this round was not to change the code requirements,” she says. “This was prompted by the licensing process, which theaters have found so difficult to complete.” Since the league started working on it in December 2003, she says, the PPA application form–once 20-some pages–has shrunk, and she expects the PAV form to be a mere six-to-nine pages. The league also passed out a draft version of its new checklist for operating a theater, which translates city regulations into digestible English.
Halperin shared the stage with a panel of remarkably benign-looking city officials–intelligent, reasonable people who seemed to want nothing more than to make the lives of theater folk easier. Julie Burros of the Department of Cultural Affairs offered to walk applicants through the zoning requirements; building commissioner Stan Kaderbek said his staff can do a “preinspection” of a venue before a company even signs a lease; and Scott Bruner said come October he’ll be heading up a new department of business affairs and licensing, which will centralize all the information theater companies are likely to need (no more interdepartmental runarounds) and assign caseworkers to make sure nobody’s bruised in the process.
Stuart Oken, the Chicago boy who brought The Lion King and Aida to Broadway, is back in town–on a mission to save musical theater from an overdose of spectacle. Last week Northwestern University announced its plan to establish a music-theater program that aims to become a nationally recognized incubator for new work, with students working with top-tier professionals. The American Music Theatre Project, with Oken, former cohead of Disney Theatrical Productions, as its artistic director, will produce five new plays at the university in the next three years. The four that have been announced so far are Was, the “true story” of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, opening this fall; The Boys Are Coming Home; States of Independence; and The Pearl.
