Library Patrons: On Tour with The Shakespeare Project of Chicago

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Chicago is home to two theater companies committed by name to the works of Shakespeare and to the city itself: Chicago Shakespeare Theater and The Shakespeare Project of Chicago. The itinerant nature of The Shakespeare Project of Chicago as a company with a foregrounded urban affiliation that performs primarily on suburban tour parallels the itinerant practices of early modern London theater companies. Both temporal theatrical contexts require(d) an array of support structures within the community and types of patronage for success. Both early modern theater companies and The Shakespeare Project of Chicago pursue itineracy via a patterned sequence of journeys through geographical space, creating a spatio-temporal region that exceeds the bounds of the former's ostensible location in London and/or the court and the latter's nominal home in Chicago. I argue that the common ground that exists between these theater companies that perform the same texts at a remove of four centuries and four thousand miles offers a foundation for constructing a deeper understanding of early modern theatrical company practice, patronage, and touring. Suiting the words and action to the venue and to the tastes of the theater company's patrons abide as imperatives that influence decisions from the overall aesthetic vision to the cut of the text to the stage business. Tracking these choices and the matrix of objectives governing them reveals the ways in which theater not only responds to and reflects, but also builds community, now and then.