Sweet charity

FUN RAISERS Porchlight associates Doug Peck (left) and Rob Lindley hope their organizing efforts will raise money and delight theatergoers.

Last winter, the artistic associates for Porchlight Music Theatre gathered around to brainstorm ideas for a subscriber event to promote Finn Fest, a two-month-long presentation of works by composer-lyricist William Finn. What they didn’t know at the time was that they were planning a runaway hit that would benefit the Center on Halsted and plant the seedling of a new annual tradition.

They’re hoping to repeat that success Monday 13 with After Sondheim, a tribute to a new school of emerging composers who’ve carried on Sondheim’s tradition of presenting the public with innovative and challenging new works. Once again, the event will be organized by Porchlight members Rob Lindley and Doug Peck, whose combined passion for musical theater make this a labor of love.

“I was thinking today, Why am I doing this?, beyond it being for a good cause,” says Lindley, who along with Peck (the two are also a couple) has put in innumerable hours coordinating the show. “But really I love cabaret and putting together nice, running orders and pairing songs against each other.”

Lindley, who is a singer, actor and the driving force behind the vocal trio Foiled Again, was recruited by Porchlight because of his affinity for cabaret. He was key in turning the event into a fund-raiser for the Center on Halsted, the new GLBT community center slated to open in March of 2007.

“We had talked to Center on Halsted about partnering in the future because they are going to have a theater space there,” Lindley says. “So we decided to do this benefit for them, and they were just knocked over because it was a gracious thing for somebody to just approach them and say, Hey, we’re going to do an event for you and you don’t have to do anything. You’re just going to get a check.”

The hard part was turning a good idea into a huge success, and both Lindley and Peck admit that doing the bulk of the work themselves for the past two years has been exhausting. Together they’ve rehearsed with the actors, coordinated schedules, secured the venue and even printed copies for last year’s program at Kinko’s.

Both, however, agree they couldn’t be more excited about this year’s theme, After Sondheim, which honors American composers Adam Guettel, Jeanine Tesori, Jason Robert Brown, Michael John LaChiusa and Andrew Lippa.

“Sondheim is definitely someone who wrote things that now we consider to be classics…He changed the way we hear chord progressions from a music-theory perspective. And these [composers] are doing the same thing,” Lindley says. “This is really, really exciting music. It’s fun to sing. It’s gorgeous. And it’s not stuff that gets produced all the time. Even the bigger, better-paying musical-theater houses in Chicago don’t do this kind of material.”

Performing the work will be cast members of the Chicago productions of Wicked, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Urinetown, among others—a coup Lindley credits to Peck’s reputation as a musical director.

“I think it was important to bring Doug on board for it, because [he] operates more in the upper-echelon Equity-theater world of musical theater. I would like to think a lot of these people would do it regardless, but part of it is that people love working with him.”

Lindley’s Foiled Again will also make an appearance. “It’s one of those things where you feel like the mom who is pushing the kids onstage. I struggle with it, but then I think, No, we’re really good. What we bring to the table is that we can get in there and do some harmonies, some group numbers. An evening of solos can get a little old.”

While hopes are high that After Sondheim will raise a ton of cash for the Center on Halsted, Lindley remains confident about the gala’s success regardless.

“The whole evening is about all of these people, these talents, coming together for one thing,” he says. “It sounds so cheesy, but it’s powerful, too.”

After Sondheim raises its voice Monday 13.