Bright lights? Big deal.

House calls
Anyone with an eye for blurred entertainment journalism knows that’s been an especially big problem for the six-year-old House Theatre of Chicago. The young troupe’s meteoric rise has come at the hand of journalists determined to use the House as a kind of branded Chicago export. As Kaufman says, “Everybody jumped on the House bandwagon.” The Chicago Tribune, for example, in January of this year publicly urged that the company transfer its storefront hit, The Sparrow, to New York City. “The House mustn’t end here,” the Tribune insisted in its advocacy. “Not if it wants to live here. And prosper.”

CENTER OF CONTENTION All eyes are on the House's new run of The Sparrow (with Carolyn Defrin, foreground).

A New York production isn’t happening, and according to company artistic director Nathan Allen, the chances weren’t that strong, despite the buzz. “I don’t feel like we’ve ever been represented well by the press,” Allen says of the hype surrounding his own company. “We’ve never been as gung ho about moving to New York as the press has made it sound.”

Instead, this week the production is currently in previews to reopen in a commercial engagement at Chicago’s Apollo Theater. The big surprise is that the run is being presented and marketed by Broadway in Chicago. It’s an unprecedented move—engineered after the House won BIC’s first-ever Emerging Company Award, which included a marketing package that subsequently blossomed into a deal—and one that has garnered even more subsequent coverage. Questions like, Is it merely a test to see if the show will fly in New York? (according to Allen, it’s not); What does it cost to make a nonprofit storefront show transfer to a commercial run? (nobody’s disclosing figures); and, Will Broadway in Chicago now take an interest in presenting other storefront endeavors? (Raizin has no comment on the issue) have dominated column inches and have generated plenty of heat in the blogosphere.

The tempest in a teapot surrounding The Sparrow (which is tepid in content compared to some of the House’s more daring shows) is perhaps the best example of how monoculture-minded journalists view the city. As countless other local companies continue to create newsworthy events, local arts coverage is instead often fixated on matters of theatrical colonization: either how Chicago shows deemed exportable might fare elsewhere or what’s going on with New York shows that are currently planted here. Consequently, plays with no agenda other than entertaining Chicagoans get edged out.