It’s been a long, cold winter here in Chicago, and we’ve been itching to get back to work for months now – tonight we finally got to dive into a new script and new playwright with a great new group of people, with the first rehearsal of Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare.
Listening to the cast read through the script for the first time, I was struck by the power, sensuality, and humor of this play, which explores the tense relationships of strangers brought together by circumstance during the Great Plague of the mid 1600s.
Tomorrow we’ll come back together to begin discussing the dramaturgical research and characters, and by the end of this week the actors will be up on their feet. Based on their first trip through the play together, this promises to be a fascinating six weeks we’ve got ahead of us, and we’ll be sharing the experience here on the blog as we go along.
The photo above, taken by our fantastic photographer Scott Cooper, features Elizabeth Stenholt (Morse) and JP Pierson (Bunce). More photos, including some behind the scenes shots from tonight’s rehearsal, are in our One Flea Spare set on Flickr.
Our crackerjack dramaturgical team has started posting all of their research here on the blog, and it is filled with fascinating nuggets of information to help artists and audiences alike understand Miller’s brilliantly complex script on a deeper level.
One of my favorite pages so far is a collection of quotes by and/or about Marilyn Monroe, who (despite Miller’s occasional claims to the contrary) is widely seen as a model for the character of Maggie. All of the quotes are worth reading, digesting and ruminating on, but here’s my favorite:
“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.” -Marilyn Monroe
Browse through the research by clicking the link on the right, and keep checking back in as we add more…
This rare documentary looks at the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, and contains interviews with Miller himself. It’s in two parts – here’s part one:
I’ll post part two, along with some thoughts on what this means in terms of After the Fall, later this week.
Chase Community Giving is using Facebook to determine which 200 non-profit organizations nation-wide will receive donations of $250K, $100K or $20K.
Eclipse is in the top 200 now, and we need your help to stay there!
If you’re on Facebook, visit Chase Community Giving and cast a vote for Eclipse Theatre Company!
If you’re not on Facebook, please pass this message along to someone who is!
And once you’re there, you can keep right on supporting the Chicago theatre community … you can cast up to twenty votes, and help secure funding for all your favorite Chicago theatre companies! Use the links below to support our friends in the community:
Kristy Johnson (left, playing Keisha) is nominated for a Jeff Award for Best Supporting Actress – we’re wishing her all the best for Monday’s award ceremony!
Blogging has been slow lately, but we’re ready to pick things up again as we prepare for After the Fall, which started rehearsals last week and opens July 11th at the Greenhouse Theater. Our brilliant photographer, Scott Cooper, spent the weekend with a few of our actors and created the beautiful image below, with the overlapping relationships between Quentin (me, on the right), Maggie (Nora Fiffer, left), Louise (Julie Daley) and Holga (Sally Eames-Harlan):
Tomorrow afternoon (Saturday April 10th, 2:00 pm at the Greenhouse Theater) we’ll be reading and discussing Arthur Miller’s first full-length play, The Man Who Had All the Luck. It’s kind of like Death of a Salesman in reverse – everything goes right for David Beeves, and his good fortune drives him slowly to the point of madness as he watches everyone around him struggle with their lack of luck. Miller called this “a fable,” and the story is by turns tragic, funny, instructive and cautionary. It’s a fun script to explore, and a fascinating look at a legendary playwright’s early ideas.
This event is part of our Playwright Scholar Series, giving subscribers a chance to explore our featured playwrights with us beyond the three main productions. It’s free for Eclipse subscribers and for the general public ($5 suggested donation for non-subscribers), and a good reason to subscribe to the 2010 Arthur Miller Season.
The 2010 Arthur Miller Season
Playwright Scholar Series: The Man Who Had All the Luck
Saturday, April 10th at 2:00 pm
The Greenhouse Theater Center
2257 N. Lincoln, Chicago
For more information or to reserve seats, call 773.325.9655.
How did Miller’s work change or mature? Did it become more or less progressive as he became more well known? This is a unique opportunity to dive into Millers early work . I am not a Miller enthusiast (in fact I haven’t been exposed to much of Miller), but I’ve noticed that Miller has encorporated an element of madness and even desperation, in one way or another, in his plays(at least in Resurrection Blues and The Crucible). I am looking forward to learning a bit more about him and his work, and why this motif is so.
The script of Resurrection Blues calls for lobsters in scene five, to be eaten by Felix and Emily as the scene opens on them finishing their elegant meal. For a small-budget Non-Equity theatre company, this is a challenge to solve, and our props designer Kim Lyle not only solved it beautifully (with the essential help of my fantastic sister in Maine who donated and shipped four live Maine lobsters!), but also documented her adventure in the brilliant video below:
A brand new photo, from the theater as we prepare for Resurrection Blues, here’s a shot of Set Designer Steph Charaska’s scenic art in an early stage of the process – there are more photos on the Flickr set, and I’ll put up a full post about these wonderful set pieces soon …
As difficult as it is, the old saying is true – the show must go on, and for me personally it’s been an important part of the healing process to get back to the work of exploring this challenging and beautiful script. Rehearsals have been going very well this week, and we’re starting to get a sense of what this play needs to be and what we need to be working on over the next four weeks.
I’m working on the Director’s Note for the program now, trying to find a way to articulate the important place that Resurrection Blues has in Arthur Miller’s body of work, and the importance that this story has for me personally.
