A fixture on the off-Loop scene for almost two decades, Chicago’s Raven Theatre has plodded along doing solid creative work but without hitting many headlines. A non-Equity company with an ensemble of Chicago-based actors and a specialization in classic American drama, the Raven has spent almost all of its existence playing to audiences of fewer than 100 people. It has never sold subscriptions or had more than the equivalent of one full-time staffer.
And yet on Sunday night, this little Chicago theater will officially open the new $2 million Raven Theatre at 6157 N. Clark St. It may be the prosaic former home of the Certified Grocery Score, but the two-story building has been turned by the noted Chicago theater architect John Morris into a two-theater arts complex that cannot help but raise the Raven’s profile and give this tiny troupe one of the nicest and most practical venues for theater on Chicago’s North Side.
A revival of Scott McPherson’s emotional play “Marvin’s Room” will be the first production in the new space, which will also house the Raven’s offices and provide dressing rooms and costume and prop storage. There’s even a dedicated parking lot right by the front door.
The City of Chicago and the State of Illinois together have bankrolled more than $1.2 million of the $2 million budget for the new theater. About another $500,000 has been raised by Raven from various individuals, foundations and corporations. The remaining $300,000 to $400,000 (fundraising is still ongoing) has been converted into a long-term mortgage secured on the building and land. And since the theater no longer has to pay rent — and, indeed, can now rent its theaters to other groups — it says it should be able to service that debt without too much difficulty.
“We’ll become one of the very few theaters in Chicago that owns their own space,” says Michael Menendian, Raven’s executive director and co-founder. “We’re really just stunned by this.”
“We were so, so lucky,” said JoAnn Montemurro, the theater’s general manager and its only full-time employee.
Everything came together
Precisely how Raven has ended up with this facility, which includes a 160-seat main-stage facility and a 60-seat studio theater, is mainly a combination of luck, persistence and aldermanic largesse.
New theaters and arts centers built with the aid of public money dot Chicago’s downtown business district. But while these have been heady days for artistic pork, very little of the financial meat has been delivered outside of the Loop. The opening of the Raven Theatre within a generally bleak commercial stretch of Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood goes someway toward redressing that balance. And given the sudden change in the financial fortunes of the government entities involved, it may be the last such theater project to get the green light in Chicago for some time.
Founded in 1983 by Menendian, Montemurro, Sam Derence, John Mueller and Tom Porter, the Raven has been run for most of its history by Menendian and Montemurro, a married couple. In 2000, the Raven’s former home at 6931 N. Clark St. was acquired by the Chicago Board of Education for the development of the Hait Elementary School. Menendian, a savvy insider whose day job is a consumer services inspector for the City of Chicago, immediately began looking for a new location. He wanted to remain in the same neighborhood, but since the Raven was merely a tenant of its previous theater, he was looking mainly for a place to rent. Initially, the search was not fruitful.
But as luck would have it, Ald. Patrick J. O’Connor (40th) happened to be chairman of the City of Chicago’s Education Committee and thus knew about the loss of the Raven space.
“We were closing down their theater for good reason,” O’Connor said. “But I felt that gave us an obligation to find them another place in the same neighborhood.”
The price was right
O’Connor knew about the empty grocery store — part of a nondescript strip of repair shops and video stores — and told Raven to take a look at the space. Menendian liked what he saw, but worried about the potential cost. So O’Connor asked the owner of the building to give the Raven a good price.
“That place had gone through a number of owners and was not making it as a grocery store,” O’Connor said. “We’d fought off a liquor store there and other uses that were not desirable for the neighborhood. So I told the owner he needed to work with Raven on pricing because this wasn’t a real rich institution.”
But O’Connor was not yet done helping the Raven. He went to State Senators Lisa Madigan and Ira Silverstein and persuaded them to donate some of their discretionary state funds to the project — which is how the Raven managed to snag some $700,000 in funding from the Illinois First program. Since the new location was in a TIFF district, an area of the city designated as qualifying for public help with development projects, O’Connor next went to the city for more money. The alderman says there was some resistance at first, but after he pointed out that TIFF funds already had been committed to the Noble Fool Theater downtown, he got another $400,000 or so for the Raven.
