You wouldn’t know it from looking, but Trap Door’s cramped, sepulchral, amenity-free cubbyhole, where the shoestring company has been mounting intractable, inscrutable plays for 22 years, is the site of perhaps the greatest Chicago theater success in the last quarter century.
Despite nearly a quarter century presenting demanding, unmarketable works, Trap Door has garnered numerous awards, launched European tours, and significantly grown its audience. Yet it hasn’t gone the usual route charted by successful fringe companies: get a bigger space and program more audience-friendly material to support it. Rather they do what they’ve always done, challenging our conventional understandings of what theater is, how it operates, and why it matters. Such constancy is their arguably greatest success. And given our nation’s rising, recalcitrant nativism, their focus on European experimentalism reminds us of an urgent truth: the American way of doing things is only one among many.
Through 2/11: Thu-Sat 8 PM Trap Door Theatre 1655 W. Cortland 773-384-0494trapdoortheatre.com $20-$25
