ALBANY PARK — "Watch this space for a big announcement" — that's the message David Feiner, co-founder of the Albany Park Theater Project, posted Wednesday night to a Facebook group of current and alumni members of the theater's youth ensemble.
He spent the next several hours fielding one wild guess after the other until 7 a.m. Thursday when Feiner was finally able to divulge the secret he'd been keeping for months: Albany Park Theater Project had received a MacArthur Foundation Award grant of $400,000.
"It was a great digital celebration," an exuberant Feiner said of the reaction to his news.
"Our teens love to post GIFs. There were all these images of people screaming and hugging," he said. "It was like this big silent scream on Facebook."
For the theater company, founded on a shoestring in 1997, the MacArthur grant is a "game changer," Feiner said.
At a 2015 meeting of the theater's board, members agreed the organization was firing on all cylinders artistically but lacked financial stability, he said.
What the theater needed was an operating reserve "to ensure everything we've built is not in jeopardy," Feiner recalled.
After crunching the numbers, he determined it would take more than a decade to build a comfortable cushion for the theater — assuming no unexpected emergencies cropped up in the meantime.
"Then you get a call and in one fell swoop, [the MacArthur Foundation] gave us a grant that filled that need," said Feiner. "It's huge. It's really a dream come true."
While a portion of the $400,000 will be set aside to provide much needed economic security, part of the grant will also be used to create an innovation fund.
"It gives us the seed money to pilot new collaborations," Feiner said. "It allows us to be bold and experimental."
Bolder is more like it. Albany Park Theater Company already pushes boundaries every time its teen ensemble takes to the stage, performing original works developed from real-life stories related to social justice issues.
In addition to its home base at Eugene Field Park, 5100 N. Ridgeway Ave., the company has taken up a summer residence at the Goodman Theatre for the past several years, earning rave reviews for its productions.
Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss has said the youth ensemble "easily can compete with any Equity cast," performing with "virtuosity, ease, charm, polish, humor, political bite and, above all, an emotional depth and cohesive spirit."
Feiner called the theater's teens "the most inspiring and hard-working and generous-spirited creative artists I can imagine."
"On the one hand, it never stops surprising me and astonishing me," he said of the youngsters' talent. "Yet at the same time, I expect that all the time."
Breathing room and bigger dreams
For Links Hall, founded by a trio of dancer/choreographers, recognition from the MacArthur Foundation is "wonderful for visibility" on the national and international stage, said Marie Casimir, associate director.
More importantly, the $200,000 grant, which represents half of the organization's annual budget, provides "breathing room," she said.
"We can do some planning, we can dream a little big bigger," said Casimir.
Links Hall, which shares a collaborative space with Constellation at 3111 N. Western Ave., has been an incubator for dance and performance art since 1978, not only hosting performances but providing artists with residencies, training and rehearsal studios.
The organization has been fortunate to receive support from a variety of foundations, but that support more often than not comes with strings attached.
The MacArthur grant is unusual, Casimir explained, in that it can be used toward operating expenses.
"You usually can get programming support," she said. "A grant that supports the business of doing business is really ... that doesn't really exist. It's not bountiful for arts organizations."
Links Hall plans to bank the vast majority of its grant and use the remainder for technology and facility upgrades, Casimir said.
With the organization's artistic director Roell Schmidt due back this weekend from a trip to Japan, Casimir was looking forward to celebrating the MacArthur grant with the rest of the Links Hall staff.
"I think we're just going to hug it out," she said.
What's next
This weekend is the perfect time to check out Links Hall, which is one of several venues hosting performances as part of the city-wide In>Time festival. Shows are free, but an RSVP is required.
Albany Park Theater Project is prepping its next show, Learning Curve, which will premiere in July.
The immersive production is based on interviews with students, teachers, parents and administrators regarding their experience in Chicago’s public schools.
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