Your Friday Question: Is This All There Is?
Hey, gang! I've had more and more people stumble upon this blog and mention reading it in the last week, which is exciting, and a little daunting.
But, I say to myself, this is a Good Thing! For more theatre folk reading means more theatre folk to participate in the conversation. And we have lots to talk about.
This week I've been feverishly devoting most of my time to filling in the gaps on the revised theatre cataloging project. The result is a fairly awesome stage 1.
(Those of you who care about the nitty gritty technical aspects of the cataloging, skip ahead to the end.)
Now, the question: Who am I missing?
Below is the list of all the producing companies in the database. Actors, designers, directors, theatregoers: look at this list. If I'm missing a theater you've recently worked with or attended, please leave a comment below - and if you can give me a website, that'd be fantastic! Also, a few companies I have here may be defunct - I'd love to know that, too.
16th Street Theater (Berwyn) [added 2/7/2008]
20% Theatre Company
A Reasonable Facsimile Theatre Company
A Red Orchid Theatre
About Face Theatre
Actors Revolution Theatre [added 2/7/2008]
Actors Workshop Theatre
Adventure Stage, Chicago (formerly Vittum Theater)
American Theater Company
Apex Theatre Company [added 2/7/2008]
Appetite Theatre
Apple Tree Theatre (Highland Park)
Artistic Home, The
A-Squared Theater Workshop [added 2/7/2008]
Babes With Blades
BackStage Theatre Company
Bailiwick Repertory
Barrel of Monkeys
Big Noise Theatre Company (DesPlaines)
Big Picture Group [added 2/7/2008]
Big Theater [added 2/7/2008]
Black Ensemble Theater
Black Forest Theater (Evanston)
Black Sheep Productions
Blackbird Theatre Company
Blindfaith Theatre
bluemoonstudiotheater, inc [added 2/7/2008]
Bohemian Theatre Ensemble
Box Theatre Group, The
Boxer Rebellion [added 2/7/2008]
Breadline Theatre Company [added 2/7/2008]
Bricklayers Theatre Company [added 2/7/2008]
Broken Compass, The [added 2/7/2008]
Brown Couch Theatre Company
Building Stage, The [added 2/7/2008]
Caffeine Theatre
Chemically Imbalanced Comedy at The Cornservatory
Chicago Dramatists
Chicago Fusion Theatre
Chicago Kids Company
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
Chicspeare Production Company
Circle Theatre (Forest Park)
City Lit Theater
Collaboraction
Collision Theatre Company [added 2/7/2008]
Congo Square Theatre Company
Corn Productions
Court Theatre
Curious Theater Branch
Democracy Burlesque
Diamante Productions (Glenview)
Dog & Pony Theatre Company
Dream Engine
Dream Theatre Company
Drury Lane Oakbrook Theatre (Oakbrook Terrace)
dueEast Theatre Company [added 2/7/2008]
Echo Theater Co.
Eclipse Theatre Company
Emerald City Theatre Company
EP Theatre
eta Creative Arts Foundation
European Repertory [added 2/7/2008]
Factory Theater
Fehinty African Theatre Ensemble
First Folio Shakespeare Festival (Clarendon Hills)
Free Street Theater
GayCo Productions
Gift Theatre Company, The
Goodman Theatre
Greasy Joan and Co.
GreyZelda Theatre Group, The
Griffin Theatre Co.
