The Event: For 200 guests at American Theater Company’s benefit at the Intercontinental Hotel Chicago, the focus was the evening’s theme, “Making History Together.” The Chicago theater featuring new and classic American stories celebrated 30 years of considering what it is to be an American on April 10.
Cause célebre: “Our mission is to explore what it means to be an American with amazing drama and comedy on stage,” explained board member Lynn Hughitt of Evanston. She added that ATC’s size — it seats only about 100 — does not prevent the theater from offering world-class drama and world premieres. “It’s original works (and) an intimate setting with Equity actors,” held Hughitt.
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ATC offers many ways to explore the concept of American identity, in addition to its stage productions. Its Humanity Project, a four-week summer program, seeks to inspire students to promote social change through great art. ATC’s Chicago Chronicle teams up seventh- and eighth-grade students with professional playwrights to create documentary-style plays from interviews. American Mosaic is ATC’s flagship outreach program, and serves more than 700 Chicago Public School students annually. The company’s Bridge gives tenth-grade students who excel at American Mosaic an opportunity to further explore theater after school.
“There is so much great theater in the suburbs and Chicago, but to see theater that embraces American ideals and history, that’s really rare to find and that’s really all we do,” said board member Melanie Peterson of Glenview. “It’s a time to realize who we are, where we come from and where we’re going as Americans, and we are the only theater that embraces what it means.”
Bottom Line: Making History raised $105,000 for ATC’s new play development and education programs that serve more than 1,000 CPS studentsevery year.