Profiles Theatre - Chicago: Abuse Allegations- Page 2

[lambchop2]

Posted: 6/11/16 at 5:10pm

Collin Mitchell has been removed from Bitter Lemon.

http://socal.bitter-lemons.com/learn/article/3455

http://socal.bitter-lemons.com/learn/article/3456

 

[¿Macavity?]

Posted: 6/11/16 at 7:13pm

I can't stop thinking about this, it's absolutely disgusting. 

[ggersten]

Posted: 6/12/16 at 3:22pm

Chicago Tribune theatre reviewer Chris Jones finally spoke/reacted publicly last night on FB:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10154320481253854&id=715118853

People have been calling for me to comment further on the allegations reported in The Reader. I felt it was important that I speak to the Reader's reporter, Aimee Levitt, on the record, and I did. Not all of what I had to say ended up in the piece, which is neither unusual nor unreasonable. But I have been asked to say more and am now doing so, speaking only for myself. It took me a little time to re-read everything I had written about Profiles. It does not need liking; there has not been much to like these last 72 hours.

I found the allegations contained in the piece to be exceptionally distressing and painful.

The theater is a place of trust - actors need to trust each other to be able to make great art; audiences, critics included, must be able to trust that what they are seeing on stage is the work of professionals operating in a professional workplace. Those allegations would suggest I took too much on trust, to assume all the actors felt and/or were safe despite the lack of union representation, or some other workplace protections, in the room.

It is also a fair criticism to say that viewed in the light of these allegations, a 2007 review I wrote of "Apple" by Vern Thiessen, a play I much admired, would seem to make light of those allegations. I apologize.

I recall writing it. I had discerned what I thought to be a pattern of casting, decided it demanded noting and then wrapped myself in knots trying to reconcile that with my admiration for the actress in the show, the progressive nature of the play itself, and my not wanting to make or insinuate a charge in the absence of any evidence. For I did not know of these charges for another eight years. Read now, it appears, at best, tone-deaf and, in these circumstances, potentially distressing to some of the people I very much admire.

In a 2005 review of Rebecca Gilman's "Glory of Living," another play that I consider a superb work, I wrote that:

"this 'Glory' sometimes seems to take the pawing and the nudity a bit far. This isn't supposed to be shock theater, for all the horrors in the script."

Read in the context of the allegations, that does not feel like anything close to a sufficiently strong statement.

Some of this, I think, has flowed from my longstanding obsession with viewing only the work as it is, in the moment. I've always seen that as a fundamental matter of fairness, as a self-corrective against bias. But these allegations serve as a reminder that context must always be considered, perhaps more than I have been willing to admit. Many of the numerous theaters that I have chosen to attend, and those choices have been mine, regularly operate with little or no protections, in a gray area between legitimate employment and an informal interest group with powerful leaders and an artistic product. The piece. for me, raises some questions about whether I should have been in those theaters at all, inviting the public to follow.

If Chicago theaters are to be viewed as professional, they need structures in place to protect their courageous artists who are asked, as part of this art, to give deeply of themselves. Not in Our House is, as most of you know, is working hard on this.

For the record, I heard about the Profiles allegations at the same time as some others, about a year or so ago, once they emerged, fitfully, on social media. Some time later, I was briefed more fully, albeit off the record. There were many conversations involving me and not involving me. Where I work, the women's desire for privacy, which is wholly understandable, had to be balanced with a major daily newspaper's rules about anonymous or semi-anonymous accusations, especially in the absence of formal civil or criminal complaints.

There are good reasons for those rules, although I understand why you may not think so in this case. And, as the Reader notes, one of the most troubling issues here is that some of the women at Profiles told the paper that they felt that no such avenues existed. As I said above, it is very painful.

After all those conversations, the Tribune reported a more generally focused story on these issues, concerning both theater and comedy in January, arising in part out of the matters I've discussed here. Nina Metz's story ran on our front page.

[KnewItWhenIWasInFron]

Posted: 6/15/16 at 1:14am

And Profiles Theatre has shut its doors:

http://www.profilestheatre.org/index.html