Since I first found this play at the library downtown, I felt strongly that it needed to begin our Arthur Miller Season. The style of the writing is in some ways very recognizably Miller – the rhythms and language share the technical beauty and emotional resonance of his most popular works, and the ideas are huge and complicated, leaving audiences with a lot to talk about and process on the way home. In many ways, though, this is a very different kind of play from what we traditionally think of as an Arthur Miller play – it is, most obviously, a comedy, and a very funny one, that satirizes politics, religion and media with no punches pulled. It is also a very contemporary play, written in 2002 and set firmly in the present.
What fascinated me the most, though, is that this play is, in my, mind, a mature and reverent exploration of faith from an artist who wrestled with a sense of bitterness towards religion in many of his plays. Despite all the humor (much of which comes in the form of blasphemy), this is a story of our common cultural search for a true and deep sense of the divine and a powerful personal relationship with a faith that feels more universal than any specific religion.
Now more than ever, this is a play that I’m grateful to have the opportunity to explore, for myself and for Arthur Miller fans as we begin the season.
It has been a difficult and tragic week within the Eclipse family; our good friend and ensemble member Kat Saari passed away on Monday, leaving our hearts broken and our souls aching. Kat’s passion, intelligence and artistic vision will be missed as much as her friendship. The outpouring of support and love from throughout our extended family in the Chicago theatre community has been nothing short of amazing, and a wonderful reminder about the lives she touched.
Her family has created a page on Facebook dedicated to sharing memories and photos celebrating her life and our fortune in being a part of it. For those who knew Kat, please follow the link at right to Eclipse’s Facebook page, and from there you can leave your own thoughts and memories. She will be in our thoughts and prayers always, and we miss her terribly.
The 2010 Arthur Miller Season officially began last night, with the first rehearsal of Resurrection Blues, scheduled to open (as a Chicago Premiere!) on March 28th at the Greenhouse Theater in Lincoln Park. After two years of celebrating our first decade of playwrights, it was exciting for all of us to return to the “One Playwright, One Season” format and kick off our year-long journey with Arthur Miller.
First read through of Resurrection Blues
With a small audience of subscribers and friends, the cast dove into the script with a fantastic first read through, exploring the rhythms, humor and big ideas in Miller’s penultimate play. The story, which satirizes politics, media and faith in a very contemporary setting, shows a different side of the playwright, even as it explores the themes that resonate throughout Miller’s work. And this cast – a wonderful group of talented actors who are all passionate about this script – had a blast playing with those themes.
Now the real work begins – we’ll spend the next few days sitting around a table talking, asking questions, and maybe finding some answers, and then we’ll start putting scenes on their feet and see where they take us over the next five weeks. Stay tuned for more thoughts, photos from rehearsals, and videos as we go along.
We start rehearsals for the Chicago Premiere of Arthur Miller’s 2002 play Resurrection Blues in just two short days – here’s a sneak peek from this past weekend’s photo shoot – more to come soon …
Reading Arthur Miller’s autobiography, one gets the sense of a man who struggled all his life with religion and his place in the world. Many of Miller’s plays deal with the “common man” and his sense living with a disappointing life. But as we prepare to produce Resurrection Blues, Miller’s relationship with religion became the focus of my attention.
Being Jewish, Miller struggled with identifying himself with the faith, but also recognizing that God would even care about his little insignificant life. As a child he visualizes God viewing the world as if God was in a theatre watching a play. Miller imagined that God would only come out for weddings and funeral, and then disappear back into the synagogue. In the 1930s, Miller saw socialism as his faith.
All of these childhood and young adult views affects the writing of Resurrection Blues in an interesting way. It is almost as if Miller is struggling with his Jewish identity and God through the prophet in the play. By representing religion the body of a man we never see, the evidence of Miller’s relationship to God is there.
While our current production of Democracy continues to roll on, we’re keeping ourselves busy with additional events celebrating our past featured playwrights. Last weekend, with the help of composer Scott Wheeler and singers from VOX 3 Collective, we had a fantastic evening exploring Mr. Wheeler’s opera Democracy: An American Comedy, based on 2001 featured playwright Romulus Linney‘s Democracy. The event included scenes from the Eclipse production and the opera, along with a fascinating discussion with Mr. Wheeler and the artists.
Our next event, coming up next Saturday, will be just as exciting – don’t miss it!
Keith Reddin and the mythology of America
Saturday, December 5th at 12 pm
The Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N Lincoln
Admission is free ($5 suggested donation for non-subscribers).
Eclipse’s 2004 featured playwright, Keith Reddin, explored our collective identity as Americans throughout his works. The Celebration Series continues the exploration by revisiting Eclipse productions from 2004 (Brutality of Fact, Big Time and Frame 312), along with readings from other plays and a discussion with Eclipse artists.
Call us at 773.325.9655 for more information and to reserve seats for this unique event.
We’re posting some background information and research in the Dramaturgy sidebar on the right, including a great interview where Keith Reddin discusses his sense of his own identity as an “American playwright”:
I think of myself as a very American playwright. And when you look at the words that set the American way of life, they are “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It’s not happiness, it’s the pursuit of happiness. We have the freedom to pursue happiness but that doesn’t mean that we’re guaranteed to get it. Happiness is very fleeting; that’s a very American theme. We very rarely, if ever, find it. But I enjoy that we have the freedom to pursue it and I think that’s what all the plays are about.
