Looks like I'll soon have to find a new home for this here blog.

Defiant Theatre sent out a press release today stating that the fall production of A Clockwork Orange will be the company's swan song. Finished. Finit. Kaput.

The eight years I've lived in Chicago have been defined by Defiant. They were my first circle of friends here, and many of them continue to be my closest. Without Defiant, I would never have met my girlfriend of four-and-a-half years. Their aesthetic influenced my aesthetic. I learned more from Defiant about the dramatic art form and art in general than I did at my first alma mater (though, to Virginia Tech's credit, I simply wasn't listening all that much then). Without the opportunities I had with Defiant to hone my skills with a mouse, I wouldn't be persuing a degree in graphic design now.

It's difficult for a theater company to survive without the benefit of a notable celebrity. The other options are to remain blissfully small or to hand control over to a Board of Directors and risk selling out your mission. To Defiant's credit, they never did anything small. Even the "small" shows had some Herculean aspect to them. And they never let a Board of Directors sell them out; they sold out all by themselves. (And for the record, Defianteers, that was a joke.)

So what causes a theater company with huge aspirations but no celebrities or soulsucking Board members to end? An exodus to LA and NY. New life goals. Families. Changing audiences. Changing political climate. Competing ideals. All of these factors, in one way or another, lead to a decline in work quality, which leads to more waning interest, and then you get one of those damn spiral-y things. Thus the template for nearly any arts organization's downfall, assuming they weren't shut down by the city or a torch-wielding mob.

What could Defiant have done differently? I started to answer this question here, but deleted it. Truthfully, there isn't anything Defiant could have done differently because anything different would not have been Defiant Theatre.

I'm extremely proud of the work I've done with Defiant. Most of my memories are good ones, and the bad memories are no more significant than the ugly times any ensemble experiences; after all, assembling a faction of artists is a sociological experiment in which you throw a group of huge egos in a room and observe. I stopped dwelling on the bad memories so long ago. (I can hear Jim Slonina's huge sigh of relief.)

I'm not doing one of those Moment of Silence posts like I often do because Defiant is not quite dead yet. The Pyrates is still running, and it is worth seeing fellow blogger Kelly Cooper in a fat suit and a creepy mask threating Will Schutz with a flaming bamboo enema. A Clockwork Orange makes perfect sense as a final show, as well. From today's press release:

"Clockwork is essentially a story about youthful passion and energy, about the often painful maze of error and discovery through which these lead, and how we ultimately emerge from that labyrinth as different people," says Christopher Johnson... "It is a story about the journey from adolescence to adulthood told through the most violent, sexual and politically charged metaphor conceivable.... I can't think of a more fitting piece of theatre to sum up the eleven year odyssey we are concluding, bot personally and artistically."

So cheers to Defiant Theatre: for influencing Chicago off-loop theater for years to come, for sticking to your principles as vehemently as you could, and for shaping my life as you have -- thank you.