The Understudy’s first full manufacturing: THE BEST DAMN THING, written by Hanna Kime, composed by Sara Geist, and directed by Grace Dolezal-Ng. (Photograph by Juli Del Prete.)
The dusky-toned books, neon lights, and heart-thumping drums of femme teen philosophy shroud 20-somethings in heat, forming a spot of laughter within the grey panorama of frozen Chicago. Sitting via a rehearsal for Hanna Kime’s The Finest Rattling Factor, the primary full manufacturing at the Understudy (operating Jan. 27-Feb. 5), has obtained me pondering quite a bit about utopia.
A love little one of couple Adam Todd Crawford and Danny Fender, this theatre specialty bookstore café (say that 5 occasions quick) has been formally working since March 2023 within the hip Andersonville neighborhood. Within the yr since they opened their doorways, they’ve already constructed a powerful crowd of regulars whereas gathering new patrons at every occasion. Up to now they’ve hosted almost 60 occasions and are trying ahead to discovering extra methods to serve the group. Crawford stated he considers their house, sustained by a thriving small enterprise mannequin, a type of different to the “American theatre nonprofit disaster.” The Understudy strives to facilitate a gathering floor for infinite risk, lending itself to experimentation and new work.
In true meta-theatrical vogue, The Finest Rattling Factor is about scrappy new work, impressed by its playwright’s early days writing. When Kime was simply 16, she wrote a novel she described as “foolish, and messy, and…the most important deal in all the world.” Now years later she’s written a campy and uncooked musical a few teenage woman craving to be taken critically as a human being and artist. In The Finest Rattling Factor, a younger artist pitches “a present she thinks will change musical theatre” to her ex-best-friend, a now-cool pupil in her highschool theatre division who will get to choose subsequent yr’s musical. What’s the music, you ask? Impressed by true teen pop angst, the protagonist wrote it within the vein of early 2000s icon Avril Lavigne (Sara Geist’s searing music for The Finest Rattling Factor definitely does the sound justice).
A former literary supervisor at First Flooring Theatre, Kime was thrilled to hitch forces with Geist, a longtime artist “taking off in thrilling methods within the metropolis’s indie music scene,” as she put it. They birthed many of the music over the previous few months main as much as opening. It’s a collaboration that hasn’t relied on elaborate units or massive budgets, and as a substitute units out to soar in a down-to-earth, intimate house.
“Everyone seems to be recognizing that theatre doesn’t earn money,” stated Crawford. “However what can we do with that info?” The reply: A brief run in a bookstore that does make sufficient cash to maintain itself. “We couldn’t make this manufacturing in a nonprofit mannequin—we don’t have that construction,” he continued. “We’ve got a bookstore and a espresso store that sustains itself, during which we will hang around after closing and make this play in a unusual approach. It has lowered the extent of problem and hurdle to get it completed.” Crawford smiled as a music rehearsal blared within the background.
Crawford elaborated, “It permits us to step away from the shortage mindset—that worry that if one packages one thing that’s by no means been completed earlier than, it’s topic to failure. We don’t see this as a danger in any approach. We’ve bought out three quarters of our seats already. I feel there’s a marketplace for good performs, and there’s all the time going to be. Folks nonetheless have an urge for food.”
After which there’s one in all artists’ favourite factor folks do in a bookstore-café (apart from learn and sip espresso): write. “This was one in all my goals,” stated Fender. “I advised Adam, ‘I can’t wait to see writers in right here and share tales of after they wrote in our house.’” Kime went one higher: She invited Fender and Crawford to the studying of her play It Woman, commissioned via the Goodman Playwrights Unit, that she had partly written whereas sitting on the Understudy. Although they couldn’t make it to that studying, they wish to discover one other strategy to help Kime. They requested a script, and Fender stated he instantly tapped into her play’s early 2000s nostalgia, examination of celeb tradition, and dissection of rising up on this century. “We’re reflecting quite a bit on how the world has grown,” he stated.
The Finest Rattling Factor equally seems again to the early 2000s, and to what Kime recalled as “these all-consuming friendships that teenage women can develop with one another, and the way heartbreaking and devastating it’s when these friendships rupture.”
In speaking to Kime about her new musical, Fender stated, they noticed a chance to do greater than a studying. As a result of the present is ready in a basement, he reasoned they might remodel the Understudy into a comfortable house, simply interpreted as a basement. He and Crawford had deliberate their house to embrace quite a lot of performances and occasions, with what they name a wise “advert hoc lighting grid” and sound tools. These haven’t simply been the same old bookstore writer occasions; one, a latest “Cafe Queens: A Drag Present / Latte Artwork Throwdown,” featured each drag efficiency and a latte artwork competitors.
“We discovered what’s bodily doable in right here,” Crawford stated of their 2023 occasions, “and I feel Hanna confirmed up at a second once we had been itching to attempt one thing new.” Contemplating the reside band and electrical energy bouncing off the partitions, he stated, “It’s like a live performance. You by no means lose the visible body of being in a efficiency house, however you do turn out to be absolutely immersed. You get the expertise of being in a bookstore with 50 folks and being absolutely immersed on the earth of those two women.”
No stranger to the Chicago storefront or regional theatre world, director Grace Dolezal-Ng curated an deliberately collaborative room, welcoming enter from every artistic current, from Understudy workers to playwright to crew to precise understudies. Her grounded nature and directorial MO enter into dialog with the fabric and story of the Understudy.
“It’s thrilling to get a bunch of 20-something-year-olds and see our voices and concepts represented in an enormous approach,” Fender stated. “And there’s one thing about this play that, past preliminary references, speaks to many generations. Grant author Larry Bundschu got here in with a pocket book, and I questioned what the notes could be [considering a generational gap], nevertheless it was 5 pages of compliments on the play and the way he personally linked with it.”
They’re hitting a heat spot that resonates with Chicago storefront historical past. I can’t assist however be reminded of origin tales of Steppenwolf or Lookingglass as I hear them speak about bringing a Twenty first-century sensibility to theatrical entrepreneurship.
The world craves such moments of group connection. And if it may be served with espresso, a lot the higher.
Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (she/her) is the affiliate Chicago editor for American Theatre. gcoutinho@tcg.org
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