Of all the upsetting stories I heard while Aimee Levitt and I were investigating Profiles Theatre, the one that disturbed me the most came not from anyone who’d ever met or allegedly been harmed by artistic director Darrell W. Cox and his cohort. It wasn’t even a story about something specific he or his collaborators had allegedly done.
Savage redacted the postscript and forwarded the message to another friend of mine, a local theater artist, and asked him if this sounded familiar. Even though the name of theater wasn’t mentioned, my friend immediately suspected which company it was.
I’d also posit that critics often mistook this charisma for authenticity, which is particularly unfortunate for a town whose theater scene prides itself on its authenticity and nose for bullshit, a matter critics like to believe they help arbitrate. But in getting duped into praising his fake lady directors and marveling at the staggeringly real-seeming stage violence we all mistakenly assumed was being safely and professionally executed but was actually just real, we failed not just in our capacity of supposedly discerning aesthetes and connoisseurs of the art form, but also as stewards of Chicago’s implicit agreement with the young people who come here specifically on the promise that, unlike New York and LA, our city is a uniquely safe playground to experiment with one’s craft.
