Help on the First Rung
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“There hasn’t been anything like it in Chicago since Cinestory left a few years ago,” Brooks says. (Cinestory, which now operates out of Idyllwild, California, and is about to move to Austin, Texas, was headquartered in Chicago from 1995 to 2001 and conducted script readings in partnership with Second City.) Anyone with a screenplay and some pocket change can submit: ScriptWorks charges $15 to read full-length scripts of up to 120 pages, $7 for shorts (up to 60 pages). Each script is read by two of the partners; rejects get comments by e-mail within eight weeks. Selected scripts are assigned a director by Brooks and company, who also conduct auditions (casting is by Coffee Table Casting, run by Klunder), find a performance space, hold rehearsals, promote the event, and host a reception. Aside from the meager onetime charge to authors, the organization’s only source of income has been a suggested $5 donation at the door. For the three readings ScriptWorks has held since March, Brooks covered most of the expenses with her own plastic.
Scripts for the first three readings came from the ready pool of Brooks’s writers group, but outside scripts have begun to dribble in. One of those, Eric Diekhans’s romantic comedy “Anywhere’s Better Than Here,” will be read by a cast of 11 this Saturday at 7 PM at Lakeview Presbyterian Church, 716 W. Addison (see www.roatanfilms.com for more info). Brooks says attendance has been strong and response favorable at previous events (at the Cornservatory and other locations), though she’s still looking to get the word out to industry people, film students, and theater audiences. She’d also like to find a permanent home for the events and wonders if there’s anyone out there “with a nice space that seats about 60 they’d like to donate.” Two more readings are scheduled this fall; the plan is to do at least six a year. Right now, Brooks says, ScriptWorks is a place for writers to network, see their characters come to life, and learn what they need to do to fine-tune their scripts, but she’d also like it to be a catalyst for selling some of those scripts and getting them produced in Chicago. “They read 200 scripts at Fifth Night,” she says, “and 40 of them have been produced.” She’s hoping celebrities (especially those with Chicago roots) will come to read and listen, as they did at the Nuyorican. As for Fifth Night? It’s been on “hiatus” since April 2002, when it ran out of money.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
