THE MOST With the Least

MAGIC DOESN’T HAVE TO COST MILLIONS. Throughout the country, small theatre companies build houses (and bodies of water), stage seven-hour Pulitzer-winning epics, and bring a bit of everyday Hawaii to the shores of Lake Michigan.

How do they do it? By seeing the potential in garages and horse stables, scavenging for foam and discarded motorcycles, and most significantly meeting their core audiences exactly where they’re at. The following companies’ fastidious planning, outside-the-box thinking, and emphasis on nurturing performers and designers alike might inspire even the wealthiest of Equity houses.

MIDWESTERN ALOHA

To tent or not to tent?

That was the question Nothing Without a Company (NWaC) faced last spring when staging the Chicago premiere of Not One Batu, an immersive look at Hawaii’s meth epidemic written by co-artistic director Hannah Ii-Epstein, who was born and raised on Oahu. (“Batu” is a Hawaiian Pidgin English term for methamphetamine.)

“Hannah really wanted to do it on a beach and I said, ‘Girl, that is not how Chicago works!’” explains Anna Rose Ii-Epstein, NWaC’s co-artistic director and Hannah’s wife. (The women combined two family names to form a portmanteau Anna calls “Jewaiian.”) “We’d made a conscious decision to stay away from outdoor shows because of weather issues, so originally we were going to put up a $5,000 tent.”

Reclaimed spaces are the foundation of Nothing Without a Company, formed in 2005 by then-classmates at the Theatre School at DePaul University. The company’s annual budget is around $50,000, so site-specific work cuts cost on space rental, and makes for interesting artistic challenges. “The space tends to inform and challenge what the designers can do,”