Are the Blue Men ever coming back?
Chicago’s commercial theaters are in trouble
Indoor gatherings of more than 50 people remain banned in Illinois and there is still no discernible, let alone bankable, timeline for the return of large-scale live entertainment.
COVID-19 has created a world of pain for all sectors of the Chicago theater. Notably, the city’s commercial, for-profit operations are showing the most immediate and visible stress.
June, the cruelest month so far, saw L. Walter Stearns, the hardy and well-regarded owner of the Mercury Theater, his elegant two-theater venue in the Lakeview neighborhood, declare his intention to close up shop and sell his building. Charna Halpern, the owner of the iO improv theater in Lincoln Park facing a tsunami of property taxes, running costs and internal criticism over the climate at her theater, also called it quits.
And on Monday in Canada, the venerable but now massively indebted Cirque du Soleil sought protection from its creditors, throwing into question the future of the Blue Man Group, a hugely popular show that has been running since 1997 — that’s 23 years — at the Briar Street Theatre on Chicago’s North Side, along with similar productions in Las Vegas and New York.
At press time, Blue Man Group’s spokesperson said she had no more information. The show’s website says the Chicago production has no resumption date and contains the following paragraph: “Because of the tremendous financial impact of the health crisis on the company and the fact that we have no clear timeline on when we will be allowed to get back on stage, we have no choice but to take a pause for a little while. This will allow us to build a more resilient and viable organization that will be able to face the uncharted territory brought about by COVID-19.”
Right now, that is all that is clear.
But it doesn’t bode well for a fast return of entertainment at the Briar Street Theatre, which had been packing ’em in as many as 12 times a week.
Hopefully, the Mercury Theater is a sufficiently attractive venue that quickly will find a new owner. (Stearns has said he wants the property to remain a theater, not get bulldozed for condos.)
Meanwhile, local writer, Second City artist, consultant and activist Sheri Flanders is leading an effort to persuade several of the city’s philanthropic entities to purchase the iO building from Halpern and hand it to a yet-unnamed group that would showcase BIPOC improvisers and presumably run the operation as a nonprofit.
And Cirque du Soleil, one of the globe’s great entertainment brands, will most likely reemerge in somewhat leaner form, probably bringing its Blue Man Group franchise along for the ride. Right now, the original Blue Man Group team must be counting its luck in cashing out before the pandemic padlocked the doors and closed up all the paint cans.
Still, all of this turmoil has happened in less than two weeks. It’s nothing short of stunning.
Counting all the stages at iO, that’s a dozen Chicago theater spaces whose future is, at best, up in the air. And you can add Second City to the theaters in distress, given that the co-owner Andrew Alexander has retreated, again following internal protest, and put his share of the venerable comedic entity up for sale.
Why have Chicago’s for-profit institutions been so hit? The main reason is their total revenue dependence.
A big nonprofit potentially can rely on its board members to bankroll it through these hard times or can sweet talk its big donors. In some rare cases, endowments can be tapped.
But that’s not true of for-profit theaters, entirely reliant on ticket sales, bar takings and concessions for their survival. The longer the closure goes, the more devastating the impact. And very few of these operations in Chicago float a lot of cash.
In the case of Blue Man Group, the purchase by the Cirque du Soleil meant their mid-sized lot got thrown into a much larger whole. With its huge shows in Las Vegas, Orlando and across the world all shuttered for months, Cirque has proved unable to weather so great a storm, especially since the company was loaded down with debt.
And let’s not forget that Cirque itself has been a mainstay of the Chicago cultural scene for years, bringing its
In recent years, when Cirque has pitched its tent alongside the United Center, that has meant a major boost for the bars, restaurants and parking operations on the Near West Side. Last year, the Cirque launched a new holiday show here, which was supposed to return in 2020.
So far there has been little help for these cultural businesses, up to and including Broadway in Chicago, a mainstay of the Loop economy that’s struggling to get back to life.
The Arts for Illinois relief initiative applies only to nonprofit cultural organizations and, in a modest way, to artists themselves. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has announced that the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity will begin distributing the first $60 million installment of Business Interruption Grants in coming days, but the amount of money available is won’t even come close to solving the problems listed above, especially given the duration of the stoppage.
Tough times in showbiz with no end yet in sight. And it’s worrying.
No disrespect, but Chicago doesn’t want to look like every other Midwestern downtown, circa 1980.
