The Practical Theatre Company
The PTC, whose motto is "Art is Good", is notable for the fact that the entire cast of its 1982 improvisational comedy revue, The Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee (Brad Hall, Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Gary Kroeger and Paul Barrosse) was hired by Saturday Night Live.
[1] In September of '79, Attack Theatre's inaugural season closed with a pair of one-act plays staged at National College of Education: Playgrounds by Hall and On the Fritzz by Grace McKeaney and Lewis Black with a cast featuring Laura Innes.
The show's mix of slapstick, satire, absurdist comedy, agitprop, and literary sophistication tied together with music and offbeat song and dance numbers established a unique style and format that the PTC would refine in more than a dozen revues over the next seven years.
Artistic Director Robert Falls of Wisdom Bridge Theatre (located further east on Howard Street) was renovating his space and donated his old theater seats.
The turning point that third season came when the prominent director Sheldon Patinkin came to the JLA to judge the group's third improvisational comedy revue Scubba Hey for the Joseph Jefferson Committee.
Scubba Hey was a critical and box office hit, and the group closed its first season at the JLA with Beggar's Holiday, an original comedy which opened on November 28, 1981, to a glowing review by Richard Christiansen of the Chicago Tribune, who called the PTC "as zany a bunch of intellectual clowns as the Earth can hold.
Under Patinkin's guidance, Hall, Barrosse, Pearson, Kroeger, and Jane Muller crafted the company's most successful show to date, as 1,314 ticket buyers crammed into the 42-seat JLA over the six-week run.
Other after-shows featured The Practical Women, a project led by PTC co-founder Angela Murphy, designed to encourage female talent in the male-dominated improvisational comedy environment.
[8] The first show at the Piper's Alley Theater, The Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee, opened on July 28, 1982, and put the Practical Theatre in the national spotlight when it caught the attention of Saturday Night Live producers Dick Ebersol and Bob Tischler.
Artistic Directors Hall and Barrosse split their time between working at SNL in New York and returning to Chicago on their breaks to oversee the Practical Theatre Company, especially pre-production and rehearsals for Megafun, the group's next comedy revue in Piper's Alley, and the opening of The Practical Women's first main stage show at The John Lennon Auditorium, A Cast of Squirrels Before Swine, featuring Angela Murphy, Isabella Hofmann, Lynn Baber, Sandy Snyder and Ileen Getz.
Featured in the cast were Tom Virtue, Richard Kind, Victoria Zielinski, Jeff Lupetin, Lynn Anderson, Jamie Baron and Jane Muller.
"[13] An enthusiastic Variety review caught the attention of Arthur Cantor, a New York-based theatrical producer, who brought the show to the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village in February 1984—but it had substantial cast and content changes.
The PTC's next comedy revue, The Merry Guys Who Windsurf, was staged at the Goodman Theatre studio and directed by Barrosse with a cast including Herb Metzler, John Goodrich, Ross Salinger, Kit Falsgraf, McLachlan and Baber.
Featuring Barrosse, Victoria Zielinski, Baron, musical director Steve Rashid on piano, and guided by Patinkin, Art, Ruth & Trudy received very positive reviews and became the longest running show in the company's history.
With Barrosse, Zielinski and Kyle Hefner in the cast, backed by Steve Rashid on piano and Don Stiernberg on guitar, Bozo received mixed reviews and ran for two months.
The Practical Theatre Company worked with a number of distinguished graphic artists during its history, notably Ron Crawford, Gary Whitney, Paul Guinan and John Goodrich.
