“Dive” is a new play set in a Chicago dive bar. And not in a storefront theater flipped to mimic a bar, but it’s actually staged in Fritzy’s Tavern in Edgewater.
“We literally wandered in October,” said Michaela Petro, co-founder of The Dark Room District, the new theater company producing the immersive show.
“We were location scouting, i.e., ‘bar hopping,’ and we walked in,” Petro continued. “There was a ball game on, and there was nobody in the bar. The owner, who was bar tending, walked up and said, ‘We give out hot dogs on game day.’ So we just hung out for hot dogs and a drink.”
Petro, along with fellow co-founder John Henry Roberts, are former ensemble members of Strawdog Theatre Company. In 2020, when theaters across the country shuttered, they faced existential questions, said Roberts, such as, “Are we still artists?”
Believing theater may actually be dead, the duo left the ensemble and originally had the idea of founding a company to make podcasts.
During these years, Roberts returned to a script he had started back in 2010. The play was set in a bar and took place in a very different time.
“There’s one character that’s a cab driver,” said Petro. “And in the fall of 2010, that’s when Uber and Lyft really came on full tilt boogie and all but decimated that industry, which was — and still is — a huge livelihood for a lot of Chicagoans.”
Those are types of characters in “Dive,” which boasts a cast of 16 actors. Roberts depicts a bar in 2010, in the years before social media fully kidnapped our collective attention, before AI became unavoidable and before people hailed rides through apps. In those days, Roberts said, people still understood the value of third spaces.
“We need to remember, honor, and bolster third spaces,” said Petro. “Whether that is church, whether that is a library, whether that is your local watering hole, we’re losing that connection. We’re losing these spaces that people once upon a time went to when they didn’t want to go home yet.”
This longing for third spaces was the inspiration that set the tone for the production. And while it is billed as “immersive,” because the audience is seated in the bar for the show, the creators are sure to note this is not “muder mystery” style theater.
“We’re riding this razor’s edge of what we are considering an immersive experience,” said Petro. “You don’t go to the bar and order from our actor bartenders. You don’t participate.”
What audiences do get is an authentic experience of a dive bar in 2010 as a fly-on-the-wall. The approach was inspired, in part, by Petro being a cast member in the first show produced by Spencer Huffman’s New Theater Project at the titanium factory in Bowmanville. From that show, she said she learned, “all you need is a space.”
With “Dive,” Petro and Roberts not only found a non-traditional space, but a functional reason for utilizing it: Chicagoans love dive bars. Petro, the daughter of a bartender, jokingly notes she’s “been doing shots of orange juice since I was like 6.” But more strategically, dive bars are an example of an unpretentious third space.
“No one’s gonna look at you weird if you roll into a library,” she said. “No one’s gonna look at you weird if you roll into church. Dive bars are just an extension of that welcoming environment.”
For Roberts, the play hits a core value that we all have as artificial intelligence continues to infringe on our daily lives. The need to just be human.
“I think getting in a room with people is a great way to verify that what you’re seeing is human,” said Roberts. “I feel like it’s really important to people.”