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Berwyn-win situation
16th Street finds an eager audience in the western 'burbs.
If you’re looking for auto parts, you’ll find plenty of options along Cermak Avenue. Old-school Italian restaurants dot Windsor Avenue, with facades out of a postcard album. But it may be surprising to learn that west suburban Berwyn has become a destination for theater, ever since Ann Filmer, 40, entered a basement space in the city’s cultural center on 16th Street.
“Joe Vallez, the North Berwyn Park District executive director, wanted a theater. He was a fan of Teatro Luna and had seen them at the Chicago Dramatists. And so he literally went, ‘Okay, stage here, entrances here,’?” recalls Filmer, who spent four years as a producing director at Dramatists. When she stepped inside the 16th Street space, with its intentional mimicking of Dramatists’ setup, “It was just like, Aaaah, fate!”
Seeking an affordable home, Filmer moved to Berwyn with her musician husband and daughter, now five, in 2007. She also wanted to pursue an artistic trajectory that began when she founded Chicago’s now-defunct Aardvark Theater in 1995, shortly after earning a bachelor’s in dance from San Jose State. She says running 16th Street Theater, where she’s been artistic director since its 2008 launch, has become her most satisfying artistic work. She’s still programming new, issue-oriented plays featuring Chicago storefront talent; what’s changed are the audiences.
“Last year, I’d been all Berwyn Berwyn Berwyn,” she says, “and a friend of mine was doing something at the Theatre Building [in Lakeview]. And I knew 80 percent of the people in the audience. It was all theater people. And I was like, ‘Really? Really? That’s who we’re doing the play for?’ I’ve been so spoiled because at my theater, the audience is people. Not people who work in the theater, just people.”
The Berwyn setting sparked skepticism at first for actor H.B. Ward, who appeared recently in 16th Street’s The End of the Tour. “I initially didn’t want to audition,” he says. “I didn’t know where it was—it seemed hard to get to.” But after a perusal of the CTA map, with Blue and Pink Line stops in the vicinity, he found the largely neighborhood audience energizing. “It reminded me of why I got into acting to begin with,” the fringe veteran says, remembering one woman who saw the play three times to experience perspectives from different seats.
Ward credits Filmer with the theater’s success, a judgment echoed by 16th Street board member Joyce Strombeck. “Ann is a jewel,” she says. “And to have this kind of theatrical quality in Berwyn: It’s such a gift.”
16th Street has managed to fulfill its mission of providing professional theater at an affordable price, with tickets largely capped at $16, by drawing on many sources of support. The city of Berwyn has given substantial grants, as has the Berwyn Development Corporation. And the theater enjoys the major privilege of free rent from its Park District landlord. Meanwhile, Filmer manages online sales, writes marketing copy and runs productions. When we meet, she’s preparing a pair of remounts: Rohina Malik’s Unveiled, coming to Victory Gardens from a sellout run in Berwyn, and Tanya Saracho’s Our Lady of the Underpass in the 16th Street Theater.
Her infectious energy comes through during our lunch in a Berwyn Thai restaurant, as she pulls out her iPhone to show pictures of her daughter, Hannah, and discovers photos from a recent Patti Smith concert. (“I want theater to be like rock & roll,” she declares.) Building the new theater’s audience has called the California native’s formidable social skills into play. She describes one early exchange with a caller from nearby Stickney: “This older woman got our first season brochure and called to say, ‘The Ascension of Carlotta? What is that? Don’t you want people to come to your theater?’ So I said, ‘Well, ma’am, The Glass Menagerie also has a horrible title, and at one point that was a new play.’ And she pauses and then says, ‘Well, now, that’s true.’”
16th Street remounts Teatro Vista’s Our Lady of the Underpass starting Thursday 1.
