Part of the ongoing Origins of CIC series by Founder and Executive Producer Angela McMahon
One of this things that keeps a Theater running is offering classes. Frankie knew this all too well with his experience working at IO. So he asked me to think of a class that wasn’t currently being offered in Chicago that we could sell. We came up with “Dramatic Improv”. It would be taught by Don Hall (Founding Director of WNEP Theater) AND Mark Sutton (Artistic Director of Chicago Improv Festival). Three weeks with Don and three weeks with Mark. We decided to offer the first round for free and hope word of mouth would carry the class. We also offered the class a performance slot on Sundays at 8pm — Frank said that what folks really want is stage time.
At this point the restaurant was still piles of dirt, but we did manage to move the light switch to the booth area, even though the lights were still just up, down, or slow fade. No real “theater lights” yet, just normal track lights. An amazing number of 33 people signed up for the free class. After the first show (with only 1 person in the audience- my darling husband Tom) the class quickly went down to 15 for our second meeting. The second show had a two person audience (Tom again, and someone else’s wife). This went on for the first five shows. Despite small houses, the class really seemed to enjoy what we were doing. One show we just put on a CD that Don made and did silent scenes to the soundtrack none of us had heard before. We would sometimes start the show sitting all around the theater doing strange monologues all at the same time. It was very artsy and fun, but difficult with no audience to enjoy it with us.
At the time there was a Comedy group in town named “Low Sodium Entertainment” (later members of LSE would form pH productions). They were known for handing out flyers everyday for hours outside of the Stage Left. With little promotion experience behind me I figured this must be a good way to get the word of mouth out.
While I was down stairs handing out my flyers to the 3 or so people that walked down the street in Uptown at 7:15pm on a Sunday I was approached by what looked to be a homeless man. It was about a week before Christmas. He was crying and he said “I want someone to know I am going to go in the alley and kill myself.” I said to him “Would you like a dollar?” He replied “No, I have no family and no one in my life, I just want someone else to know I am going to die.” I calmly replied, “there is a shelter on the corner, I could walk you over.” He shook his head no and started into the alley next to the building. I then said “Would you like to see a free improv show?” He stopped and turned around. “Ok,” he said. I brought him upstairs. I told my husband Tom what was going on and to keep an eye on him. I went backstage and told the cast what I had done. It was our largest house to date (with a total of 8 people in the house-including Tom and the homeless man) and they were all nervous to have this man in the house. But I told them Tom would watch him and that it would be fine. I went back downstairs and continued to flyer passers-by.
A few minutes later, Tom shouted down to me “Ang do you want to get your Ninja off the stage?” I ran up stairs and the man had jumped on stage and started doing some Karate Kid moves slowly and repeating over and over “I’m a Ninja.” I jumped on stage and grabbed him and said in my sternest mommy voice “You have to sit and be good or you have to leave.” He quickly apologized, adding “I am really looking forward to the show.”
TBC next week!
