It was a dark and stormy night when the first public meeting to discuss the possibility of a Chicago performing arts museum convened at the Mercury Theater last week. A torrent of water poured from the thundering sky and lightning bolts—90,000 of them over four hours—strafed the ground like so much machine-gun fire. Besides that, the Cubs had a home game and parking was impossible.
Three months later, Christiansen told the Reader‘s Albert Williams that he “got excellent reader ‘great idea’ response by phone and e-mails, but not a word from anyone to say, ‘Let’s do it.’” On June 6 Williams posed the question “Why doesn’t Chicago have a theater and dance museum?” on the Reader‘s performing arts blog and declared, “I hereby join Christiansen’s call for the creation of a Chicago Museum of the Performing Arts in the Randolph Street Theatre District.” Williams fingered a possible home for the institution: the Cultural Center.
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Epperson, a big-picture thinker, firmly believes that any plan must eventually include a brick-and-mortar facility with a performance space and lots of interactive programming. He told the meeting that the group’s next step is to hold some small fund-raisers and develop a plan to present to foundations that might underwrite a feasibility study. Then word came from the back of the house that there was a tornado in the Roscoe Village area and everyone bolted from their seats faster than critics at the final curtain. It’s a night they’re likely to remember years from now because they exited to an exploding sky. If this dream survives to fruition, they can also say they were there when a new Chicago institution was born.