Grounded Theatre, The (Naperville)
GroundUp Theatre
Halcyon Theatre
HeadCheese Fat Boss Productions [added 2/7/2008]
Hell in a Handbag Productions
House Theatre of Chicago, The
Hubris Productions
Hypatia Theatre
Hypocrites, The
Imagination Theater
Infamous Commonwealth Theatre
InFusion
Journeymen, The
Keyhole Theatre Company [added 2/7/2008]
Kidworks Touring Theatre
La Costa Theatre [added 2/7/2008]
Lifeline Theatre
Light Opera Works (Evanston) [added 2/7/2008]
Lincoln Square Theatre
Live Bait [added 2/7/2008]
LiveWire Chicago Theatre
Lookingglass Theatre Company
Mammals, The
Marriott Theatre, The (Lincolnshire)
Mary-Arrchie Theatre
Mill, The fka Experimental Theatre Chicago
MOB Productions
Mom and Dad Productions
Moving Dock Theatre Company, The
MPAACT (Ma’at Production Assoc of Afrikan Centered Theatre)
National Pastime
Neo-Futurists, The
New Leaf Theatre
New Millennium Theatre Company
New World Repertory (Downers Grove) [added 2/7/2008]
Next Theatre Company (Evanston)
Nightingale Group, LLC [added 2/7/2008]
Noble Fool Theatricals (St. Charles)
Northlight Theatre (Skokie)
Not Waiting Productions [added 2/7/2008]
Oak Park Festival Theatre (Oak Park)
Open Eye Productions
Oracle Productions
Organic
Ouroboros Theatre Company
Pegasus Players
People's Theatre of Chicago [added 2/7/2008]
Piccolo Theatre (Evanston)
Pine Box Theatre [added 2/7/2008]
Piven Theatre (Evanston)
Plus Sized Productions
Point of Contention
Polarity Ensemble Theatre (Evanston)
Porchlight Music Theatre Chicago
Premiere Theatre & Performance
pretty blue sky
Profiles Theatre
Promethean Theatre Ensemble
Provision Theater
Purple Bench Productions
Quest Theatre Ensemble
Rascal Children’s Theater
Raven Theatre
Red Tape
Redmoon Theater
Remarcable Productions
Remy Bumppo Theatre Company
Riddlemark Theatre Company [added 2/7/2008]
Right Brain Project
Rubicon Theatre Project
Saint Sebastian Players
Sansculottes Theatre Company
Seanachai Theatre Company
Second City, The
Serendipity Theatre Collective
Shakespeare Project of Chicago, The
Shantz Theatre
Shattered Globe Theatre
ShawChicago Theater Company
side project, the
Signal Ensemble Theatre
Silent Theatre
Silk Road Theatre Project
Sinnerman Ensemble
Soapbox Theatre Company (Aurora)
Speaking Ring Theatre
Stage Left Theatre
Steep Theatre Company
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Stockyards Theatre Project
Strange Tree Group
Strawdog Theatre Company
Teatro Luna [added 2/7/2008]
Teatro Vista
Theater Oobleck
Theater Wit
Theatre Building Chicago
Theatre Seven
Theatre-Hikes
Theo Ubique
Thunder & Lightning
Time of Your Life Players [added 2/7/2008]
TimeLine Theatre Company
Trap Door Theatre
TUTA Theatre Chicago
Tympanic Theatre
Victory Gardens Biograph Theater
Village Players Theatre (Oak Park)
Vitalist Theatre
Walkabout Theater Company
Will Act For Food [added 2/7/2008]
WNEP Theatre
Writers’ Theatre (Glencoe)
Zombie Fortress Arts Collective [added 2/7/2008]
The Methodology
What I've essentially done is recreate the work of last summer, tragically lost in the computer crash of the fall. (Yes, I have also started backing up regularly to an external harddrive.) I've have a table listing almost every single production in Chicago this season (Aug-Aug), with info like playwright, director, open and close date. Though there are still some holes to fill and some facts to check, I have 450 entires in this table as of today.
I've already gone a step further and created a related table to house information on just the theatre-producing groups in Chicago, which as of now has about 160 entries. I had to make some criteria - so what I included ended up being loosely defined as "professional agencies that produce live, mostly scripted theatre in Chicago and it's near neighbors." Professional, of course, is a loose term: I used the Potter Stewart metric. There are companies like Stage Wright or (League of Chicago Theatres member) Roosevelt University that stage essentially student productions. Here I used an actor's perspective - while directors and technical designers from the theatre community may work there, I, for instance, couldn't get cast there.* The location thing was a bit trickier. Not including Writer's Theatre in Glencoe seemed ludicrous, but why include them and not the companies producing in Lake Forest or Elgin? I used Google Maps and my own understanding to construct a "Can I get there without a car from Chicago" rule. It's rough, but it's functional.
