As a soon-to-be-retired board member of Chicago Dramatists and an actor in the local scene, I read Chris Jones’ and Roche Edward Schulfer’s recent opinion pieces on Chicago theater with interest.
Jones laid out the problems with the authority one might expect from the leading critic, and Schulfer’s detailed explanation of different producing economies, followed by his solution of combining commercial and not-for-profit theaters to uplift the industry as a whole, is inspiring. May his suggestions take root.
Chicago has always been a city of haves and have-nots in life, dramatic and real. The competition for theater funding is intense: The corporations, the foundations and the wealthy favor the established companies, while smaller donors keep the others afloat. Some smaller companies live on the donations of their actors or writers who have transitioned to TV and film to keep their companies alive. The spectrum is wide on donor lists.
On one end, Shulfer’s Goodman Theatre has a large base of donors as it sits in a downtown space on Dearborn Street built for them in 2000. Next door fiscally, Steppenwolf Theatre’s heavily endowed company recently rolled out the Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Arts and Education Center and Helen Zell Ensemble Theater. The Halsted Street campus is gorgeous. Yet, these sterling institutions have been affected by the pandemic and the economics of producing in 2023. They’ve had to shrink to survive, contract to compete and compromise to continue.
On the other end of the spectrum, Chicago Dramatists sits at the intersection of Chicago, Milwaukee and Ogden avenues. The theatrical intersection of development, hope and keeping the doors open. We no longer produce. We do what we do best: develop playwrights, develop new work and support dramatic writers at every stage of their evolution. Dedicated to growing, nurturing and championing dramatic writers of all kinds. Committed to advancing the new play field.
As a former artistic associate, I refer to it as home. I’ve enjoyed success and managed to make a living while doing what every actor in Chicago does: whatever we can to get paid. Then, later in life, give back to the community that welcomed me. Donate, raise money, perform public readings of work in development and join the board of directors. I even tried my hand at producing a new work called “Johnny 10 Beers’ Daughter” by Dana Lynn Formby, along with a nonequity company that specializes in magical realism called Something Marvelous. It’s been a great ride and mostly pleasurable. I’ve had the chance to work with extraordinary writers, actors, directors, designers and board members, many from the business community.
What the public may not know is that the United States provides little to no support for theater arts. Germany has several hundred theaters that are subsidized by the government. The U.S. has no state-subsidized theaters. Zero. We do have the National Endowment for the Arts, which hands out hundreds of millions of dollars to artists who work in various media, such as poets, novelists, educators, actors, playwrights, fine artists, sculptors, musicians and community groups. Sound like a lot? By comparison, Reuters estimates that the oil and gas industry is subsidized to the tune of between $10 billion and $50 billion a year in the U.S. Last year, oil subsidies topped $7 trillion worldwide, according to the International Monetary Fund. That. Is. A lot.
So maybe it’s not the fault of the theater industry as it struggles to survive. As it scrounges for money to entertain, inform, inspire and provide a communal experience to laugh, cry, be amazed and heal. Perhaps it is us. We the people. We allow our politicians, our “body politic” (another theater in the Chicago boneyard), to hijack our communal dollars to subsidize industries that may do more harm than heal. Industries that overheat our oceans and our atmosphere. Industries that cause wildfires that choke our cities and burn our forests, hurricanes that swamp our states, droughts that dry out our farmland, which then needs subsidies to survive these disasters.
We throw financial and tax subsides at Big Oil and Gas, Big Agriculture, Big Pharma, the airlines, health care. We always find funds for war. Funds to relieve the failures of housing bubbles, banking and the financial industry. But spare are the public funds for theater.
Maybe we need the great theater bailout of 2024? Pump some much needed billions into a once-thriving industry to lift all theater in this country, especially in Chicago, where there is a rich history of production going back decades. The community, commercial and not-for-profit groups will be eternally grateful.
Randy Steinmeyer is a Chicago journeyman actor.
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