Performing Arts Group Thinks Big
An its 35th anniversary season, Performing Arts Chicago is nearly doubling its roster of music, theater, and dance events and hoping to cement its reputation for presenting the best of what’s new and adventurous from around the world. After a comparatively quiet 34th season, in which it presented only 11 attractions as it tried to retire a $179,000 debt, the presenting organization (known as Chamber Music Chicago until 1992) is expanding to 19 events this year after paring its debt down to $28,000. Though that financial improvement–which came mostly through a combination of lowered administrative expenses and significantly increased unearned income–is a step in the right direction, executive director Susan Lipman is still anxious about the ambitious upcoming season. “Everything we’re doing this year is a risk for us,” she says. But she also maintains that the audience base PAC has built up over the years is large enough and trusting enough to support an ambitious and diverse schedule. “We’ve intentionally been developing a crossover audience that will sample more than just music.”
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Among the new offerings is the organization’s first-ever theater series, featuring five productions that range from the Handspring Puppet Company of Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Maly Theatre of Saint Petersburg, Russia, to an eight-member British troupe called Stomp that specializes in a nearly wordless theater of percussion, with sounds created by trash cans, oil drums, broomsticks, and even matchboxes. It sounds like a typical International Theatre Festival lineup; hopefully Lipman will have better luck than the theater festival did selling tickets. She’s well aware of the International Theatre Festival’s poor attendance this year; PAC copresented one of the featured attractions, Canadian Robert Lepage’s Needles and Opium. That technically elaborate production at the Vic lost money but was one of the festival’s better-attended offerings.
Not everyone who knows Lipman is certain she can pull it off; one source who has worked with her says she sometimes gets so caught up in the artistic decisions that she doesn’t pay enough attention to important business details. The upcoming season will certainly prove whether or not she can handle all aspects of her job. For now, Lipman is optimistic. “Over a period of time, audiences have come to trust us, and what makes it all work for us is the quality of the work we present.”
