'Gang' of Architects to Build New Theater in Glencoe

With a book, one might see imagined space as the combined effort of the reader and the storyteller. Page after page, a captivated mind imagines sailing across an expansive ocean, drinking coffee in a garden cafe or sitting 50 floors atop a towering skyscraper.

In theater, though, space is limited by the life of each play: The actors, production team, lighting, audience and set, among a handful of other elements.

With that immutable fact in mind, Writers' Theatre in Glencoe will tear down its roughly 100-year-old theater at the Women's Library Club, 325 Tudor Ct., and build a new one that's intended to “match the sophistication of the art that's being created" by the theater, said the organization's executive director, Kathryn Lipuma.

Read more:

In late July, the 19-year-old theater company announced it had hired Chicago-based Studio Gang Architects to design the building. Lipuma said the new facility should open within four years. 

"We have to make sure that the building is what [the theater board of trustees] wants,” Lipuma said. “Everyone was satisfied with [the firm]. They're competent, collaborative and extremely creative.”

Lead by principal Jeanne Gang, the firm is famous for:

• Designing the Aqua Tower, a downtown Chicago skyscraper with a rippling surface that seems translucent anytime of the day.
• Drawing up the nature boardwalk at the Lincoln Park Zoo, an example of sustainability for urban parks.
• Designing Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theatre, which was renovated into a sound stage that opens to the stars. 

With plans for more seating, Lipuma said, the theater can “continue to build audiences [with each play] as well as better amenities for artists and patrons.”

“One of the things that's very important is to create a bigger theater,” she added, though “not necessarily a much bigger theater. Our hallmark is our intimacy...between audiences and actors.

"All this will be taken into consideration when we start to design the space,” Lipuma said.

Both the firm and theater chose not to release estimates for the new building, but Lipuma hinted that, like with any similar project, it would not be cheap.

She estimated that the capital campaign would take at least two years to raise the necessary money but did not expect the effort to increase ticket prices. 

“We're a not-for-profit,” the director said, later noting the theater's history of affordability and accessibility. “We're never going to run a commercial theater or for-profit theater. We can't predict how the industry as a whole is going to be in five years [though] with ticket sales."

The performance company has more than 5,700 subscribers and an annual operating budget of $3.5 million.