David Feiner and Laura Wiley made it into regional theater and then decided they wanted out. They met at the Yale School of Drama in 1992, where both were pursuing master’s degrees. After working for several years, he at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and she here at the Goodman, they’d soured on big-city theater–at least when it meant established companies mounting prestige plays for bourgeois subscribers. Says Wiley, “These companies need a subscriber base of thousands, and so a lot of energy goes into propagating the operation. There’s too little risk.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
So in 1997 Feiner and Wiley, by then married and living in Chicago, established the Albany Park Theater Project (APTP), a community-based theater group for teens. The pair had fretted that the entrance of two Yalies into the ethnically diverse neighborhood might generate suspicion but, says Wiley, “people could care less where we went to school.”
Yet the process has its cathartic effects. During the summer after eighth grade, Jessica Irizarry lost her best friend, Michael, to a gang-related shooting. “Michael was riding in a car driven by a friend who was in a gang,” she says. “Michael took the wheel, but because the windows were tinted you couldn’t tell that it was him driving.” A rival gang member allegedly shot him 36 times. Michael’s mother refused to admit that her son was dead–instead of holding a public funeral, she buried her boy in secret. “Her thought was, if no one saw him dead, then he wasn’t,” says Jessica.
APTP is reprising its show What U Got this weekend at the Storefront Theater at 66 E. Randolph. The show includes Miguel in a gripping monologue about identity, Jessica as a girl trying to come out as a lesbian, and a wrenching look at Nicaragua during the time of the Sandinistas, with Maggie cast as a mother. Performances are this Friday and Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 2. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students; due to mature themes, children under ten are not allowed. Call 312-742-8497 for tickets and 773-866-0875 for more information.