We’re getting ready for a fantastic event this coming Sunday – we’re offering audiences a fun way to explore our current production Democracy through the spectacular Opera version … This is a free event, and it’ll be a lot of fun – don’t miss it!
Scott Wheeler (Composer of Democracy: An American Comedy) will join actors from Eclipse Theatre Company and singers from VOX 3 Collective to explore the stage and opera versions of Romulus Linney’s story. This unique event will include performed scenes from Eclipse’s production of Democracy and selections from Mr. Wheeler’s opera, followed by a discussion with the artists.
Eclipse Theatre Company's "Democracy"
Democracy: Opera and Drama
Sunday, November 22nd at 7:00 pm
Greenhouse Theater Center
2257 N Lincoln
A suggested donation is encouraged for non-subscribers. Please contact us at 773-325-9655 for more information or to reserve your seats for these exciting events!
From our current production of Democracy, which opened last night, Baron Jacobi (Larry Baldacci) has an old-fashioned plan to stop Madeleine Lee (Rebecca Prescott) from marrying the ambitious Senator Silas Raitcliffe in the scene below from The Stage Channel:
In the opening scene of Democracy, Baron Jacobi introduces us to the characters in the play. As President Grant and his wife Julia walk by, Jacobi notes her crossed eyes and explains:
When they came to the White House, she wanted an operation. The President said no! He could not bear his great burden without the cross-eyed girl he had loved all these years.
I was thinking about this line as I was setting up the links on the Democracy Dramaturgy page – included in the research prepared by Sarah Moeller and Katie Vandehey, co-dramaturgs on the production, is a comprehensive biography of Julia Boggs Dent Grant, including this photo of the cross-eyed girl that Ulysses loved.
We spent the first two days of rehearsal going through this information, giving all of the actors, designers and the director the background information they needed before creating the world of this play. It’s here on the blog for them – and for you – to browse. Enjoy!
I’ll be back for the regular Friday rescue later in the day – first I wanted to share this beautiful photo of Senator Raitcliffe (Jon Steinhagen) courting Madeline Lee (Rebecca Prescott) in Romulus Linney’s Democracy:
I wish I had taken a few “before” photos – it’s difficult to describe the chaos here at the Eclipse space three weeks ago, when every square foot was stacked to the ceiling with three shows worth of theatrical debris. We’ve been steadily chipping away, and we’re almost ready for a party…
I took a break from setting up last night to take some “during” photos – there’s still more decorating and cleaning to be done before Saturday, but our rehearsal space is almost fully transformed into a hip, funky party pad. There are more photos of the space on our Flickr page – and there will be more (with a lot of people having fun) after Saturday.
Come on out and see what we’ve done to the place, help us celebrate the current season and look ahead to the 2010 Arthur Miller Season …
Artistic Director Nathaniel Swift in Plaza Suite. Photo by Scott Cooper.
Come celebrate & network with all of us at Eclipse as well as our colleagues and friends from the theatre community, as the Chicago theatre fall season begins and Eclipse’s 2-year Celebration Series concludes.
The night kicks off at 7:00 pm at our swanky digs with beer, wine & food, live DJ & dancing, a little Wii Bowling, and your chance to mingle with some of the coolest people in Chicago theatre!
If you are in a show that evening, please come by afterwards!
Actors, Designers, Directors – feel free to bring your pic/resume!
$15 suggested donation or whatever you can donate at the door.
At the Eclipse Space: 4001 N Ravenswood, Chicago, IL 60613
My apologies for being late this week – I was sneaking in a quick vacation visiting family in Maine. Here’s the view from the boat on Friday as we headed out past the point:
On the first day of tech rehearsals for our current production of Six Degrees of Separation, I handed my digital camera to Eclipse ensemble member Stephen Dale, who plays Ben in the show. Take it backstage, I told him – have some fun, shoot anything you want back there, and maybe we’ll be able to create a quick montage of what it’s like to be backstage during tech.
With a cast of sixteen, there was a lot of down time for actors as we went through tech rehearsals – as we spent time planning and practicing the timings of light and sound cues, the actors were backstage spending their time … well, I’ll let Stephen show you:
It’s no longer a secret … I’m very excited to announce that we are returning to our One Playwright, One Season format next season with a year-long exploration through the works of legendary American playwright Arthur Miller.
With a career that spans over seven decades, and a body of work that includes some of the most well-known and most frequently produced dramas in the world, Arthur Miller may be this country’s greatest storyteller. His plays range from realistic psychological dramas to abstract dreamscapes; exploring social dynamics, personal connections and political conflict.
The 2010 Arthur Miller Season is an ambitious and exciting journey through Miller’s remarkable vision, offering audiences a truly unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of Arthur Miller for a full season. On behalf of everyone here at Eclipse, I’d like to invite you to join us on this unique journey, including:
After the Fall, opening March 2010
This deeply personal 1964 play, which Miller says “takes place in the mind, thought, and memory of Quentin,” explores personal relationships and political loyalties through one man’s examination of his life.
