Time Out Chicago April 12, 2007
Child's play
Ambitious productions like the big-top–style Go, Dog. Go! unleash a new era of family-friendly theater in Chicago.
By Judy Sutton Taylor
The huge, recently raised yellow and pink tent in the middle of Grant Park is more than just the home for Chicago Children's Theatre's production of Go, Dog. Go! The big top also serves as high-profile proof that the struggling Chicago children's theater community is finally gaining the status kid-focused troupes already enjoy in other cities.
“The question to ask is ‘Why hasn't this already happened?,'” says Jacqueline Russell, CCT's cofounder and artistic director, who notes Chicago's scene trails the work done by groups like Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis and Seattle Children's Theatre. She theorizes that the city's status as a theater capital might actually play against the children's circuit: “With such a huge theater scene, there are so many opportunities for artists here and children's theater hasn't been in the forefront. But we're out to break the stereotype that it can't be done on a professional level. We're paying real wages, we're working with the unions.”
“Chicago artists weren't particularly interested in family theater until recently,” agrees Karen Cardarelli, cofounder and executive artistic director at Emerald City Theatre, which produces shows at the Apollo Theater in Lincoln Park. “They wanted to be involved in adult projects because they were more edgy.” Emerald City saw a shift when the group put on its popular 2005 A Nutcracker Christmas, written by the Jeff Award–winning playwright team G. Riley Mills and Ralph Covert. (Covert, under the name Ralph's World, has become a kiddie-pop music sensation.)
The tent—which takes up 6,700 square feet and holds 750 seats—will be up until May 20. Its construction created an instant buzz that's helped push preshow ticket sales to roughly 5,000, Russell notes. This production, which brings to life the P.D. Eastman kids' classic, is exactly the type of thing she set out to achieve when she left her position as executive director of Lookingglass Theatre Company in 2004 to create CCT, now in its first full season.
“In other cities children's theater companies take on riskier, drama-based subject matter all the time, but here children's theater has always been associated with more storybook-type of productions,” Russell says. “That's why we produced Dandelion Wine [a play based on the Ray Bradbury novel about his childhood, which opened this season]. We wanted adults to ask themselves, Do I want to be taking my kid to see a Ray Bradbury play? And we wanted to challenge kids to think about things they may not have thought about before.”
Like other local artists who've become parents and found themselves exposed to the often painfully cutesy world of kids' entertainment, Russell (whose daughter Shiri is ten) simply wanted something better. She's not alone here: Several well-known Chicago musicians have been playing to the sippy-cup set because they are having kids themselves, and they don't want their tots listening to the likes of the Wiggles or the Doodlebops. Covert, former lead singer of the Bad Examples, started teaching Wiggleworms classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music as a way to entertain his daughter, and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy also has played to Wiggleworms audiences. Last year, Jon Langford, Kelly Hogan and Sally Timms became the Wee Hairy Beasties, performing concerts and releasing an album on Bloodshot Records.
But tackling large-scale children's theater takes more long-term effort than strapping on a guitar and singing about playground woes. It means Russell had to secure a steady stream of cash by attracting some of the most prominent names in Chicago's philanthropic community, including the Harris and Crown families, Boeing and the Prince Charitable Trusts. She also brought in A-list talent, such as Redmoon Theater's Jim Lasko as production designer and Lookingglass Theatre's founding member Andrew White as director.
But other local children's theater companies are having a hard time finding financing. “Our biggest challenge is educating funders [so that they] consider supporting children's theater the same way they support adult theater,” Cardarelli says. “Children's theater has grown leaps and bounds in terms of the great scripts out there and, subsequently, the great artists who want to be involved.”
There are other obstacles, too: Finding and producing work that speaks to Chicago's many ethnic groups is tough, says Lisa Portes, artistic director of Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences for the Theatre School at DePaul University, which performs mostly for Chicago Public School audiences. “Look at a nationally known, successful kids' show like James and the Giant Peach, and then look at what's going to read to our specific audience. Those are two very different things,” she says. Portes looks for work that puts an urban, contemporary spin on kids' books and fairy tales, like a Latin twist of their recent Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans. “Kids who attend Chicago Public Schools are literally from many walks of life. We have to reflect that onstage. Our greatest challenge is being true to our audience.”
Go, Dog. Go! opens Friday 13 at the Big Top Tent in Grant Park's Butler Field. See Kids listings.