Pride Films and Plays, a six-year-old nonprofit organization focused on LGBT-centered stage productions and film development, will take over operations of the two theater spaces formerly operated by Profiles Theatre, PF&P officially announced on Monday. Together the two theaters will be known as the Pride Arts Center.
The larger of the two spaces at 4139 N Broadway, which had been home to the National Pastime Theater before Profiles took it over in 2012 and dubbed it the Main Stage, will be the main performance home starting in 2017 for Pride Films and Plays. PF&P plans to call it “the Broadway.” The smaller space two doors north at 4147 N Broadway, which Profiles had occupied for many years, will be known as “the Buena” and will serve primarily as a rental venue for other producers, the company said.
Profiles Theatre ceased operations in June, less than a week after the publication of an in-depth investigation by the Chicago Reader into years’ worth of allegations of abusive behavior in and out of the workplace by co-artistic director Darrell W. Cox.
Pride Films and Plays was founded in 2010 by executive director David Zak, who had previously been artistic director of Bailiwick Repertory Theatre for more than two decades. Bailiwick Repertory faced its own public allegations of financial misconduct before losing its lease at 1229 W Belmont Ave (now Theater Wit) in late 2008 and dissolving in 2009. Pride Films and Plays opens its latest production, BITE: A Pucking Queer Cabaret, tonight at Mary’s Attic.