Resurrection Blues, opening July 2010
Miller’s penultimate play, published in 2002, humorously and powerfully satirizes the strength of faith – religious, political and personal – as a repressive dictatorship prepares to crucify a possibly divine prisoner in front of American television audiences.
A View From the Bridge, opening November 2010
This 1955 classic, set in a close-knit Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, explores a father’s response as his safety and family are threatened by his decision to protect his cousins from immigration officials.
Playwright Scholar Series Events Throughout the 2010 Arthur Miller Season, join us for intimate readings and discussions from works throughout Miller’s canon.
Also, don’t miss productions of Arthur Miller’s most well-known plays at some of Chicago’s best theaters this fall and spring:
All My Sons at Timeline Theatre, running August 31 – October 4, 2009 at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln. Details at www.timelinetheatre.com. 773-281-8463.
Death of a Salesman at Raven Theatre, running October 6 – December 5, 2009 at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark. Details at www.raventheatre.com. 773-338-6547.
The Crucibleat Infamous Commonwealth Theatre, running March 27 – May 2, 2010 at Raven Theatre. 6157 N. Clark. Details at www.infamouscommonwealth.org. 312-458-9780.
It’s an exciting season for fans of Arthur Miller! I look forward to seeing you at the theater throughout 2010!
The Black Theatre Alliance Awards announced their 2009 nominations, and we were excited and proud to see two actors from A Song for Coretta among the talented artists being honored:
The Ethel Waters Award – Best Performance In An Ensemble (Actress)
Kierra Bunch – From The Mississippi Delta – eta Creative Arts Foundation Kristy M. Johnson – A Song For Coretta – eclipse theatre company
Ashlee Olivia – Radical Hearsay…Stories at Sixty One – MPAACT
Carla Stillwell – Radical Hearsay…Stories at Sixty One – MPAACT TayLar – A Song For Coretta – eclipse theatre company
The awards ceremony will be held Monday, October 5th. Congratulations and best of luck to all the nominees – especially Kristy and TayLar!
Continuing Stephen Dale’s ongoing series of interviews with the cast & crew of Six Degrees of Separation, here’s a part of his conversation with Eric Leonard (Flan) and Karen Yates (Ouisa), talking about their characters and their approach to this complex script.
There’s more on the way, including some fantastic backstage footage from tech rehearsals – if you haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel yet, now’s a pretty good time…
Eclipse puts on several Playwright Scholar Series events each season to give the audience a deeper look into each writers canon.
This Saturday, August 1st at 2pm, we will be exploring the prose, poetry and essays of Pearl Cleage.
Ensemble members JP Pierson and Sarah Moeller selected inspirational excerpts out of her writing and brought these pieces to the table at the first rehearsal for the Playwright Scholar Series last night.
It was a great rehearsal. A group of six actors (male and female) assembled to read selected pieces. They were given some time to read through the pieces themselves and then choose the piece each actor felt strongest about. After hearing each piece out loud we discussed more about Pearl Cleage, what inspires her, what inspires us about her and then dismissed for the evening to take some time to reflect on the insightful pieces we had heard over the evening.
Tonight we will meet for rehearsal number two and revisit each piece that was read last night and then work more on how the pieces will be read and presented Saturday afternoon.
We hope you can join us for this event!! It is free for subscribers and $5 suggested donation for non-subscribers.
We had our first audience last night – a surprisingly large crowd for a Final Dress Rehearsal before we start Previews tonight (there are still $5 Industry tickets available for all three Previews at 773.404.7336). The show is in great shape – we’re putting the final touches on the design elements, and the cast is having a lot of fun …
We also had a photo shoot with Scott Cooper on Tuesday, and now have a few more beautiful photos in our Flickr set, including the one below of Ouisa (Karen Yates) as she dreams about Paul (Michael Pogue):
Michael Gonring (left, playing Trent in Six Degrees of Separation) and Michael Pogue (right, playing Paul) take a break during the first day of tech rehearsals to mug for the camera.
Ensemble member Stephen Dale sat down recently with Michael Pogue, who plays Paul in our upcoming production of Six Degrees of Separation. It will be a two or three part interview – here’s part one, where Michael talks about playing a character he’s had his eye on for a long time:
I dropped a hint yesterday that we’ll be announcing our next playwright soon, and as I said, we are all excited to get back to the year-long focus on a single writer, but for now we’re trying to keep up with a busy summer schedule that has us exploring three playwrights over the next three weeks:
2007 featured playwright Pearl Cleage is on stage now – A Song for Coretta runs through July 26th in the first floor studio at the Greenhouse Theater.
2002 featured playwright John Guare is just up the stairs – I’m sitting in the dressing room of the second floor studio at the Greenhouse right now, where I should really be helping get the space ready for Six Degrees of Separation, which opens July 26th.
2003 featured playwright Neil Simon is waiting in the wings – last year’s production of Plaza Suite will be back for one weekend at the Chicago Park District’s annual summer festival Theatre on the Lake, on Lake Shore Drive at Fullerton, August 5-9.
And we still have two more to go – we just finished casting 2001 featured playwright Romulus Linney‘s Democracy, which opens in November, and we’re planning an extended Playwright Scholar Series event this fall exploring 2004 featured playwright Keith Reddin.
After that, the Celebration will be complete, and we’ll turn our full attention to – but I’m not allowed to say yet.
