STEP
UP TO THE MIKE
WANNABE PERFORMERS FIND
A STAGE - AND
AN OUTLET
By Jeff Favre. Special to the Tribune.
Published: Friday, February 17, 1995
Section: FRIDAY
Page: 30
In a city with more wannabe actors,
writers, singers and comedians than there are lights in the John
Hancock Building, finding room to let your talent shine may seem
daunting.
But a resourceful artist can star
every night of the week-if you know where to go.
The open microphone, a longtime
tradition enjoying new popularity in bars, clubs and cafes, allows
unknowns to strut their stuff, network with other performers and
work on new material. Once you hand the mike over to anyone who
wants it, you never know what you'll find: Performers may bring
erotic poetry, jazz memories or even puppet theater to the stage.
For the non-performers, the low (or
no) open-mike covers make for a cheap, and often amusing, date.
These open stages showcase some of
the city's best undiscovered talents, in between the occasional
clunker:
Cue Club, Heckler's Heaven, 8 p.m.
Wednesdays, 2833 N. Sheffield Ave., 312-477-3661, $2 before 7:30
p.m., $5 after.
As the name implies, this is not for
the weak of heart. Gerald Lott, a talent manager, designed the show
after being dragged to other open mikes by one of his comedians.
"Every night it was, `I'll laugh
at you if you laugh at me,' and you'll never get better with a crowd
like that," Lott says. "I thought, let's make it a hostile
audience. And it's a competition where I give the winner $200 out of
my own pocket."
The rules allow any comedian to get
up and perform, unharassed, for three minutes, until a whistle is
blown and the lights are raised.
Then the chips fly. For each
comedian, three judges are selected from the audience. They are
given a rubber chicken to toss on stage if they are unimpressed.
Comedians with three chickens thrown before the five-minute time
limit are eliminated.
Deon Cole, a comedian who has
toured
with HBO's "Def Comedy Jam," frequents Heckler's Heaven
when he's in town.
"I love the mixture of the
crowd," says Cole, 24. "The comedy doesn't have to focus
on one race, which is very uncommon in this city. They allow people
to heckle, so it's up to you to make your comedy versatile. And if
you succeed then it shows that you can do any kind of comedy at any
place."
FitzGerald's, Rhythm & Rhyme
Review, 8 p.m. Tuesdays, 6615 Roosevelt Rd., Berwyn, 708-788-2118,
$2 (performers receive a free pass to future shows).
Host Scott Momenthy meets with 10
to
14 performers before the two-stage show to determine an order,
alternating between mainstage musicians (heavy on modern folk) and
side-stage poets.
"I make it very clear before a
show that the audience is here to listen, and the crowds are very
supportive of it," Momenthy says. "I try to run it like a
real show, and there is little down time between acts."
A recent show includes a young poet
expounding on the lurid dreams of Freud, followed by Joseph Kostal
of Cicero, an amateur singer-songwriter who performs for the
attentive crowd of 50, mostly middle-age.
"This is one of the best open
mikes because when you're up there, you're being heard," Kostal
says.
Each show is followed by a featured
artist, some of whom were found during previous open mikes.
Gentry of Chicago, 9 p.m.
Wednesdays,
712 N. Rush St., 312-664-1033, no cover.
Beckie Menzie, a professional
entertainer with a gift for sight reading, plays guide and mentor
for anyone who wants to grab the spotlight and jump into a jazz tune
or show off their Sondheim.
"I want to try that again,"
actress Lisa Menninger tells Menzie after she falters at the climax
note of a "Les Miserables" tune. Menzie, smiling with
enough confidence for two, backs up a refrain and begins again.
This time Menninger hits it, to
thunderous applause.
"I do everything in my power
to
make sure that everyone sounds as good as they possibly can,"
Menzie says. "It takes a lot of guts to get up there, and they
need all the support they can get."
Although Gentry is a gay bar, all are
welcome and encouraged to perform.
"It's great to see someone
come
in who sits in front of a computer all day but loves Broadway
musicals and has always wanted to sing," says Mark Hawbecker,
who has been coming for five years.
The main room is small, seating two
dozen, and a monitor in an adjoining room allows latecomers to watch
the show. The regular bar's thumping disco music detracts from the
more elegant numbers, so an early arrival is recommended.
The Green Mill Cocktail Lounge,
Poetry Open Mic and Poetry Slam, 7 p.m. Sundays, 4802 N. Broadway,
312-878-5552, $5.
As the hippest of the hip and the
coolest of the cool, The Green Mill is known throughout poetry
circles as The Place to show your stuff to a brutally honest crowd.
Marc Smith, the guru of aspiring
poets, has run the open mike and the slam, a cutthroat competition,
at The Green Mill for eight years.
"This slam started 50 other
slams worldwide and spawned most of the readings in Chicago,"
Smith says. "The poetry is always changing. It's like a lake
filtered by a strong river, and it never get stagnant."
The open mike is first, followed by a
featured artist and the slam. Smith suggests newcomers try the open
mike-the audience is tough but not as demanding.
"We do not do polite applause
here," Smith says to the youthful house of more than 50.
"If we think something is bad, we snap our fingers."
The crowd prepares for the worst but
receives a dose of solid free-form poets discussing fantasies of
heroism and the trappings of loneliness. Numerous eruptions of
applause-not snaps-fill the evening.
