NEW EDGEWATER HOME FOR RIVENDELL. The ensemble theater, which is now in its 18th year of production (16th year of being an official nonprofit), celebrates its first permanent home at 5779 N. Ridge Avenue.
The unusual partnership with actor Steve Misetic, whose family owns the building, gives the woman-oriented company a 50-seat flexible black box theater on the ground floor, rehearsal space, and administrative offices.
Rivendell will serve as the resident company, and Misetic will rent to other theater troupes when the space isn’t in use.
At a recent open house, artistic director Tara Mallen and other ensemble and board members welcomed the community to their new home with champagne toasts and tours. Founding Rivendell member Elvia Moreno, who is a local architect, provided the design work.
Mallen gave thanks to Misetic and to their funders – the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which set up a special “PAV fund” to help small companies meet the city’s requirements for the Performing Arts Venue license.
In addition to great soundproofing (Misetic pointed out that the traffic on super-busy Ridge Avenue couldn’t be heard inside the space), Rivendell patrons will enjoy free parking at nearby Senn High School
The inaugural production for Rivendell’s new space is Gary Kirkham’s Falling: A Wake, directed by company member Victoria “Toy” DeIorio and based on the events around the 1988 Pan Am jet that exploded mid-air over Lockerbie, Scotland. It runs March 8-April 14.
There are two more open houses on Thursday, January 19 and Tuesday, January 24, both at 6:30 p.m.
GRIFFIN THEATRE STARTS RENOVATION. Founded in 1988, Griffin has been itinerant since giving up its old venue in the Calo Theater in Andersonville several years ago. (The space now houses the Brown Elephant resale shop.) Griffin acquired a former police station at 1940 W. Foster Avenue from the city for one dollar about a year ago.
But what the city gives, it also takes – in the form of long approval processes. “You know, you turn in your plans and drawings and 14 different departments give it back to you all marked up,” says Griffin co-founder and co-artistic director William Massolia.
However, they have cleared most of the final licensing hurdles and hope to start the renovation process in March of 2012 and open their first show in the new space by this time next year.
“The original plan was pretty grand,” says Massolia. The downturn in the economy has led them to reconfigure those initial concepts, and they will now open with an 80-seat flexible black box in the original building that will also house offices and dressing rooms.
The second phase, to be completed as funding allows, calls for knocking out the back wall of the former cop-shop and building a brand-new venue in the back. Once that happens, the original space will, says Massolia, probably revert to a second space for rentals and also classroom/workshop space.
Massolia points out one key advantage to having one’s own space: the ability to extend hits. Griffin’s production of the musical Spring Awakening at Theater Wit, which closed on January 8, turned out to be their highest-grossing show.
But there simply wasn’t a space in the rental schedule at Theater Wit for them to keep it up and running, and finding transfer spaces on short notice is a perennial problem in Chicago.
Kerry Reid is a freelance theater critic and arts journalist. Her work appears regularly in the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Reader. Please send news items to kerryreid@comcast.net.
