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Book Review by Samuel L. Leiter . . .
Richard Christiansen. A Theater of Our Own: A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004). 317pp.
24th Edition.
Chicago, which first became America’s second-largest city in 1890, was incorporated as a town in 1833 and a city in 1837, the latter being the same year it saw its first theatrical performances. During the 19th century, its theater business followed much the same path as those in other burgeoning American cities, with New York, the largest city, setting the standard and providing the product for the rest of the nation. In the 20th century, as elsewhere, however, what had been a flourishing theatrical environment began to struggle, especially with the advent of movies. The years that followed saw numerous attempts to keep theater, both commercial and non, alive and kicking in the Windy City.
Mostly, this meant either the big touring shows from New York (i.e., Broadway) that largely represented commercial theater interests (and were often inferior to their originals), or the smaller, independent, noncommercial venues that maintained interest in the higher artistic altitudes, amateur as well as professional. Rare examples aside, Chicago, for all its native talents, was not known as a progenitor of important new theatrical work.
In the second half of the 20th century, however, what later was considered a cultural renaissance occurred, and the professional theater experienced a remarkable efflorescence, especially with the emergence of countless independent companies, some having national influence. By the turn of the 21st century, the city that, half a century earlier had been a theatrical backwater, inspired Mayor Richard M. Daley to point to “Chicago’s growing reputation as the new theater capital of the United States.” It was hyperbole, of course, but it expressed pride in a true turnaround.
Until relatively recently, though, very few books—several of which I’ve discussed in this column—have attempted to offer overviews of this exciting history. As far as I know, the only truly comprehensive history of theater in the Second City is A Theater of Our Own, today’s subject, by the late Richard Christiansen, long the chief drama critic of the Chicago Tribune, who published it 20 years ago. While it would be of great value to have his book brought up to date, Christiansen’s engrossing account, which describes many groups and individuals still active, serves excellently as a bird’s eye view of Chicago theaters, plays, actors, designers, producers, and so forth from 1837-2004.
The book’s springboard was a four-essay series Christiansen wrote for the Chicago Tribune in 2002, shortly before his retirement. His book is an excellently illustrated, wide-ranging, well-researched, accessibly written account of Chicago theater history, replete with bibliography, index, and locator maps, unburdened by notes. Christiansen’s many decades of reporting on and reviewing Chicago theater, for which he was a respected advocate, give him a decided edge in writing about those years in which he was active.
A Theater of Our Own introduces the leading figures of Chicago’s 19th-century theater world, beginning with the great comic actor Joseph Jefferson III (whose name is attached to the city’s most prestigious theater award), who first appeared locally in 1838; the city’s earliest playhouses, beginning with the Sauganash Hotel; and the first important actor-managers, like John B. Rice, founder of Rice’s Theatre, and James McVicker, whose McVicker’s Theatre survived five incarnations into the 1980s.
Christiansen also looks at the antitheatrical moralists who tried to block the art; the growth of major theaters in the Loop district, Chicago’s answer to Broadway; the world-class visiting stars, like Sarah Bernhardt; the leading American theater figures produced by Chicago itself, like Florenz Ziegfeld and Mrs. Leslie Carter; the harmful incursions of the Theatrical Syndicate; and much more. Naturally, the narrative is nicely supplemented by a robust number of informative anecdotes.
The most important 19th-century theaters (over 30 by the end of the century), such as the huge Auditorium (1889), with over 4,000 seats, are described as part of a rapidly growing, skyscraper city—especially after the fire of 187l. Christiansen, of course, examines in detail the catastrophic Iroquois Theater fire of 1903, with its loss of over 600 lives; oddly, he never mentions the Brooklyn Theater fire of 1876, America’s worst such tragedy until the Iroquois burned down.
The transition from large-scale Loop theaters—which declined seriously from the 1930s on—to small, often out-of-the-way venues was a major part of theatrical progress in the modern age. The shift was first noted with the establishment in 1889 of Hull House, a settlement house co-founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. After numerous ups and downs, and location moves, theater remains associated with Hull House, whose work triggered what would one day be Chicago’s remarkable flowering of small-scale, intimate institutions.