Where am I going from here? Well, I've already started populating (see? a databasers term!) a sub-table to the "Productions" table with performance times. It seemed like a bit much to try and come up with a widget to allow every single possible performance time. I mean, I'm not making this so that people can find what show is playing tonight at 7:30pm in their neighborhood. For the purposes of analysis, I thought knowing generally how many times a week a show was performing might be interesting, so you can put in any day of the week, and indicate whether the show is a matinee. I have some ideas as to how this might come into play later down the road, so it may make more sense later on.
I'm also shortly going to make a separate table for performance venues, which will include capacities of each space. It'll allow me to look put some numbers to things like possible revenue vs. operating budget, etc. For that, I'll of course need to add in more info on operating budgets and revnue from 990s, which will probably be another table altogether.
My Holy Grail is to have a table for reviews. I'm still working out how this will work, but ultimately it will give us some hard, longitudinal (see? a statisticians word!) data on how much coverage we're getting out of our theatre writers. I'm also thinking it may reveal some biases, so that might be juicy. In any case, it'll be a huge time suck to dig all that info, so it will probably have to wait until the summer. Unless, of course, somebody wants to help me ...
*Now, I admit following this argument to its logical conclusion causes some problems for those of us who declare our professionalism in the face of bigots who use the same basic argument to exclude non-Equity folks from the Valhalla of Professional Theatre. And furthermore, what's the difference between, say, a Columbia College production and a show by Silent Theatre, made up of mostly current Columbia College students? I could try and craft an argument that the school and it's administrators (rather than the artists themselves) dictate the programming, and do so with the education of its students, rather than an theatrical aesthetic, primarily in mind. However, that begs the question, "how does that differ from the young theatre companies who pick their seasons based on shows they did in college?" So rather than continue down that road, I'll say this: if you don't like who I included and excluded, feel free to make your own database.
21 comments:
YESSSS!
Dan, You and I are on the same page. I can't believe you've done all this work already. Populating a working database is key to another project I've had in mind. Generating interest starts with knowing what's out there.
In order to keep this project sustainable for you (and accessible for the future), we need to get this into a web database (PHP and mySQL or a Wiki with a database backend) so that other people can collaboratively contribute to what you're doing and fill in the gaps. And so that computer crashes never wreck your beautiful data again. I've been planning something like this but need to know the full scope of the need before I get started, because it's potentially huge to do it right (Database design is my secret passion.) Think about a Theater in Chicago-like website that theaters can update themselves. No More Exclusion, No More Wait. An administrative back end that allows theaters to promote their show and at the same time archive their production materials. Build history and context, collaboratively and with a minimum of work. This kind of thing I think has great potential to grow our collective theater-going audience because it generates buzz and traffic by design.
And here you are doing the hard work.
Let me know what you need table-structure-wise and maybe I can help put some scaffolding together to build a quick-and-dirty starter web-based database organically as a community (and in a way that we can then tie the data to other web services later) I'm talking with the League about partnering on awareness-generating projects like this, so that could generate some community-wide traffic, as well.
I think you should also plop this list - by far the most complete I've seen anywhere - down on the Theater in Chicago Wikipedia page, and us other folks can help you plop in the links and maybe write some nice teaser descriptions and/or missions of their theaters?
See also: http://nikku.net/blog/follow-up-someone-else-is-already-writing-our-history/
Rock star. That's what you are.
RZ
I have never heard of "Dream Engine" and can't seem to locate a website for them, but perhaps you're thinking of "Dream Theatre Company," one of those currently in residence at the side project.
www.dreamtheatrecompany.com
Tympanic Theater
http://www.tympanictheatre.org/
(new this year)
Dan,
chicagomammals.com
aka The Mammals
Thanks for the responses, everyone!
