In the business of show, there are few equations knottier than the one that yields the menu of productions offered each season at any given theater. Those splashy adverts touting the 2015/16 seasons at the Marriott, Writers, Citadel and Northlight theaters are years in the making, the result of ever-shifting combinations of gut instinct, statistical analysis, subscriber polls, artist input and diplomatic wrangling.
“There’s no formula in planning a season. There’s also no end to it,” says Marriott Lincolnshire Executive Director Terry James.
As a producing house since the 1980s, the Marriott has some 35,000 subscribers. It seems reasonable to intuit that by doing nothing but musicals, Marriott’s season selection process is a bit simpler, but a full slate of show tunes brings its own challenges.
“If you do five musicals a year, you start running out of product pretty quickly,” James says. “Broadway’s output isn’t consistent. And if, like us, you don’t repeat shows more than once a decade, it gets tough.”
Further muddying the mix at the Marriott and everywhere else: Snagging the rights to the show you want. When James sets his sights on a show and applies for the license to do it, he’s competing with theaters from Indiana to Wisconsin for that permission. Although, James points out, it’s not like he and the honchos at Drury Lane in Oak Brook or Paramount in Aurora are out brawling over who gets to stage “Fun Home” in 2018.
“People like to think we’re competitive because that makes for good storytelling. But the truth is we’re all friends. And it’s rare we’re going after the same shows,” says James.
It’s not so rare for other north suburban theaters. As artistic director for Lake Forest’s Citadel Theatre, Scott Phelps has found success in staging shows that are rarely his first choice.
“I usually wind up with my third or fourth choices in any given season,” says Phelps. “We’ve got 144 seats, and we’re in competition with theaters in a 100 mile radius. If venues with more seats want the same show we do? They’ll get it. ” Such was the case with “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which Phelps sought and Chicago’s Goodman got. “I wanted to do ‘Cabaret’ last spring, but (Oak Brook’s) Drury Lane had it, so I went with ‘Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, ” Phelps adds. “Sometimes it works out. In 2006, I wanted to put ‘A Nervous Smile’ in, but I couldn’t because Victory Gardens had a hold on it. So I called them. I was like, ‘Look, if you’re not going to do it, can you release it so I can?’ They did,” he says.
James has had similar negotiations with Drury Lane and Paramount Theatre. But he’s often able to avoid these situations by engaging in the uber-risky business of staging world premieres such as the recently opened “October Sky,” last year’s “Hero” and previous seasons’ “For the Boys,” “Bowery Boys” and “Phantom of the Country Palace.” That means James’ artistic associates Andy Hite and Aaron Thielen are constantly perusing new scripts.
“Everything sort of flows through Aaron and Andy,” says James. “And of course, we always have to keep our audience in mind. You want to take risks, but you also want to make people happy. People have to trust us, to believe that even if we do a show that seems outside their comfort zone, we’re going to do it well.”
Trust is also crucial when BJ Jones works out the formula for Skokie’s Northlight Theatre. If there’s a consistency to Northlight’s seasons, it’s the venue’s wholly unpredictable eclecticism. Like Marriott and Writers and Citadel, there’s no unifying theme in Northlight’s seasonal menu beyond the loose rule that the holiday slot will lean toward the “family-friendly.” Like Writers’, Jones’ also almost always programs a “refreshed” take on a classic.
“Nobody wants to be typecast or put in a box. I pride us on our inability to be pinned down,” says Jones. That inability hasn’t stopped upward of 60,000 single ticket buyers from joining Northlight’s 6,000- strong subscription base ever year. Since Jones took the helm 17 seasons ago, Northlight has become a powerhouse presenter of new works including “Chapatti,” “The Outgoing Tide,” “Better Late” and “Rounding Third.”
Plucking diamonds (or box office gold) from a sea of unproduced plays is an immeasurably huge task and like James, Jones has a few close collaborators he relies heavily on to funnel potential scripts his way. Longtime casting director Lynne Baber is crucial to the effort at Northlight. So is maintaining a schedule that has Jones seeing upward of 100 plays a year.
That’s a schedule Phelps knows well. As a member of the Jeff Committee (which bestows annual awards on Chicago theatre), Phelps sees between two and five shows a week. (Ironically, Citadel itself won’t be Jeff-eligible until next year — after Phelps takes the company Equity this season.) Phelps’ own artistic tastes skew toward edgy dramas.
“If I programmed strictly according to what I wanted to do, I’d go out of business,” says Phelps. “You have to find that balance between what will bring people in, and what you’re passionate about. Ideally, the two merge at some point.”
Passion and collaboration, says Writers’ founding artistic director Michael Halberstam are at the heart of season programming.
“Our projects are manifestations of the passions and dreams of the artists with whom we collaborate,” he says. Such lofty ideals are inexorably linked to the bottom line.
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“You have to have variety,” says Halberstam, “If you did four relentlessly bleak and abstract plays in a row, no matter how good they were, you’d probably start losing (audience members).”
And like his colleagues, Halberstam’s own passions and tastes are sometimes checked by his inner circle, including literary manager Bobby Kennedy, casting director Stephen Schellhardt and artistic assistant Tyrone Phillips.
“Arcadia,” the dazzling Tom Stoppard drama that will open in Writers Theatre’s new Alexandra C. and John D. Nichols Theatre in March, wasn’t his first choice for that milestone spot.
“When I presented the first play I wanted to do there, I got a lot of pushback from the staff here and the artists we work with,” says Halberstam, who didn’t want to name the show since he might want to stage it the near future. “So I went to ‘Arcadia,’ which we’d tried for in the past, but could never get the rights to. And everyone said ‘yes’ pretty immediately. It’s a drama about the bind that connects the present and the past, which was perfect for opening the next chapter in our history.”
In the end, north suburban leaders concur, it’s always best to never say never.
“I never thought we’d stage a murder mystery,” Jones says of Northlight. “Then we did ‘Mousetrap’ last year and it turned out to be one of our most successful shows ever.”
Seasons at a glance:
Northlight Theatre
9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; Northlight.org
“Funnyman” Sept. 11-Oct. 18
“Charm” — Oct. 14-Nov. 8
“You Can’t Take it With You” — Nov. 6-Dec. 13
“Mothers and Sons” — Jan. 22-Feb. 28, 2016
“Butler” — March 13-April 17
“Discord” — May 6-June 12
Writers’ Theater
Books on Vernon space: 664 Vernon (Books on Vernon Space), Glencoe. New Theater Center (opening this spring) 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe; Writerstheatre.org
“Marjorie Prime” — Oct. 21-Feb. 21, 2016 (Books on Vernon)
“Arcadia” — March 16-April 24 (New Theatre Center)
“Death of a Streetcar Named Virginia Woolf: A Parody” — April 27-July 10
“Company”— June 15-July 24
Marriott Lincolnshire
10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire; Marriotttheatre.com
“October Sky” — through Oct. 11
“Elf” — Oct. 21-Dec. 31
Citadel Theatre
300 Waukegan Road, Lake Forest; CitadelTheatre.org
“Ordinary People” — Sept. 18-Oct. 18
“Oliver!” — Nov. 20-Dec. 20
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“Educating Rita” — Feb. 12-March 13
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” — April 22-May 22