Oracle Productions is a shoestring theater, founded nearly a decade ago by a clutch of Barat College students and now based in a tiny, 44-seat storefront at 3809 N. Broadway. But there’s nothing small about the members’ thinking.
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The announcement included a rationale that boiled down to: we’re a charity, why aren’t we acting like one? Signed by executive director Brad Jayhan-Little and artistic director Ben Fuchsen, it noted that most theater companies in Chicago are nonprofit corporations, which enables them to collect donations from individuals, corporations, foundations, and the government. “We have a duty to give back as much as we ask from the community,” Jayhan-Little and Fuchsen wrote, yet “we also charge commercial prices for our seats,” putting up “barriers” to attendance. (“If you look at other not-for-profits, like food banks and shelters, they’re not charging the people they’re serving,” Jayhan-Little elaborated last week.)
Then they threw down the gauntlet: “This is the status quo in Chicago theatre, and Oracle is challenging it.”
That’s not the double-talk it sounds like, he argues. “Subscription in today’s theater community is, ‘You give me $75, and I’ll give you two tickets to three shows next year.’ With us it’s more along the lines of Match.com or Netflix,” where you pay a monthly fee and take your pick of the services offered. Oracle patrons sign up for a particular level of automatic payment and in return get reservations for productions (at $5 per month you’re guaranteed one seat for every show; at $100 “you pretty much make the rules”) plus “live video feeds from the theater, insider information when we’re doing special or nonpublicized shows, and access to some of the rental companies that come into our space.” Next year subscribers will also be able to avail themselves of classes and film screenings Oracle’s planning to launch—including a workshop initially designed for the theater community that’ll offer life skills “like how do you pay your taxes.”
But the free-theater business model isn’t new, and isn’t necessarily risky. Quest Theatre Ensemble, for example, has been quietly doing donation-only work since it was founded eight years ago by a group of friends from Indiana State University. Operating out of a 99-seat space in the lower level of the athletic building at Saint Gregory Catholic Church in Andersonville (where they’re rent-free artists in residence), Quest produces three upbeat shows annually, including its touring Christmas production, Blue Nativity.
Blood Wedding
Opens Sat 10/9. Through 11/20: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, 3809 N. Broadway, 773-244-2980, oracletheatre.org.