Yeah, okay, it’s a tease – I don’t want to scoop ourselves, but I am very excited that the ensemble has just completed the selection process, which began late last year, and we have reached a decision on our next featured playwright. We will have a press release out very soon, and we will post the season here before it hits the papers anywhere else.
There’s a special buzz to this one – although the Celebration Series has been, and will continue to be, a fantastic journey, I think we’re all excited about getting back to the One Playwright, One Season format. And I think audiences will be excited too – but that’s enough teasing for now…
A Song for Coretta has less than three weeks left, Six Degrees of Separation opens in less than two, and Plaza Suite is at Theatre on the Lake the week after that. And if that’s not enough, we’ve got a big announcement coming up very soon about our 2010 season featured playwright. I’ll do my best to keep up with the blogging.
This is a new photo - from Six Degrees of Separation, which opens July 26th. Ouisa (Karen Yates), Flan (Eric Leonard) and Paul (Michael Pogue) pose for a family portrait. Much thanks to our fantastic photographer Scott Cooper for capturing this loving and creepy family.
From Total Eclipse 2009 (our annual benefit), this is a reading from Jeffrey Sweet’s play The Action Against Sol Schumann, presented as part of the 2010 featured playwright selection process and featuring ensemble members Steven Fedoruk, CeCe Klinger, Nora Fiffer and myself.
The process is almost complete – we’ll have some exciting news to announce by mid-July …
In preparation for our forthcoming show SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, now in rehearsals, I had gone through many reviews of the John Guare play; and many had referenced THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES by Tom Wolfe. “Transcendent…magical…a masterwork that captures New York as Tom Wolfe did …” as Frank Rich wrote in his review of the play. So, I set forth to my local bookstore and picked up a copy of the Wolfe satire. There is maybe a difference of a few years between when both plot lines take place, but the main themes and ideas are shared. The issue of class, race, status, identity, sexuality, and connection are all burned in the pages. The other thing they share is the New York pace, the quickness, the whirlwind, the speed, the thrill.
In early discussions of how we wanted to put our mark on this play, the theme of isolation and disconnection kept coming up. There is an excerpt from BONFIRE, they captures an element these themes:
“Insulation! That was the ticket. If you want to live in New York, you’ve got to insulate yourself from these people. The cynicism and the smugness of the tide struck as very au courant. If you could go breezing down the FDR in a taxi, then why file into the trenches of the urban wars?”
Steve had said that in many ways SIX DEGREES and BLUE SURGE share an equal fate: BLUE SURGE is about the insulation and isolation of the poor and their inability to break out of that world, and SIX DEGREES is about the same thing, only with the upper class, the rich.
A major difference I find in Tom Wolfe’s book and John Guare’s play is that Wolfe has no mercy, sympathy, admiration, doesn’t find or give many redeeming qualities in the menagerie of characters he has created. Guare, on the other hand, has tremendous love for his characters. It is very important, as Steve said at our reading of the play, with the full glorious cast assembled, that we like these characters. And there is the trick of the play, I think. If we as the audience, the cast, the crew, the reader, genuinely like all of these characters despite their flaws and status and attitudes, then we have succeeded in delivering the power of this piece; a very timely piece when it first premiered as it is now.
Perhaps that is why the famous actors of the movie THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, speak ill of the film. Wolfe passed judgement on them through his story telling, instead of leaving it to the reader to cast the stone.
From the currently-running, Jeff-RecommendedA Song for Coretta by Pearl Cleage – I promise the whole show isn’t this sad, but this moment between Keisha (Kristy Johnson, left) and Mona Lisa (Kelly Owens) is beautiful:
Eclipse ensemble member TayLar plays Helen, giving an interview to Zora (Niccole Thurman) about her memories of Coretta Scott King, in Pearl Cleage's A Song for Coretta
The last few nights of previews for Pearl Cleage’s A Song for Coretta have been great – so great, in fact, that I haven’t been able to get a seat since Thursday. So I’ve been listening from the lobby and talking to audiences after the show as the cast and crew make the final push before the big show tonight.
It’s been a fun week – we’ve had fun and responsive audiences who have really loved the show, and we’ve had our share of weirdness and then some. In the last few days, we’ve seen a doll get accidentally beheaded on stage, an actor lose her footing in the rain, and a trolley of drunk partiers that parked just on the other side of the thin theater wall for half a show. And then there was the naked bike ride, which rolled by the front doors a few minutes after the show ended last night. I think we’ve gotten all the weirdness out of the way, though – and the show is strong and beautiful and ready to rise above whatever else pops up during the run.
I’ve never been all that good at tooting my own horn, and maybe that’s why I’ve been so slow to blog about the fantastic night we – and I – had on Monday. The 2009 Non-Equity Jeff Awards were held at the Park West, and two of the night’s awards went to myself (Actor in a Supporting Role) and Laura Coover (Actress in a Principal Role) from Blue Surge. The full list of nominees and winners is at www.jeffawards.org.
Jeff Award Winners Laura Coover and Nathaniel Swift in Blue Surge
I think the acceptance speeches will be posted soon at www.stagechannel.com – I’m excited to see them, since I have no idea what I actually said. I’ll tell that story when I link to the video, though.
