Columbia College Chicago's Symposium: "Chicago: Theatre Capital of America. Past. Present. Future." A Report from the Field

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature. . . . Perhaps a thing is simple if you can describe it fully in several different ways without immediately knowing that you are describing the same thing.

—Richard Feynman¹

In It, Roach claims that theatre-making is part of the service economy, a product that is expended as it is consumed yet can endure in other forms. He writes: "Theater historians need to complicate that definition because they know that the experience of attending a performance is not a thing; it is a service of a very dynamic and labile kind." This service exists not as goods, but essentially as time spent in pursuit of something internal (aesthetic delight, emotional purgation, distraction from one's own woes, and so forth.) I made a similar point in The Economics of the British Stage: 1800-1914, expanding upon the ontology of what theatre artists make as distinct from what playgoers consume. The critical issues remain time and durability.

—Tracy Davis²

It is possible to believe what we do not understand. It is not possible to reason about what we do not understand.

—S. H. Burbury³

When is it proper, advisable, or preferable for scholars to "complicate our understanding" and when to "simplify"? When new ground opens for scholarly exploitation, should the first surveyors choose one goal or the other, or take steps to achieve both? If so, what steps would those be—in 1911, 2011 or 2111?

These questions, among many, underlie the work of the organizing committee (OC) of the first-ever Chicago theatre symposium.⁴ "Chicago: Theatre Capital of America: Past. Present. Future." occurred 18-22 May 2011 at the Film Center of Columbia College Chicago. The following paragraphs present a sampling of the first fruits of the Symposium, describe the prospects for future work in this site, and open for discussion two theoretical questions.

Given the climates in which dramatic theory, praxis, criticism, and historiography live, move, and have their being, the OC keenly understood the risks of adding the terms "Past. Present. Future." to the symposium's title. The simplicity of the words only magnified the complexity of the subjects signified. Barely submerged beneath the placid surface of these ordinary words seethe powerful artistic, academic, and cultural currents. Which pasts? What presents? Whose futures?

We believed that we steered in less hazardous waters with the phrase "Theatre Capital of America." We sought safe harbor from stormy criticism by deploying the words of a critic, and not just any critic—nonAmerican, nonaffiliated, nonacademic Michael Billington. He conferred the title on Chicago—not us! (What simpleness is this, indeed!)

Yet our simple tactics to draw the gaze of theatre makers and theatre scholars alike never masked our astonishment at an abyss in the historiography of modern theater: In a half-century, Chicago has transformed itself from a theatrical dead zone into interlocking networks of performative ecosystems. Where once no creative performers sustained themselves, now hundreds of creative lives flourished with even greater numbers emerging.

How could we account both for these profound changes in Chicago's performative ecology and the sparse commentaries about them in the historical and historiographical records? Circumstances cried for action of some kind.

Some Background

During 18-22 May 2011, over 350 theatre scholars and theatre makers convened at Columbia College's Film Row Center in Chicago's south Loop to celebrate, analyze, and discuss the evolution of professional nonprofit theatre in Chicago since 1950.

The support of the Mid-America Theatre Conference for the symposium was essential to its development and success. A goodly number of MATC members participated, including Rhona Justice-Malloy, Rosemarie Bank, and Harvey Young, a featured speaker who gave the second-day keynote address.

Speculating about what moved each person to attend the sessions and related events would...