About 10 years ago, director David Petrarca was working like crazy on the Goodman Theatre’s premiere production of “Marvin’s Room.” That show was so well received that Petrarca subsequently directed productions in Hartford, Conn., Washington, D.C., and New York City. But when the late Scott McPherson’s moving play was filmed in 1996, Petrarca was not the director.
“They said,” Petrarca recalls with a slight sneer as he munches on a Sunday lunchtime sandwich, “that I had never been behind a camera.”
Rather than wallow in bitterness, Petrarca has since made it his business to be behind all kinds of cameras. Still a Goodman Theatre resident director and a resident of Chicago, Petrarca has not directed a live show here since his controversial Goodman production of “Design for Living” in 1998.
Instead, the “tri-coastal” Petrarca has been in Los Angeles directing episodes of “Jack and Jill” and “Popular” for the Warner Brothers television network, “To Have and To Hold” for CBS and “Nothing Sacred” for ABC/Fox. He’s also been trekking the streets of Chicago helming “Early Edition” and is working on various projects in New York.
“I’d love to get to the point where I can make movies here,” Petrarca says. “We need to establish Chicago more firmly as a movie-making base.”
Because Petrarca has been delving into high-school culture for “Popular,” there’s a certain symbiosis in his choosing to direct Wendy MacLeod’s “Schoolgirl Figure,” which begins previews in the Goodman Studio on Friday night.
Interestingly enough, MacLeod (who also wrote “The House of Yes” and “The Water Children”) is currently a writer on “Popular.” Petrarca introduced her to the producers — and MacLeod used the unproduced “Schoolgirl Figure” as her writing sample.
Yet even though MacLeod’s play mines the familiar territory of high-school cliques and the tribal implications thereof, this is not the kind of thing you are ever likely to see on television. “Schoolgirl Figure” takes sensitive topics like bulimia and anorexia and uses them as material to be ground in a comic mill. Indeed, even the generally bold and edgy Petrarca seems nervous about how his latest show will be received. Satire, he observes, can be a very tough sell.
“It’s so politically incorrect,” Petrarca says, looking briefly down at the floor. “It’s not the kind of thing non-profit theaters are meant to do . . . people might be wildly offended.”
By definition, satire attacks societal taboos without much regard for sensitivity. They know that very well at the Second City, which is perhaps why mainstage performer Stephnie Weir has ended up in Petrarca’s cast. And because the characters are so young, this is a chance for audiences to see a cast of five new faces at the old Goodman.
But even though Petrarca insists that “you either embrace the view that theater is about imagination or you don’t” (in other words, anything goes), he’s more of a sentimentalist than most people realize. He even regards “Schoolgirl Figure,” in which the main character virtually starves herself to death, as a play about “the absurdity of trying to achieve perfection in an imperfect world.”
Asked what his chief interest is right now, Petrarca responds that he wants to do projects about “alternative families.” He’s working on a TV pilot about a diverse group of unmarried folks who are collectively raising three kids.
Because the residents of 28, Barbary Lane in Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” series fall into that category, Petrarca hopes that his next major theatrical project will be a stage version of Maupin’s work. Details are a long way off, but he thinks it would be a fine project for the new Goodman. So would the stage musical version of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” for which Petrarca is trying desperately to unsnare the theatrical rights.
He’s got all the right contacts.
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If you ever stroll the 4200 block of Lincoln Avenue (or visit the supermarket therein), you may have noticed that a new but largely unsung little district of storefront theaters has been quietly emerging. Just a few short years ago, the former Zebra Crossing Theatre at 4223 N. Lincoln had this part of town mostly to itself, but that’s all suddenly changed.
After plying its trade at the former Zebra Crossing space (which is still operating as a busy theater), Tinfish Productions has just opened a delightful and fairly expansive new space up the street at 4247 N. Lincoln (where you can currently see Dario Fo’s “Abducting Diana”). The new Tinfish is next door to the Alchymia Theatre (present home of “Rosmersholm”), a tiny but quite beguiling new little theater at 4249 N. Lincoln.
In the other direction, one can easily stagger to the Cornservatory at 4210 N. Lincoln. This is the new home of the wacky comedic crew at Corn Productions, who were forced to move after they lost the Sweetcorn Playhouse in pricier Andersonville (which has been hemorrhaging theaters of late). When you add another new theater called The Playground just a little farther south, this stretch of Lincoln has a density of new theaters that can rival Randolph Street downtown. The average capacity up here, however, is just a little smaller. And the stages are just a little more active.
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An interesting trend has emerged in the last couple of years in which resident, non-profit theaters in Chicago have been able to win the rights to hit New York shows that just a few years ago would have been produced here in commercial venues. One major beneficiary of this trend has been the Northlight Theatre, which snagged the rights to “How I Learned to Drive” and “Visiting Mr. Green,” for example.
But with the reports that the Royal George Theater is in the final stages of being sold to New York producer Mitchell Maxwell, that may change soon. Maxwell produced Donald Margulies’ “Dinner With Friends” off-Broadway this season and is likely to bring that show here. That same title has been on the highly desired list of Northlight’s artistic director, B.J. Jones. But even the competitive Jones is happy that the sad state of commercial producing in Chicago is likely to improve after Maxwell takes residence at the George.