I forgot to post a photo yesterday, but here’s an action shot from today – from about twenty minutes ago in our tech rehearsal for A Song for Coretta, here’s Sound Designer Adam Smith working on a sound cue:
I’ve spent the last few days creating an Eclipse Intranet for our office staff to use (with great thanks to the fine folks at Google), and I had a moment of total disbelief when I set up a tool that counts down the days to each production. I put in the date of Opening Night for A Song for Coretta (June 14th), and it told me that that’s only 16 days away. 16 days? And that was yesterday, so now it’s telling me that we have 15 days left until the show opens. 15 days.
Niccole Thurman, Ebony Wimbs, TayLar, Kelly Owens and Kristy Johnson in Pearl Cleage's A Song for Coretta
Time does have a habit of moving way too fast, especially when we’ve got a lot of great projects in the works. And fortunately not everyone is as surprised as I am – I watched a run through at rehearsal a few days ago, and the cast definitely looks ready to go. Sarah is already working tiny little moments; work that directors sometimes don’t have time to get to. Clearly she and her actors have been doing their homework and aren’t feeling the time crunch the way I am. We start loading into the theater on Monday, we have tech rehearsals next weekend, and then we’ll have audiences before we know it.
And, although I miss the great projects we were working on, there’s not a lot of time to look back. The fancy new gadget tells me that we’ve got 57 days until Six Degrees of Separation and 67 days until Plaza Suite. There’s still 169 days until Democracy, so that’s like forever away. Right?
Hey everyone! As a production assistant for A Song for Coretta, part of my job was to set up a pre-production photo shoot. After having a lot of luck with scheduling, we were able to get the photographer, the actors, the costumer, and a few others to come and take some great photos! This one is one of our favorites. We have more photos uploaded on our Flickr site. You can find them at our flickr set. Enjoy!
We just completed the third day of rehearsal for “A Song for Coretta”
To recap Day 1 was the first read through in which we invite subscribers, ensemble members and other friends of the company to hear designer presentations and hear the actors read the script aloud together for the first time. Day 2 was a wonderful dramaturg presentation from Katie, dramaturg and ensemble member. She gaves the cast, management team and director insights into Pearl Cleage, Coretta Scott King, the civil rights movement, the war in the middle east, teenage pregnancy, Hurricane Katrina and other information pertinent to having a deeper understading of the world of the play. Day 3, today, our first chance to really dive into the script. This is really the day I, as the director, have been waiting for. The first chance to get the actors in a room together and talking about the world of the play, the characters, what drives them, where they came from, why are they here.
I had a wonderful evening. We have assembled a fine, beautiful cast of women ready and excited to tell the stories Cleage puts forth in her script. We spent the evening reading through the script at a large conference table and stopping many times to discuss points in the script intertwined with our thoughts, feelings, inclinations regarding motives, intentions and using our own personal experience and knowledge to lead to new discoveries. I am excited to continue the process tomorrow as we go through the last third of the script as over the course of this evening I was reassured that I am working with a group of incredibly intelligent, hard-working, thoughtful and inquisetive women. Just the type that need to be in a room together to bring Cleage’s brilliant work to life. OK, maybe I sound a bit like a marketing person at the moment, I just have to express my excitment and pleasure in bringing this piece to life and I am more than excited to continue on this journey over the course of the next few weeks!
Laura Coover and Nat Swift, Jeff-nominated actors in Blue Surge, sat down with ensemble member Steve Dale before the final performance to talk about their characters, their process, and the nudity:
After almost 24 hours of free time (we had our last performance of Blue Surge on Sunday), we’ve already started to work on the next project – the Chicago Premiere of Pearl Cleage’s new play A Song for Coretta.
There was a lot of energy at last night’s First Rehearsal – the cast was ready to go, we had a great turnout of subscribers and friends, and director Sarah Moeller had just had a wonderful phone conversation with Pearl Cleage, who sent her love and support to all.
There’s a lot to talk about as we start to work on this play, but what jumped out at me last night was the musicality of the play as a whole. Sarah brought together a group of actors with beautiful and distinct voices, and they quickly understood and embraced the rhythms of Pearl’s writing, and the harmonies they can create with one another. The result was a rich musical quality that rode underneath and shaped the powerful stories these five women tell throughout the play.
The nominations for this year’s Non-Equity Jeff Awards were announced this morning, and Eclipse was honored with four nominations, including myself and Laura in our current production of Blue Surge:
Laura Coover, Actress in a Principal Role – Play (Blue Surge)
Nathaniel Swift, Actor in a Supporting Role – Play (Blue Surge)
Jon Steinhagen, Actor in a Supporting Role – Play (Plaza Suite)
Nora Fiffer, Actress in a Supporting Role – Play (The Autumn Garden)
Congratulations to all the nominees!
There’s still one weekend left to catch the now Jeff-Nominated show – tickets are available online here.
We still have two weeks left in our run of Rebecca Gilman’s Blue Surge (and there are some tickets left!), but we’re already starting to get excited about revisiting 2007 featured playwright Pearl Cleage.
In less than two weeks, we’ll begin rehearsals for A Song for Coretta, a beautiful play about five women who gather in the rain outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church to pay their respects for the late Coretta Scott King. As each woman shares her reasons for being here, Pearl Cleage explores the impact that Mrs. King had on their lives, and the connections that they build with one another through her memory and legacy.