By the turn of the 19th century, Chicago was New York’s closest competitor in terms of theatrical activity, although the bulk of its offerings were New York products, usually in touring versions. However, on one of Christiansen’s frequent highlight pages about a narrow subject, the author lists three dozen shows, from 1902’s The Wizard of Oz to 2002-2003’s Hollywood Arms, that transferred from Chicago to Broadway, with most of their companies intact.
Of vast importance in noncommercial terms during the depression-era 1930s was the work of the Chicago branch of the Federal Theater Project (1935-1939), whose shows also toured the region. Leftwing groups, largely amateur, also made an impact during those turbulent years. And while commercially popular plays that offended social tastes, like Tobacco Road, were likely to invite censorship, others, like the sex farce Good Night, Ladies, could break long-run records. On the other hand, occasional artistic breakthroughs happened in the Loop, where Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, welcomed by the famously acidic critic Claudia Cassidy, premiered to acclaim in 1944. Similarly, Cassidy’s praise in 1959 for Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun was instrumental in its success.
Beginning in the 1950s, many low-budget companies were born in basement or storefront spaces, breaking ground with both innovative new plays or staging, not to mention providing stages for challenging foreign works. These so-called Off-Loop troupes often began with non-union personnel fresh out of one of the nearby colleges and universities that continue to supply the city with a steady stream of ambitious young theater artists. So effective were such groups they often led to the spread of theaters, large and small, in nearby towns and suburbs. Among these was the nation’s first dinner theater with famous guest stars, which led to similar enterprises elsewhere.
Christiansen, who also looks at Chicago’s various ethnic theaters, ably covers these developments, discussing not only the most prominent companies but the inspirational leaders responsible for them. As the picture of Chicago’s contributions to American theater comes into sharper focus, we realize how remarkably important the city has been in shaping America’s theatrical landscape.
Dominating that landscape are such Chicago figures as improvisation specialist Viola Spolin and her son Paul Sills, the latter responsible for a genre called “Story Theatre”; Chicago Little Theatre founders Maurice Brown and Ellen Van Volkenburg; actress-playwright Alice Gerstenberg; actor-director Sam Wanamaker; playwright Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, for whom Chicago’s famed Goodman Theatre is named; playwright Ben Hecht; actor-journalist Studs Terkel; and many others.
Chicago’s innovative energy really took off in the 1950s with the founding of a series of improvisation-based cabaret-style theaters, evolving from the Playwrights Theater through the Compass Theater to Second City. Names attached to the work and its offshoots over the years include a remarkable number who rose to household-name stardom through their Broadway, film, and TV appearances (especially “Saturday Night Live” and “SCTV”).
All the principal Chicago names, many not familiar outside the city, are mentioned, be they producers, actors, designers, composers, or playwrights, like Jeffery Sweet and David Mamet. The city’s best-known indigenous creations, like Bleacher Bums, Warp, and Grease, all get their due. We learn not only of the loss of important Loop theaters but of the district’s renaissance, with old theaters, renovated and renamed, drawing crowds back to the downtown theater center.
Too many other important theatrical developments are described for inclusion here, most significant being the birth (in a school basement), growth, and maturity of the great Steppenwolf Theater Company, founded in 1974 in the church basement of a Chicago suburb by high school students Jeff Perry, Terry Kinney, and Gary Sinise. A book about Steppenwolf, now nearing its 50th anniversary, will be the subject of next week’s column.
Other distinguished, if now extinguished, institutions, like Body Politic, Organic Theater, and Wisdom Bridge Theater, all—like Steppenwolf—born in the 1970s, are discussed, but too many others—from Victory Gardens to Remains Theater—are involved to enumerate them here.
I must force myself to stop here, tempting as it is to mention even just a few of the innumerable first-rate artists and innovators, theaters, companies, and productions that have made Chicago such a potent force in American theater over the last 75 years. A Theater of Our Own may be two decades old, but if you want a good foundation for appreciating the American theater of today—New York included—this survey of Chicago’s theater history will be an eye-opener. Even if you’ve never thought of Chicago as your “kind of town,” a trip through Robert Christiansen’s book may find you thinking about a trip just to check out what the fuss is all about.
Coming up: John Mayer, Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago: In Their Own Words.
Leiter Looks at Books welcomes inquiries from publishers and authors interested in having their theater/show business-related books reviewed.
