This is the story of a Chicago theater Christmas miracle. It’s also the story of how the Agency Theater Collective got the cab for its production of Hellcab, Will Kern’s play about a cabbie on Christmas Eve.
“It was perfect,” Austin says. Well, almost. It wasn’t drivable. It smelled like something—perhaps many somethings—had died in it. And the asking price was $2,000—way over budget for the tiny Agency. Touhy is still miffed about that. “They wouldn’t move,” he says. “Even when I explained we were a nonprofit.”
The leap led him to a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who said an auto-body shop in Niles might be willing to advise how to get a full-size sedan into the theater space. Enter Carol Himmel, director of the German-American Children’s Choir, longtime patron of the arts, and owner of Erich’s Lehigh Auto Body. “We like to help when we can, and these guys definitely needed help,” Himmel says. “And they were so sweet the way they asked.”
Through 12/30: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-680-4596, wearetheagency.org, $5-$20.