The rehearsal process begins with an Open First Rehearsal – a unique, behind-the-scenes that includes a few words from Artistic Director Nathaniel Swift (that’s me) and Director Sarah Moeller, presentations from the technical design team, and the cast’s first read-through of the script. This is a free event, and a great opportunity to meet the artists and hear their ideas.
Here are the details – I hope you can join us and help us kick off this journey!
A SONG FOR CORETTA
Open First Rehearsal
Monday, May 4th at 7:00 pm
Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N Lincoln
Cost: Free
For more information or to reserve seats, please call 773.325.9655
Sorry I’m late – I’ve started adding photos taken by our lighting designer, Seth Reinick, to our Flickr set. It’s taking longer than I expected (the man takes a lot of pictures), but it’s well worth the time – from the first batch, here’s Kevin and I arguing about who screwed up the massage parlor raid in Blue Surge:
2:04 – I just arrived at the theater a few minutes ago. We’re sold out and then some today, so I need to keep the producer hat on for a few more minutes. Warmups, notes and fight call start in six minutes – I’ll be back soon.
2:28 – The box office chaos is (mostly) under control, I’ve had a chance to practice getting punched in the face, and now I’m off to make sure my props and costumes are set where I’ll need them to be during the show. The first things I need, for a quick change after my first scene: socks, underwear and a gun. It’s a fun show …
2:42 – The house is open – I can hear only a few people out there right now, but we’re waiting on the group from MSU, so it’ll get a lot louder any minute. I just finished my warmups – pushups, situps, and some stretching, and now I just wait for the house lights to dim.
2:51 – Yeah, it just got a lot louder out there. I hope everybody got a seat.
2:57 – We’re holding for five minutes. I guess they’re trying to find seats for everyone. “Holding” is the right word for us as we’re backstage – we’re ready to start the show, and now we need to keep that energy and focus as we wait. Which means I probably shouldn’t be blogging right now, but what the heck.
3:00 – I just overheard the organizer of the MSU group tell her students that there’s no photography allowed during the show. Considering my first costume, I appreciate that.
3:10 – We’re off and running, a few minutes late. I’m not in the first scene, so I still have a few minutes to let my jittery nerves run their course. I think I’ll pace around the dressing room.
3:29 – Finished the nude scene and the first quick change. We’re in scene three now. The show’s going well, and this audience is giving us a lot of energy. Days like this are a lot of fun.
3:33 – I was just backstage waiting to do the set change after scene three. At the end of that scene, Curt tells his girlfriend not to be jealous of the prostitute he tried to arrest in the first scene. “It was just work,” he says. “I can’t even remember what she looked like.” From somewhere in the audience, as the lights were going down, we could hear someone say “Yeah, right.” Yeah, it’s going to be a fun day …
3:57 – Just did the fight scene. The package claims that the blood packs I use are “pleasant-tasting.” The package lies.
4:09 – Intermission. Lots of energy and noise from out in the house. I wonder if they know – Michigan State just beat Louisville 64-52. They’ll play Connecticut next week in the Final Four.
4:26 – This is probably the last time I have enough of a break to blog until the end of the show. This play moves fast, especially act two, and I need to stay focused so I don’t miss an entrance. I’ll be back if I can.
4:46 – My work here is done. Just waiting for the curtain call now. And the post-show discussion, which I’m really looking forward to. Kevin and Laura are in the final, heartbreaking scene on stage right now. It sounds like it’s hitting well – a great finish to a strong show.
I guess technically I’m live blogging right now (we’re in act two, scene three of Blue Surge right now, and I have about five minutes before I’m back on stage), but this is just a quick post to say that I’ll be blogging throughout the show from backstage this Sunday. The show starts at 3:00 pm. Stop by the blog between 3-5pm to ask me what things are like in the dressing room …
We have our first of many post-show discussions coming up after Sunday’s show, and we’re kicking it off with a group that I’m really looking forward to talking to – joining us for Sunday’s performance is a group of students from Michigan State (which means they’ll probably be checking NCAA tournament scores on their phones during intermission) who are in a program called MRULE – Multi-Racial Unity Living Experience. According to their website, the group encourages students to “contribute to positive race relations” by providing a community and forum for discussion:
Through open and frank discussions on controversial issues, informative presentations, interactive exercises and a variety of experiences that encourage the development of genuine friendships, students create and cultivate the experience of multiracial unity.
This makes us, I suppose, an “informative presentation,” but I’m looking forward to being informed by the students.
Blue Surge is a story about class, wealth and identity – in my mind, it’s about the way we see ourselves in the context of our own background, and the way that sense of identity can limit or destroy us if we allow it to. It’s not a play about race (it takes place in a small midwesten city, and all five actors in our production, myself included, are white), because the issues it digs into are not specific to any particular skin color or heritage.
That being said, I think it’s naive to think that class and race are unrelated - especially in America, with our long national history of intertwined -isms and the cultural identity issues that come with that history. So more than anything else, I’m excited to listen to the students from MSU tell me what this play is about – and I’m guessing that many will see it in a different light than I do.
