"The Project(s)," the story of public housing in Chicago and Paparelli's latest critical hit in what had been a peerless season this year in Chicago theater, is currently playing at the theater company that Paparelli loved and nurtured to a level of artistic success that belied the size of its annual budget. In a conversation just a few days before he died, Paparelli said that some people found him challenging because he was always trying to do the highest quality of work "on a storefront budget." No one who ever saw Paparelli's work at American Theater Company, or who saw what happened to his work thereafter, could possibly contest that statement.