Hitchcock's, 9 p.m. Wednesdays,
1157
W. Wrightwood Ave., 312-935-3760, no cover.
Hitchcock's allows standups a chance
to perform on the big screen-the TV screen, that is. With the aid of
a camcorder and a pull-down screen behind the audience, a comedian
can perform and watch the act too. Anyone who brings a videocassette
can have a tape made.
Standing with his back to the large
picture windows overlooking the sidewalk, guest host Cayne Collier
opens the show with some of his new material, including a Mick
Jagger impersonation.
"It's a polite crowd, a comics'
crowd," says Collier, 22, who has hosted the night three times.
"I root for them to do well and they root for me."
The crowd of 30, almost all
comedians, refrains from heckling even the weakest acts.
Le Cafe, Open & Out, 7 p.m.
first
and third Sunday of each month, 3343 N. Clark St., 312-665-7300, no
cover.
Emcee Dave Ouano bills Open
& Out
as the city's only open mike with an emphasis on gay and lesbian
themes.
Although the stage is open to anyone,
the majority of performers on a recent Sunday are gay men. Material
ranges from erotic poetry to a short story about a London drag
queen.
"We've been here about a
year," Ouano says. "There are a lot of regulars, but we
have new people come in all the time. It's mostly poetry, but we've
also had a cappella songs and monologues."
Tonight's offerings include a short
piece of an aria, a gay-themed piece titled "Joan of Arc Stole
My Boyfriend" and some Zionist revolutionary poetry.
Tara Moyle, 25, recites a poem about
a friend who recently died. "I've been to straight open mikes,
but I feel more comfortable here," she says.
The No Exit Cafe, In One Ear, 9 p.m.
Wednesdays, also at 9 p.m. Mondays (general) and Tuesdays (standup),
6970 N. Glenwood Ave., 312-743-3355, $1.
Before the rest there was No Exit.
The Rogers Park coffee shop has had at least one open-mike night
running since 1958.
Next-door neighbor Michael O'Toole
has run In One Ear, the Wednesday open mike, for seven years. He
suggested it to owners Brian and Sue Kozin after seeing The Green
Mill poetry open mike and slam.
"I thought, let's do that, but
without the slam and let's open it up for not just poetry but
theater and that type of stuff," O'Toole says. "Because
this is a non-alcoholic atmosphere, we get a lot of 15- and
16-year-olds. We've had some real good new talent begin here."
Few of the city's open mikes are
available for minors, and the In One Ear crowd runs thick with
adolescents who spout teen angst on the corner stage to a packed
house.
The poor sound system and constant
chatter are difficult to filter, but the raw words of youth are a
rare find at most mikes.
"If they get out of hand I just
get up and tell them to shut up and not act like high school
students," says Brian Kozin. "They hate being called high
school students, even if they are."
Sheffield's Wine and Beer Garden,
No
Shame Theatre, 9:30 p.m. Mondays, also 8:30 p.m. Sundays (general),
3258 N. Sheffield, 312-281-4989, $3, $2 for performers.
Hidden in the back room of this
Lakeview neighborhood bar, No Shame Theatre has developed an open
mike as varied and diverse as any in the area.
While the emphasis leans toward
theater, short skits or pieces of longer original plays, directors
Oliver Oertel and Meghan Schumacher welcome musical acts, poetry and
all types of standup comedy.
The format, which grew from a
writers
group at the University of Iowa, allows for anyone to perform any
original material four to seven minutes in length.
"We were looking for a
creative
outlet, and we found that this was a way for us to stay motivated in
between other projects," says Schumacher.
A recent show, 19 acts in all, kicks
off with a singer playing keyboards, followed by a satire on
political correctness for the audience of twentysomethings.
Brett Neveu, 24, has developed his
own avant-garde puppet theater via the open mike. Tonight's
installment includes the seamy backstage life of Kermit the Frog.
"It's a chance to do things that
are not being done anywhere else," Neveu says. "If you
don't like what you see in local theater you can come here and prove
you can do it better, or dare to fail trying."
Where to star
Additional open mikes for budding
performers to sample:
Abbey Pub, 9 p.m. Tuesdays
(acoustic), 3420 W. Grace St., 312-478-4408.
Be'an Wilde, 8 p.m. Tuesdays
(general), 118 N. Main St., Wheaton, 708-510-7000.
Duke O'Brien's, 8 p.m. Sundays and
Wednesdays (general), 110 N. Main St., Crystal Lake, 815-356-9980.
Durty Nellies, 9 p.m. Wednesdays
(general), 55 N. Bothwell St., Palatine, 708-358-9150.
Estelle's Cafe & Pub, 9:30 p.m.
Tuesdays (general), 2013 W. North Ave., 312-486-8760.
The Gallery Cabaret, 9 p.m. Sundays
and Thursdays (general), 2020 N. Oakley Ave., 312-489-5471.
Innertown Pub, 10 p.m. Thursdays
(general), 1935 W. Thomas St., 312-235-9795.
Morseland Cafe, 10 p.m. Wednesdays
(general), 1218 W. Morse Ave., 312-743-5955.
River West, 9 p.m. Mondays
(acoustic), 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays (Rock 'n' Roll Jam), 9 p.m.
Wednesdays (Blues Jam), 1860 N. Elston Ave., 312-276-4846.
U.S. Beer Company, 8 p.m. Sundays
(music), 1801 N. Clybourn Ave., 312-871-7799.
Weeds, 10 p.m. Mondays (poetry),
1555
N. Dayton St., 312-943-7815.
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