New Clockwise Theatre turns to timely works

Why do artists keep creating new theaters in Chicago and the suburbs, even though most companies struggle every day of their short lives for money and recognition?

Madelyn Sergel, co-founder along with Less Boyd of the recently created Waukegan-based Clockwise Theatre, says they wanted to create a new theater because "we share a passion for new plays and innovative work. But we wanted to do it there, where we live."

Sergel and Boyd - both Lake County residents - met at the Lake Forest-based Citadel Theatre. Sergel, a produced playwright who grew up in a theatrical family, was working with Citadel and not some better-known company in Chicago because she didn't want the commute.

"It's just too hard to go down to Chicago to do theater," she says. "It takes me 90 minutes just to get there."

She and Boyd hit it off. "We just had a really great working relationship," Sergel says. "You know that alchemy you cannot manufacture."

They both wanted to start a theater, and they shared a vision of the kind of theater they would like to make: contemporary, controversial, innovative. They wanted to produce recently minted plays about hot, currently debated subjects.

Thus, Clockwise Theatre's first production, "Kita y Fernanda," by Chicago Latina playwright, Tanya Saracho, is as fresh as today's headlines.

Saracho's play, which premiered two years ago at Berwyn's 16th Street Theatre, chronicles the lives and friendship of two Latinas - one rich and one poor - as they grow from adolescence into early adulthood.

The fact that Clockwise has chosen to produce Saracho, a Chicago-based writer who co-founded the highly respected Teatro Luna, is not chance: "We are going to emphasize Midwestern playwrights," Sergel says. "Women playwrights, multicultural work."

Sergel also wants her theater to help ease one of the great frustrations of writing: the shortage of opportunities for writers who have gotten one production but cannot get another. "Our theater will be sensitive to the needs of new playwrights," Sergel says. "Especially the need for secondary productions."

Sergel and Boyd have been working for 21/2 years to get the theater going.

"We started looking at places (to build a theater) in Northern Illinois," Sergel says. "And then the economy crashed. And we stopped looking for a while and we refined our mission."

"We settled on Waukegan," she says. "And that has made all the difference. Waukegan has a cool urban edge."

More importantly, Sergel believes she has found in Waukegan and the surrounding area a population of people who desire to see more contemporary theater.

"When people come to our shows," Sergel says, "we want people to say, "I never thought of that.' Or, 'Oh I felt that but never thought anyone else did.'"

•"Kita y Fernanda" runs through Aug. 15 at the Brick Café, 30 N. Genesee St., Waukegan. For tickets and more information, visit the Clockwise Theatre website at www.clockwisetheatre.org.