Nick: That would be neat - I thought of some additional directions in which such a database could grow. We'll need to talk some more about that. Re: Tympanic - I'm a little concerned adding a company that hasn't actually produced anything yet - it's a criterion I used for pretty much everyone else. However, I'll do it on your recommendation, however.
Bilal: Dream Engine's been around for a couple of years - they produced a couple of shows at the Gorilla Tango this past year. The website is at: www.dream-engine.org. But I'm glad to add Dream Theatre!
Bob: At some point I shamefully noticed that I hadn't added the Mammals, but forgot to do it when I got back to working on the database. Thanks for reminding me!
Tympanic's produced! They did Splintered Crosses at The Side Project, and they're going to be doing another production this season.
Send me an email when you're ready. What are you building the database in currently? We can export your current data later.
Nick - ah, well - there you go! I didn't see it on the website, so good to know!
I'm working in Access.
Halfway through updating the Theater in Chicago Wikipedia page... noticed:
Keyhole Theatre Company
http://www.keyholetheatre.com/
Writers' Theatre is in Glencoe.
Hey Dan. Since I see what you might call a crapload of Chicago theater and I've been documenting it on my blog for the past ten months or so, it was easy for me to compare lists. Here are the producing organizations I've seen in that time that you don't have on your list. I can provide web links for most of them if you can't find them on Google:
Nightingale Group
Pine Box Theatre
Zombie Fortress Arts Collective
HeadCheese Fat Boss Productions
La Costa Theatre
Teatro Luna
Not Waiting Productions
A-Squared Theater Workshop
dueEast Theatre Company
Riddlemark Theatre Company
Will Act For Food
Bricklayers Theatre Company
People's Theatre of Chicago
blue moon studio theater
Light Opera Works
Apex Theatre Company
Big Theater
Collision Theatre Company
Teatro Luna http://www.teatroluna.org/
16th Street Theater in Berwyn http://www.16thstreettheater.org/
The Building Stage
http://www.buildingstage.com/
Wikipedia (and the bajillions of graduating seniors reading Wikipedia about to put up stakes in Chicago) now knows where it's all at. thanks again, sir.
Chicago Children's Theater
http://www.chicagochildrenstheatre.org/
Catherine - first: oh my lord, how embarassing! This is what happens after staring at data all day and then trying to write a post ... I changed it above.
Second: Thanks for the close reading, and welcome to the blog!
Nick: I actually met some of the folks at Keyhole ... and I think there is a connection to New Leaf, I think. Or at least there was a few years ago. In any case, nice catch.
Kris: Thanks for comparing. I'm actually interested in what TOC considers within its ambit. I know Jones goes down to Theater at the Center - but to you guys go to Lake Forest, Elgin, etc.? Is there a line?
Remembered one--The Broken Compass, which produced Mercury Fur last year and The Bloody Romantic the year before.
www.thebrokencompass.org
If you're including Lincolnshire/Glen Ellyn and environs then these should also be included:
Open Door Rep - Oak Park
Citidal Theatre - Lake Forest
Greenman Theatre - Elmhurst
Hidden Talent Theatre - Arlington Heights
Metropolis Performing ARts Centre - Arlington Heights
Theatre on the Hill - Bolingbrook
Beverly theatre Guild - Beverly
Kirk Players - Mundelein
First Street Playhouse - Batavia
Steel Beam Theater - St. Charles
Hi, great job on this.
One small change if I may "Chemically Imbalanced Comedy" is no longer at the Cornservatory
We have our own Theater space now. The Chemically Imbalanced Theater.
Corn is still there, we just aren't. Thanks.
Will do - thanks! Hope the new home is working out well!
we're starting this in Los Angeles, the online relational database thing, right now hoping for a summer roll out. Should we compare notes? Show we work towards collaborating? Show we make it all open source?
we should work something else. Have you looked into People Aggregator?
Ian,
We should definitely compare notes. Nick and I are on the very early stages of transferring what was my personal database to a web-based platform using magiks I as yet know little of. We're meeting tomorrow, so I may have some more clarity then!
Dan
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