Not in Our Name
Unilateral action is so de rigueur these days. Last week, right after Mayor Daley’s surprise attack on Meigs Field, new Auditorium Theatre Council chairman Melvin Katten marched into the office of executive director Jan Kallish and ousted her–without so much as flashing a code orange to the ATC board. When news of the event reached longtime board members Sonia Florian and Betty Lou Weiss, they were furious enough to desert the cause. “In view of the fact that Jan is no longer a part of the Auditorium and that I consider her departure to have been a unilateral decision and poorly handled, I submit my resignation,” wrote former board secretary Florian.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“Mel Katten, in his infinite wisdom, single-handedly, without consulting his board, fired Jan Kallish and then sent a letter to all the board members stating she had resigned,” fumes Weiss, whose aunt, Beatrice Spachner, spearheaded a major restoration of the 3,700-seat landmark theater in the 1960s. Weiss says she had been looking forward to continued participation on the board, which she’s served on for ten years and which is about to be rebuilt in the wake of Roosevelt University’s victory over the ATC in a legal war for control of the theater. Now, she says, she only hopes Katten’s group “will be as successful as Jan Kallish, her staff, and the [previous] board in preserving the theater for future generations.”
But Roosevelt, under the leadership of new president Charles Middleton, struck a surprisingly cordial posture, issuing a joint press release with the council that suggested the possibility of coalition. Four members of the old council were installed on a seven-member transition board (headed by Katten) that would run the theater through April 30, the end of this fiscal year.
Short Takes
Seems like salt in a wound, but the Chicago Peace Museum’s staff of two is job hunting. The 22-year-old institution is a casualty of the economy, unable to raise the full $150,000 a year it needs to operate. Executive director Rebecca Williams says the museum’s one permanent exhibit will remain open in the Garfield Park field house, staffed by volunteers. A final Peace Museum event, a lecture on the subject of creating a governmental agency that would be devoted to peacemaking, takes place Tuesday, April 15, from 6 to 8 PM at Hostelling International Chicago, 24 E. Congress. Call 773-638-6450 for more info….Starting this week, a series of Chicago artists are taking up residence in a long-vacant space in the Page Brothers Building, next door to the on-the-block Chicago Theatre. The city, which owns the building, is paying $500 to artists to work there for three-week stints from now to October 1, when it hopes to rent the space–along with the adjacent storefront, now occupied by an offtrack betting parlor–to a restaurant. First up are muralists Chris Silva and Michael Genovese, followed by clothing designer Cat Chow….After dissing supertitles for operas in English last year, Chicago Opera Theater artistic director Brian Dickie has relented: the company is touting titles for every production this season….It came to them last weekend: Visions & Voices Theatre, unable to charge for tickets because of their venue’s licensing problem, has closed The Devil’s Sonata three weeks early.
