Band aid

At the risk of sounding like an uptight new neighbor who moves into a gentrifying neighborhood and tries to drive out the local rock club, the best news I’ve heard so far today involves the fact that I no longer have to hear loud rock music.

For years the talented Steep Theatre ensemble (as well as the many companies who rent Steep’s eyelid blackbox space) has received favorable notices that contain the same caveat: at around 9:30 or so, the play is overwhelmed by live honky-tonk from the bar next door, Wrigleyville North.

According to Steep Theatre’s Pete Moore, the company has just signed a lease on a new space in Edgewater (1115 West Berwyn, to be exact, just a few blocks from City Lit and Actors Workshop). If all goes according to plan, performances at the new venue will begin in the fall.

Moore says the new venue is nearly twice the size of the studio apartment-size digs Steep currently occupies. The cheek-to-jowl experience was vital to Steep’s early identity, especially when the plays were good … and three feet away from you. Frankly, I’ll miss the snug interior, the seats close enough to the cast that you might get a little sweat on you. I’ll miss hearing the actors huddled just behind a curtain that conceals them as the audience makes its way to the unisex restroom filled with eccentric junk. Hell, I’ll even miss the unisex restroom filled with eccentric junk.

But the raucous country-and-western flooding over the Brecht from the other side of the wall? That I won’t miss at all. The band will, indeed, play on. But now it won’t feel like noise pollution.