Even though we’re using new techniques and new tech, I’m hoping that we can lure some folks with history out of the woodwork to tell stories of what happened with those companies. Those stories are important, and there are many many many tricks (the WARP format being one of them) that are not of a particular time – they just work, and they’re inspiring. And when those companies faded, all that institutional knowledge went dormant.

This is another phase of ascendance for Chicago Theatre, which happens on a cycle of about five years, but on a scale that we haven’t seen since those heady days of Organic, St. Nicholas, Wisdom Bridge, and the early Steppenwolf. I can sense our work inching towards a more consistent higher quality, a more rigorous self-examination of our work and the way we work, a firmer support of the collaborators that we hold dear. We see the burnout on the horizon and we can choose to prevent it, or in the case of Bries’ The Nine Chicago, we can embrace our own inevitable demise and say “this is what we came here to do, and we did it.”

We are becoming a magnet city because I think the way we work here – the collaborative DIY famly-style ethos – reflects what this nation wants to be: People who make things better, together.

But like today, most of the companies back then operated in a bubble. Our work model back then was, as Matthew Reeder so aptly put it, no more than a collection of ” broken, incubated systems that lead to isolation and burnout.” In spite of the amazing work that was being done, only a handful of these companies have survived, while most are just distant memories to old time Chicago theatre people like myself. Many of my fellow actors, directors, designers, professors and Mary Anns, have moved to either coast, or have left the theatre scene entirely.

As a lifelong Chicagoan I am so pleased to see the passion that you twitterers, tweeters, chirpettes, or whatever you call yourselves, are displaying regarding the storefront theatre scene. I am amazed at the number of talented people that are coming from all sections of the country to be a part of it. Now we just need to work on filling those seats, with people other than ourselves, so that all of our hard work is not in vain.

I’m glad you’re connecting with it. It is a vibrant, open conversation filled with possibility and only the tiniest dollop of balancing vinegar to make a tasty, tasty salad.

It will lose steam. I think carry the ideas and the excitement with you, that’s the only way to keep conversations like this going. By initiating them and embracing them.

This obviously needs to continue, if only so we can keep Loehr, Bedard, et al in the convo, but how do we also transition this energy to the face to face?

As Nick points out, we share a certain shorthand already, but of course, Travis and I have never worked in Chicago, haven’t had the same interactions. We’ve all fallen in here in part by overhearing and then interacting. So while we share perspectives, interests, etc, we can discover that there are others who do as well. It might be easier in this arena than in person, in summit meetings. (Might?)

I wish I were up there to take part more fully–sometimes, I feel like a prophet in the wilderness down here, except there are too many cows for wilderness. But that’s the nice thing about Twitter. We’re putting heads together, we’re developing ideas and sharing ideas that have helped us and could help each other.

2am it is. No matter the time of day.