The General Admssion Sat Jan 05 2013
Column: The General Admission
On Christmas Eve, I walked along the beach near my hometown in Florida; the day after Christmas, it was back to the Chicago snow. It's my second winter in the city, and while everyone tells me how mild the two have been, I still don't like anything below 75 degrees. If you ever meet me in person, I won't admit that I don't like the winter, though -- I'll tell you, "I can handle it." This snow-white lie is something that I want to believe, at least halfway convince myself, so I don't freeze to death and so people will stop telling me to deal with it.
Although I wanted to stay with my family in the metaphorical (sun kissed, orange blossom, tropical) Florida paradise, I had to come back for The Straight and Narrow, a show I co-wrote that had a one-off performance at Stage 773 last Thursday (Dec. 27). My friend Jane Blackburn-Hammer (wearing the tiara in the above promo photo for the show) and I wrote the play together, and a few months ago we had submitted to Stage 773 as part of their pro-theater space proposal program. Opportunities like producing my first play -- although I never thought a comedy -- are the main reason I moved to Chicago. Stage 773 chose our proposal and gave us the Dec. 27 date. Two days after Christmas is not the ideal time for a one-off show, but the theater offered us their (really nice and big) space for free and that's hard to pass up no matter what the weather.
— Tyler Gillespie
