No one is better at intimate than Writers Theatre artistic director Michael Halberstam, who made a 50-seat playhouse out of the back of a Glencoe bookstore, grew it over two decades into what the Wall Street Journal has called the best drama company in the country, and is about to move it into a $31 million home designed by starchitect Jeanne Gang.
They had wound up in Glencoe by chance. Someone introduced Halberstam to Pat Rahmann, who was a partner in the bookstore and was looking for someone to host play readings there. “There wasn’t anything else happening there,” Halberstam says, “and we had the companionship of Apple Tree, just to the north of us, and Northlight and Next, to the south—enough to establish that there was credible theater, and not enough to overcrowd the market.”
That’s a long string of excellent luck and big bucks even for Glencoe, as Halberstam is aware.
Through 5/3: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 4 PM Chopin Theatre 1543 W. Division 773-769-3832definitiontheatre.org $25
