31. Anna D. Shapiro
Director
After winning a Tony for her direction of “August: Osage County” and taking that one from Chicago to New York to London, you might expect Steppenwolf ensemble member Anna Shapiro to take a breather. Fortunately for us, her breather means a full slate of directing in Chicago, from last year’s “Our Town” at Lookingglass and “Up” at Steppenwolf, to this summer’s “A Parallelogram” at Steppenwolf. We should mention that she also teaches at Northwestern, lest you think she’s loafing a bit too much.

32. Mickle Maher
Playwright
Mickle Maher, co-founder of Theater Oobleck, remounted his brilliant and chilling “An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening” last fall after its premiere ten years ago and it was a big hit all over again. And next month, Redmoon restages his acclaimed long-running puppet spectacle “The Cabinet.” In times of economic uncertainty, Maher seems to be the closest thing to a safe bet for the avant-garde. In fact, Oobleck was recently awarded a $10,000 NEA Grant for “The Hunchback Variations Singspiel,” a musical adaptation of, you guessed it, a Maher play.

33. Molly Shanahan
Choreographer and dancer
Molly Shanahan’s process-oriented approach to movement art has influenced a passel of young dancers in Chicago. Discarding the rules of modern dance, Shanahan puts movement under the microscope, cultivating gorgeous organic phrases by observing motion at the atomic level. In her three-year “Stamina of Curiosity” project, Shanahan and her collaborators in Mad Shak explore the relationship of the performer and the audience.

34. Jackie Taylor
Playwright and director
Following any given performance it’s not unusual to see Black Ensemble Theater Founder and Executive Director Jackie Taylor appear at the curtain call, make her audience feel like they’re part of the BET family and rouse them into contributing towards the company’s campaign to land BET with a new performance space/artistic home. It’s this warm, welcoming and vibrant artistry that has helped make BET the Chicago cultural institution that it has been for more than thirty-three years, and it’s definitely this dynamic that drives a BET performance. Using established songs to narrate a musical biography long before “Mamma Mia!” inspired the rest of the world to do the same, Taylor and her crew—she writes and directs most of their output—did it and did one better: their shows also boast a message of inclusion and tolerance that will never get old.

35. Nathan Allen
Director and playwright
The House Theatre of Chicago was one of, if not the, great success stories of the decade just ended. The creative force, often as both writer and director, behind nearly all of their hit shows was artistic director Nathan Allen. Breaking down the fourth wall is his mantra, and it makes for a bag of tricks that ain’t for everyone, but those who like it, really love it. This spring he returns with “Girls vs. Boys,” which the House web site promises “may be the furthest the House has pushed the envelope on a typical theater-going experience.” Consider yourself warned.

36. Tara DeFrancisco
Comedy actor
With her ball-busting energy and infectious sense of humor, DeFrancisco steals scenes left and right when she’s on stage. She’s logged time with Second City’s touring company, but for the past few years she’s been tearing up the stage at iO (in the musical improv show the DelTones) and at ComedySportz, with some stand-up thrown in for good measure. iO’s Charna Halpern calls her the “female Chris Farley.” An audition last year for “Saturday Night Live” didn’t land her a job, but performers with this kind of talent don’t stay in Chicago forever.

37. Carrie Hanson
Choreographer and dancer
Carrie Hanson and her company The Seldoms have gained a reputation for making dance in unusual places; her site-specific, thoughtful performances feature collaborations with Chicago artists of every stripe and have earned the company a MacArthur Grant as well as an invitation to perform Hanson’s new work “Marchland” at the MCA and the Isadora Festival in Russia.

38. Greg Allen
Director and playwright
Early on, during his six-hour production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude” at the Goodman last winter, a man in the balcony screamed in anger at his direction of the play. It was something of an apt summary of the role Allen plays in Chicago theater, where his meta-theatrical style, epitomized in the creations of The Neo-Futurists, where he is the founding director, have a similar polarizing effect: you either love them or hate them. Either way, there is no denying the creative force that he’s become, and next month you’ll have your choice to take part in it, when his new “I Am Camera” takes the stage at the Neo-Futurarium.

39. Richard Woodbury
Sound designer
Like lighting, the best sound design in theater tends to be ignored. You only pay attention when something’s not right. And when it’s wrong, the whole operation falls apart. So when Goodman and the Steppenwolf have it all on the line, whether it’s “August: Osage County” or “Death of a Salesman” on their stages or on Broadway, they turn to Richard Woodbury for sound. Woodbury, a professor at Columbia College, is a multidisciplinary creator of music for the stage, with a number of original aural creations for dance companies as well, such as The Seldoms and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Next up: the Broadway bound double-bill with Brian Dennehy at Goodman this month, “Hughie” and “Krapp’s Last Tape.” If all goes well, you won’t think about the sound.

Photo: Dan Merlo

40. Darrell Jones
Choreographer and dancer
In a recent interview, Darrell Jones described his desire as a novice dancer to exceed the limits of his body and realize the feats held in his imagination. Now a formidable performer and staff member at Columbia College, Jones continues to push the boundaries of human physical potential; a duet last year with Page Cunningham stripped away the illusion of ease from dance, addressing the arduous athleticism of dance head-on. Coming up, Jones dissects history and politics of vogueing.

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