Arts & Entertainment
David Schwimmer Celebrates Return of Lookingglass Theatre Company After COVID Hardships

When the COVID-19 pandemic kept people home, afraid or unable to sit close to strangers in a dark theater, the future of Chicago’s storied Lookingglass Theatre Company was uncertain.
Curtains closed. Performances paused. Plans to renovate the theater’s home base were halted.
“As people opted to stay in and work from home, the Mag Mile became considerably less magnificent, and we lost a staggering number of arts organizations,” Lookingglass co-founder and actor David Schwimmer said. “But this is Chicago. The city of Big Shoulders and its strength, resilience and work ethic inspired us. We decided to regroup, rebuild and today, reopen.”
Schwimmer made his remarks Monday at a ribbon cutting for the company’s new multi-purpose lobby at its home in the Water Tower Water Works building on Michigan Avenue — one of the rare structures to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
“Like the pumping station next door, we consider Lookingglass to be a public utility. Providing essential service to this community, and we take that responsibility seriously,” Schwimmer said. “We believe storytelling is as vital to the health of the city as the water flowing through it.”
The lobby renovations were funded largely by the state, including support from the 2019 bipartisan Rebuild Illinois capital program as well as grants from the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the Illinois Arts Council, with the contemporary “Joan and Paul” theater named in honor of patrons Joan and Paul Rubschlager.
The show “Circus Quixote,” will make its world premiere at the theater Jan. 30, and is scheduled to run through the end of March.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who stood next to Schwimmer as they ceremoniously snipped a blue ribbon, also talked about the punch that cultural institutions like Lookingglass took during the pandemic, and said “state government and philanthropy has worked hard at rebuilding all that we could.”
“They are the drivers of civic, economic and community revitalization, anchoring our downtowns and commercial districts and creating good jobs,” Pritzker said. “Art is a unifying force that transcends nationalities and languages and generations, helping us to find meaning and connection across boundaries that too often divide us. That is why providing resources and support is vitally important, especially in this challenging moment in the history of our nation. The best way out of division and chaos may be by bringing people together to share experiences and find common bonds in the imagination of gifted playwrights and actors and so many others that bring Lookingglass to life.”
The COVID-era break was the second time Schwimmer, who is on this year’s Lookingglass board, said the company faced a serious threat of going under since its 1988 founding, and the second time a government-assist helped it continue.
Before gaining worldwide fame playing Ross in the sitcom “Friends,” Schwimmer supported himself as a roller-skating waiter at the retro restaurant Ed Debevic’s and was part of a group of Northwestern University graduates who together formed Lookingglass.
“We were scrappy, fearless, idealistic and cocky,” he said. “You had to be, if you thought you could start a theater company in a city already packed with talent.”
The traveling company produced “groundbreaking” and award-winning work but “hit a wall.”
“Because we were nomadic, our audiences never knew where to find us. Remember, this is before social media. Facebook was still eight years away,” Schwimmer said.
The company was invited to apply for, and won, a Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs grant to make its home in the water works building. Its theater there opened in 2003.
In the post-pandemic world, Lookingglass is making adjustments to remain sustainable, particularly given that its intimate 200-seat theater caps how much revenue it can bring in through ticket sales.
Artistic director Kasey Foster said the company usually puts on four shows but this season has reduced it to two — “Circus Quixote” then in May, “Iraq, But Funny,” a step she called “sad but necessary.”
Lookingglass is also exploring resource-sharing opportunities, some with the potential to bring in income, like hiring out its scene shop to theaters that had to let go of their set-building teams.
The new lobby, which for the first time will allow Lookingglass to sell food and drinks at its bar and cafe, is another potential source of revenue.
“We’re trying to be creative and take baby steps along the way,” Foster said, while continuing to rely on support from public and private grants, donors and corporations.
The lobby is a “space to gather” but Foster said it will be used for other functions: Holding rehearsals, sharing with theater companies that are without a permanent home, hosting parties, events and the company’s education department.
“It was like building a ship in a bottle,” said architect Melissa Neel, who designed the theater when Lookingglass first moved to the water works building and was part of this project.
Neel said she and partner architect John Morris designed the space for all of those purposes but also with regard to history (guests can walk by and gaze down at the pumps) while also serving the main function — the home for a world-class theater company that “does dynamic, beautiful work.”
Calli Verkamp, Larry Kearns and Fabiola Yep with Wheeler Kearns Architects collaborated on the lobby project, Neel said.
They built a “little floating box to keep the pump noise at bay” and Neel describes the stage space as a “machine for theater” that Lookingglass can reconfigure, giving it the flexibility it had in its early, nomadic years.
Neel described the open lobby, accessible not on Michigan Avenue but the side door on Pearson Street, as “the place where the public and performer come together and it’s this incredible nexus for Lookingglass and the arts in Chicago to come together to make theater and tell stories and hangout.”
Contact Amanda Vinicky: @AmandaVinicky | [email protected]