Best Emerging Theater Company: 16th Street Theater
Best Emerging Theater Company
The Reader’s Choice: 16th Street Theater
Most Chicago theater companies get started because like-minded artists decide they want to do the work they love best the way they want to do it—finding a space and an audience comes later in the process. Ann Filmer took a different approach. When she moved out to Berwyn a few years ago, she found there was a nifty little black-box theater in the Berwyn Cultural Center, but no professional company to use it. So with the help of the North Berwyn Park District, the longtime director started 16th Street Theater, and got busy producing work that would speak to the western suburb’s ethnically diverse, working-class audience base.
Filmer’s background in new work encompasses shows at the Aardvark, the now-defunct collective she cofounded in 1995, as well as many credits with Chicago Dramatists, A Red Orchid Theatre, and Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe. Taking note of Berwyn’s large Latino population, she has forged a fruitful alliance with Teatro Luna and staged one of the best shows I saw in 2008—Kita y Fernanda, a breathtaking look at class consciousness and female bonding among Mexican immigrants by Teatro Luna cofounder Tanya Saracho.
Teatro Luna finishes its current 16th Street production, S-E-X-Oh! The Remix, this weekend. Then comes the Words in Motion Festival, consisting of three autobiographical performance pieces running in repertory. Unveiled, a solo show about women in Islam, follows. And in July Filmer will revive The Last Barbecue, by her old buddy Brett Neveu, using the original cast from its 2000 premiere production with the Aardvark. After only one year, 16th Street Theater is an indispensable part of Berwyn’s cultural fabric—and a destination for anyone interested in checking out new voices in a warm, intimate environment. 
Teatro Luna’s S-E-X-Oh! The Remix runs through 3/29: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 5 PM. The Words in Motion Festival opens Thu 4/2 and runs through 4/25: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM. Berwyn Cultural Center, 6420 16th, Berwyn, 708-795-6704, 16thstreettheater.org, all shows $16. —Kerry Reid
Our readers’ choice: The New Colony
The current show, Frat, runs through 4/4: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, DANK Haus, 4740 N. Western, 800-838-3006, thenewcolony.org, $20 suggested donation.
