Firebrand prepares to make a mark again

In the daze of the election results last Wednesday morning, I got a Facebook message from Harmony France telling me that the company she cofounded back in 2016, Firebrand Theatre, is planning a comeback. I needed good news, and that announcement was one little ray of light in an otherwise terrible day.

France and Danni Smith cofounded Firebrand, a company dedicated to producing musical theater with a feminist perspective, before the 2016 election. They produced several shows over the next few years, kicking it off with 2017’s Lizzie, a rock musical by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Alan Stevens Hewitt, and Tim Maner about Lizzie Borden. Their short production history also included a stellar 2018 revival of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Caroline, or Change (produced in partnership with TimeLine Theatre), a revival of Dolly Partonʼs 9 to 5 (also in 2018); and Michael John LaChiusa’s Queen of the Mist in 2019, starring Chicago legend Barbara Robertson as Anna Edson Taylor, the first person to survive a trip in a barrel over Niagara Falls.

Firebrand’s last show before the 2020 pandemic shutdown was 2019’s Always . . . Patsy Cline, in which France and Christina Hall traded off performing as the title character and as superfan Louise Seger.

At the time of the shutdown, France was getting ready to open in Grey Gardens at Theo Ubique (now just Theo). When it became clear there would be nothing on Chicago stages for a while, she decided to leave town.

“I’m very instinctual,” France tells me in our Zoom conversation. “That’s where this whole thing is coming from. And my instincts were to get closer to my mom. She was in Virginia. We didn’t know what was going to happen. I think people forget that. There was no vaccine. I didn’t know if state borders were going to close.”

While in Virginia during the shutdown, France says, “There’s just the logistics of running a company that don’t go away. [Smith had stepped away from Firebrand prior to the shutdown.] I didn’t want to do online programming. I didn’t want to do any of that. I really was kind of feeling the temperature of the situation. It felt like a time of rest. It felt like a time of reset. There were a lot of conversations that happened during that time. There was a lot of unrest. There was a lot of revolution within the theatrical community.”

The shutdown was also a personal reckoning for France, who tells me, “Part of where I was when Firebrand went on hiatus was white-knuckling it, frankly.” The stress of running a nonprofit theater, particularly one dedicated to operating under the higher costs of Equity contracts, was taking a toll. During the past few years, France earned a master’s in social justice from the California Institute of Integral Studies. “My exact degree was women, gender, spirituality, and social justice,” she notes with a laugh. 

The impetus for forming the company in the first place, as France told Reader contributor Zac Thompson in 2016, was in part the sexist body-shaming she’d encountered as someone who is “curvy” by conventional musical theater standards. France and Smith were interested in bringing more diversity in casting to the musical theater scene in the city, as well as “employing and empowering women by expanding opportunities on and off the stage.” 

As she tells me in our conversation, in going back and revisiting podcasts and other interviews she and Smith did at the time Firebrand formed, France realized, “We wanted it to be obsolete at a certain point. The whole point was, ‘We wanna show up. We wanna make change, and then we hopefully want people to take that example and get to the point where we’re not needed.ʼ”

But waking up to the grim news Wednesday was the impetus France needed to restart Firebrand.

“I woke up, and I said, ‘Hell no. Firebrand is coming back.’ Because that same need that started it to begin with, we still have it.”

In many ways, Firebrand will be restarting as if they’re a brand-new company. France mentions that they lost their nonprofit status for a while during the hiatus. (It has since been reinstated.) Before the shutdown, they had been in talks with Victory Gardens Theater to become a resident company before that organization apparently imploded. “The people that used to be involved in Firebrand are scattered to the winds,” she notes. 

One thing that France made clear from the inception with Firebrand was that it wasn’t going to be solely about producing work created by women. “You cannot tick every box. The [musical theater] canon doesn’t lend itself to that,” she says. She also notes that commercial viability is part of the balancing act as well. 

Firebrand is coming back at a time when the musical theater landscape in Chicago has shifted. BoHo Theatre, which had always included musicals in its mix, closed for good in 2023 after their genderqueer production of Jonathan Larson’s tick, tick . . . BOOM!. Porchlight Theatre, like a lot of other companies, has scaled down the number of productions in their recent seasons, and Mercury Theater Chicago hasn’t announced a new mainstage production as of yet (though several seasonal shows are coming up in the Venus Cabaret space).

But France is determined to both resurrect Firebrand and to do so in a way that won’t endanger her own well-being. “We started with a $600 check, and we have not, to this day, received one of those big grants. Never. It’s all been grassroots.” She adds, “I would say this is the very messy stage,” which involves “dreaming and scheming and writing every single thing that’s coming into my brain down on paper.” She emphasizes, “It’s important we set up the infrastructure in a certain way. Running it made me sick last time. And I can’t do that.”

It’s early days, but France says that anyone who is interested in coming aboard to help Firebrand relight the flame can reach her at [email protected]. “There are specific needs, and we’ll be putting a list of that together.” She adds, “I’m not afraid to be transparent this time. Last time, I wanted it to look like it was this company that had all these resources and all these things, and really it was like a mad woman behind the curtain with her laptop.”

Now might be the perfect time for the mad women to get together and make their voices heard.

Joel Hall Dancers and Center name new leadership team

Late last month, Joel Hall Dancers and Center announced that William Gill and Joseph Pindelski would be taking over as artistic director and executive director, respectively, for the 50-year-old company. It wasn’t a completely surprising announcement; both men had been serving in those positions in an interim capacity for the past year. 

Gill, whose career began at Joel Hall, has taught dance for over 30 years and performed with the acclaimed modern and contemporary Dallas Black Dance Theatre for nine seasons. Among many other credits, he’s also the resident choreographer for visual artist Nick Cave, collaborating with Cave on his exhibit “Heard,” which played in New York’s Grand Central Station as well as in Australia and Hong Kong.

Pindelski first joined Joel Hall in 2021 as managing director. His previous experience includes stints with Pivot Arts, the Den Theatre, and Goodman Theatre locally as well as the American Pops Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and with the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Founder Joel Hall said in the press announcement, “I feel that my company and my legacy are in the hands of a strong team, and my ‘home’ is secure.” Founded to “showcase and celebrate the artistry of Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ performers,” Joel Hall Dancers has also long been a cornerstone of dance training in the city, particularly in the jazz dance tradition. The company is a founding member of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project. 

The company also recently opened its new home studio at 4511 N. Clark, in partnership with Black Ensemble Theater.