South of Cicero, West of the Planes
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But that’s not the kind of detail likely to bog down a company that plops an ellipsis in the middle of its name. Thusing, who’s worked around town for about six years as a director and stage manager–and was one of the people laid off when Noble Fool shut its Loop theater at the end of April–says she and most of the ten other people in the company had been kicking around the idea of opening a theater on the city’s southwest side for several years. “We all live down here, and almost always had to go downtown or to the north side for work,” she says. “We wanted a place where southwest-side artists could work in their own community.” They got serious about it when the theater building, which most recently had been used as an auto repair shop and a union hall, became available late last year. They negotiated a $2,700 monthly rent and took possession June 1. If things unfold majestically, they plan to buy it.
In the Works has set itself a lofty mission: to create theater that “speaks to and for the working class.” The company intends to carry this out through its material, its location, and through ticket prices, which it’s vowed to keep under $20. To ensure this, In the Works is offering the venue to other troupes without any minimum rent: they’ll simply split ticket revenue 50-50. It’s a no-lose deal for young companies, and the bookings are piling up. Spoken Word Theatre will do stories by Stuart Dybek June 30, TAXI will open the not-exactly-blue-collar Sylvia beginning July 8, My Cup Runneth Over Productions will present Between Hell and High Water in late July and August, and Stockyards Theatre Project will stage two shows from late August through October. There’s also a lineup of Wednesday matinees, late-night comedy, cabaret, and plans for improv and indie film nights as well as In the Works’ own stage productions.
Another former Noble Fool, assistant box-office manager Dave Plomin, dropped the Reader a postscript about the downtown theater’s meltdown. The employees “were left holding the bag,” Plomin writes, with “no hope of ever receiving four weeks of back pay. We feel that we were led on and the board should have warned us a long time ago to start looking for other employment. That last Thursday, April 29, I saw a professional photographer taking pictures in front of the theater and asked my coworker to go out and ask what he was doing. The man said that he was from the Sun-Times and ‘heard that you were shutting down.’ NICE. Heard it from a stranger before the board would EVEN pay us a common courtesy of sending an emissary to tell us in person. Imagine picking up the [Sun-]Times the next morning…and reading it in the paper. Imagine [the] staff reading it on the way to work.”
The death-threat target was Skip Huston, who owns the Avon Theatre in Decatur. Huston says that he got three telephone calls that went something like “You play that movie, you’re dead,” plus thousands of e-mails. The first wave of messages seemed to have been orchestrated by Move America Forward, characterized by Moore as a “fake grassroots front group.” After Huston asked Move America Forward to remove him from its list these pretty much dried up, only to be replaced by an even larger flood of pro-Fahrenheit e-mails, which were barely more welcome: “I’ve got work to do,” Huston says. “We showed Bowling for Columbine, and we didn’t have anything like this,” he adds. “This is a very scary time.” Huston, mind you, doesn’t scare easy: he’s encountered ghosts more than once in the Avon’s ornate old halls and balcony, he says, and he’s still there.
