After 13 years and 92 stage productions_including the infamous “Real Live Brady Bunch” and “Coed Prison Sluts,” the Annoyance Theatre is closing its doors this weekend.

By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
June 1, 2000

After 13 years and 92 stage productions – including the infamous “Real Live Brady Bunch” and “Coed Prison Sluts” – the Annoyance Theatre is closing its doors this weekend.

Temporarily.

“This isn’t a goodbye,” managing director Mark Sutton says. “It’s a see you later. Best case scenario, we’ll reopen this fall. Worst case, we’ll open a year from now.

“But it is the end of an era for us in that we want to reinvent the notion of what the Annoyance is. We’re looking to expand creatively into all different kinds of mediums. And when we come back, we want to be known as much for film, television and digital work as we are for live theater.”

That would be no small feat. Notorious for flamboyant productions employing gallons of stage blood, streams of profanity and the occasional live donkey, Annoyance didn’t have much commercial success with “Fatty Drives the Bus,” a straight-to-video film that was six years in the making.

Still, artistic director Mick Napier sees plenty of potential.

“I’m really optimistic about the future of Annoyance,” said Napier, who directs Second City shows on the side. “The timing is right. I was kind of faking it with live theater for a while. After 92 shows, you want to try something else. The prospect of doing something innovative and groundbreaking is very exciting for me.

“I think that when we reopen, we’ll be geared more towards production, with maybe a third live theater. That’s one reason why we’re looking at places that are 20,000 square feet or larger – twice as large as where we are now. I hope to maintain our audience base and hope that they will enjoy the other projects that we do, like animation, CD-ROM games, films, television, DVDs. . . . My dream is to have people act on stage and be on the different projects that we’re creating as well.”

Sutton adds, “The part of us that remains a theater wants to evolve into something different as well. That’s one reason we’re closing `Coed Prison Sluts,’ after an 11-year run. We love the show, and it has been the major player in that it’s a moneymaker.

“But we’ve decided that it’s also a burden we don’t want to carry, because everything that we do is compared to it. A good chunk of the audience believes that all of our shows are like that. We want to further raise the bar so that people will realize that this is a place where you can see a weird, late-night comedy one evening and then see us doing something more traditional the next.”

Whether Shakespeare will ever be a part of the troupe’s repertory is debatable. But Annoyance did tackle Brecht in “He Who Says Yes,” a short-run production that included the music of Kurt Weill. And the company did “Idiotic Death of Two Fools,” which was based on “Waiting for Godot.”

“Many of our shows have been inspired by traditional theater,” Sutton says. “We just packaged them in ways that were palatable to our audience.”
Unlike Second City, which became a breeding ground for movie stars and “Saturday Night Live” players, the Annoyance didn’t produce a John Belushi or Chris Farley. But a few performers have gone on to marginal fame, including Conan O’Brien’s longtime sidekick Andy Richter and former “SNL” regulars Melanie Hutsell and Beth Cahill.

“Melanie was in town (this week), so she did `That Darned Anti-Christ’ with us,” Sutton says. “For us, Annoyance has never been about creating stars. But if some of them go on to fame, then we’re happy for them. When I saw Melanie on `SNL,’ I thought, `Here’s a girl from Tennessee who was taking classes with us and is on national TV now.’ We had something to do with that.”

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FINAL SHOWS
“So, I Killed a Few People,” 8 tonight
“Coed Prison Sluts,” 9:30 tonight, 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
“Madcap,” 8 p.m. Friday
“Tippi: Portrait of a Virgin,” 8 p.m. Saturday
Tickets, $10 to $15
Annoyance Theatre, 3747 N. Clark
(773) 929-6200

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1987:  Metraform opens its doors at Wilton and Belmont. Parodies slasher flicks with “Splatter Theatre.” Starts out on a completely white set. By the show’s end, everything and everyone is slathered in “blood.”
1988: “Splatter Theatre 2” opens.
1989:  “Coed Prison Sluts” opens and doesn’t close until 2000.
1990:  “Real Live Brady Bunch” opens. Metraform’s Annoyance Theatre drops the Metraform from its name.
1993:  Annoyance begins work on film, “Fatty Drives the Bus.”
1994:  Annoyance relocates to present site on Clark. Post production work for “Fatty” gets underway. “Screw Puppies” opens a 6-year run
1995:  “Donkey Improv” is introduced to Chicago. A donkey is led onstage. The cast performs around it.
1999:  Annoyance recruits comics such as Charlie Callas and weirdo filmmaker genius John Waters to play at its club.
2000:  The theatre closes its doors. Temporarily.