In its $5.5 million venue on the Mag Mile next door to Water Tower Place, Lookingglass Theatre Company produces big-budget, movement-based spectacles, often adapted from literary sources.
“You know, we talk about Chicago as an ensemble town, and we almost always mean it in the Steppenwolf model. And no shade to Steppenwolf,” Paz Brownrigg says, “but we have a tradition in Chicago that predates that—the ensemble practice we’re talking about here, [which] you see dating back to Hull House. It’s been fun to trace those threads and see where they pop up and disappear and return.”
“We call it a history and a handbook of collaboratively made theater in Chicago,” says Johnston. Each of the book’s 15 chapters profiles a different company that uses a similar practice, one that favors collective creation over a preset hierarchy, to achieve a sometimes wildly different final product. In lieu of providing scripts, it documents some of the generative exercises, or games, the companies use in rehearsal rooms to spark creation.
By Chloe Johnston and Coya Paz Brownrigg (Northwestern University Press). Launch party Mon 12/10, 7 PM, Theater on the Lake, 2401 N. Lake Shore, 312-414-1313, facebook.com. F