It was, O’Connor admits, a combination of good timing, the right circumstances and the right neighborhood. And he admits that it would never have been possible in the current financial climate. The money was committed at just about the last possible moment.
So what motivated such an effort?
“I’m not the most cultured guy in the world,” O’Connor said, “but I realize the arts are important for a community. I’m hoping the new theater will help bring in other nice entities doing nice things on that street.”
Neighborhood theaters long have been a part of Chicago’s theater scene. And other North Side troupes such as the Griffin Theatre and the Neo-Futurarium in Andersonville long have argued that their storefronts have served both as an economic catalyst for the surrounding community and as a cultural resource for the neighborhood.
Raven always has drawn its audiences from all over the city and suburbs, but Menendian says that the neighborhood component of its work also is important.
“We want to remain a citywide theater,” he said, “but we’d also like to be the kind of neighborhood place where the diverse people who live around here can come down from their homes and feel comfortable.”
The Raven, which typically rehearses its productions for as long as three months, enjoys a solid reputation among its peers for decent work. And while a lot of other off-Loop theaters are looking enviously as this new facility, they think the Raven deserves its good fortune.
`A gold mine’
“I think it’s great they have such support from their community and alderman,” said David Zak, artistic director of the Bailiwick Repertory, another North Side theater. “They were in a precarious place when their previous space was taken away and it’s unusual for people to realize that. Having a studio to rent will be a gold mine for them; there’s a great deal of demand for more small rental houses.”
With exposed brick and duct work, the new Raven evokes a similar grittiness to the much-larger Steppenwolf Theatre. And with donated seats and a lack of unnecessary drywall, the theater is not as plush as, say, the Noble Fool’s new space downtown. But it’s a spacious and comfortable facility with a big lobby and a strong visual impact on busy Clark Street.
Sticking with winners
The Raven says it plans to rent its smaller theater from time to time (it will also be used for children’s shows and workshop productions) and the main stage likely will be available when not in use by the Raven. But this always has been a busy theater with a penchant for keeping its hit shows open for several months. That’s why the Raven has stayed away from subscription series.
Menendian says he hopes to expand the Raven’s mission and give the theater more of a global sensibility, but the basic modus operandi of Raven is unlikely to change, as is the non-union status. The troupe still doesn’t know what its next show will be (although “Golden Boy” and “The Rose Tattoo” are on the short-list), nor has it decided when “Marvin’s Room” will close. It’s likely to play as long as audiences are coming to see it.
The Raven’s audience has had to wait for a while. This new theater was projected to open several months ago. And the Raven has been forced to cool its heels for more than two years since its last production in the former theater. But their alderman kept them in the Loop.
“I told them that we just had to keep forging ahead even if all our ducks weren’t yet in a row,” O’Connor said. “You have to have patience and yet also operate on faith and hope.”
Flight of Raven Theatre
1983. Raven Theatre, an outgrowth of the New Haven Playhouse in Lakeview, is founded as an itinerant company.
1985. Raven acquires an old post office at 6931 N. Clark St. Robert Anderson’s “I Never Sang for My Father” is the first production in the new space.
1988. Director Michael Menendian completes his acclaimed staging of the “Texas Trilogy,” an ambitious, interlocking series of plays by the New Mexico playwright Preston Jones.
1991. Frank Farrell’s rare revival of Arthur Miller’s “A Memory of Two Mondays” gets critical acclaim.
1995. Raven revives “Death of a Salesman” in honor of Miller’s 80th birthday.
1998. A hit production of John Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation” runs for eight months.
2000. After 15 years, Raven loses its home to the Board of Education.
2002. After construction delays, the new Raven Theatre opens at 6157 N. Clark St.