Interesting perspective from the Chicago Tribune:
"The Jungle Book" has been, to use the word of Disney Theatrical President Thomas Schumacher, wholly "entrusted" to Zimmerman. The most significant beneficiary won't be Zimmerman, whose career is established at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere, but the people she chooses to work with, many not so well-established. She gets to pick. Disney has come as close to offering carte blanche as it ever comes. That means her frequent collaborators, almost all of whom live and work in Chicago, will have the rare chance to work on the only kind of property in American theater that really makes you some big money. (Broadway, London, theme parks, stuffed toys — you get the idea.) The kind that can sustain you while you, say, work on your labor of off-Loop love 10 years from now.
It's hard to think of another time this has happened in Chicago, and it could be life-changing for an artist like Doug Peck, for example, whose musical chops are beloved in Chicago but who has yet to really be discovered in New York. I doubt Zimmerman will be able to cast this show entirely in Chicago, but one can be sure that the Chicago actors in her show will be numerous.
If all goes well, "The Jungle Book" will be an international outgrowth of a definable Chicago aesthetic traceable back through Zimmerman to her teacher, Frank Galati, and to his teacher, Robert Breen.
Those few Chicago theater people in steady jobs running theaters or teaching easily and frequently forget the difficulty of making a living as a freelance artist in Chicago. One such young theater artist sent me a note this week bemoaning the difficulty of breaking into big, sedentary institutions."
Theater Loop