This Sunday’s show is already sold out, but we’ll have discussions after all of the Sunday matinees through the run except the final performance on May 3rd. I’m excited about this week’s discussion now, but each week will bring a new group of people with a new way of thinking about the ideas Rebecca Gilman has given us to kick around. Join us if you can – the matinees begin at 3pm, and the discussion starts at about 5pm after the show ends (and yes, feel free to join us for the discussion even if you’re not seeing the play that day). There’s a link to buy tickets on your right …
This past Sunday, we ran the show for the first time with full costumes – which, for me, included full lack of costumes. My character, Doug, is an undercover cop who arrests a prostitute early in Blue Surge. To keep his cover, he strips completely when he asks for a “massage.”
This is a first for me, and not something I really thought I’d ever do. But I love this show, and I love playing Doug, and the story just doesn’t go forward if he doesn’t make the arrest. And that means the play doesn’t go forward if I don’t get naked.
So, for the last five weeks in rehearsals, I’ve been getting ready. I’ve had a lot of help from the cast and crew, who have been supportive and professional (and yes, cracking immature jokes, but that’s part of the process too). Sasha Gioppo, who plays Heather and shares the stage with me (and has slightly more of a costume than I do, but not much), has been particularly fantastic. I know it’s a weird experience for her too, and I hope she feels as comfortable with it as she’s helped me feel.
Last night, performing in front of an audience for the first time, I realized that – for me at least – there’s no such thing as being “ready.” It feels weird if I slow down enough to think about it, and it will probably keep feeling weird until the last show on May 3rd, but it also feels exhilarating and liberating. It’s a quick, active scene at the beginning of the play, and there’s not much time on stage to think about that weirdness (there’s plenty of time for that before and after the show, of course).
Instead of feeling uncomfortable during the scene, I’ve found myself feeling more free – since I would never ever get naked in public, I have no choice but to let the character of Doug take over. He, of course, is totally fine with it. So while I’m on stage, I feel like I am Doug in a way that I’ve never really felt before – I have no inhibitions, no doubts, and none of the usual voices in my head that analyze my performance while I’m in the midst of it. Simply put, it’s not me on stage. It can’t possibly be me. It’s Doug, and I can trust him to be himself and get me through the scene. And if things are going well, as they were last night, that feeling carries over through the rest of the play. So in an odd way, this is actually making me feel more comfortable as an actor than I’ve ever been.
So now I can cross this off my list of things to do before I die. And now that I’ve done it in front of a packed house (a nice surprise for a Dress Rehearsal), why not do it again?
I’m adding Scott Cooper’s fantastic new photos of our current production, Blue Surge, to our Flickr set now – here’s Sandy and Curt (Laura Coover and Kevin Scott) playing darts:
I shared a video a few weeks ago of Kevin and I (playing Curt and Doug in Blue Surge) running a fight scene in an early rehearsal. At the time, we hadn’t worked with our fight choreographer, ensemble member Thomas Jones. Kevin and I did spend a few minutes figuring out what we were going to do, and it worked out pretty well.
A few weeks later, we had reblocked the scene, memorized our lines, and choreographed a punch, a fall, and a couple of smacks with a newspaper. Take a look below:
Last night was the final rehearsal before we move into our home at the Greenhouse. The mania and fun that is Tech week is now upon us, and it’s odd to think that so much time has passed since the very first read through.
So, like most nights after rehearsal, I get home and wind down; I am so amped up during rehearsals, I need a good hour to relax and come down. I usually pop on The Daily Show after I have returned e-mails and gotten some business done. If any of you who are reading this have not seen Thursday night’s episode, watch it NOW!
I will provide the basic gist of the episode: Jon Stewart had been all week and last tarnishing and slamming CNBC for their lack of reporting and possible negligence and complacency in this whole market trouble. So, enter Jim Cramer of Mad Money, to be the kind of buffer for the network and Jon’s jabs at their failures. This is a great interview and speaks to what I think most Americans are feeling right now: anger, confusion, completely baffled and a sense of betrayal.
Blue Surge is a brave piece of writing that is deeply relevant for our times right now, and I imagine will remain a powerful piece of writing and theatre about the present state of The American Dream. And, all of these elements that I listed above, anger, confusion, bafflement, betrayed, and frustration are all apart of this piece. There is an almost eerie echo going on in this play. All week, with what the headlines have been blowing up, and what we are doing in rehearsals this is coming so much closer to home. And that is exciting! That is what is amazing. Rebecca Gilman has written something that is almost ten years old and speaks to our present moment loud and clear and with such depth, intelligence and concern and love for the people that this crisis and event is really slamming. There is something wonderful, humbling, and honoring in producing a play that speaks for people and understands that sometimes the choices are not many, that sometimes you are left with two options.
There is a touching anger throughout Blue Surge . I know that that seems like an oxymoron, but there is something moving about an emotion, be it sadness, joy, desperation, etc.. that everyone universally feels. Who among us can deny that there is an element of universal anger in all of us at what is going on. There is unity in that, and in being apart of this play, hearing the words and seeing this cast really grab hold of these characters and their predicaments with such grace, truth, and thunder, this play has spoken to many of my concerns of what is going on right now in this country. That is something remarkable.
So, here is the assignment: Watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the march 12th episode and come out and see Blue Surge.
Stephen Dale, one of our fantastic new ensemble members, has been sitting down with the cast and crew of Blue Surge to talk about the show, the rehearsal process, and whatever else happens to come up when you put creative people in front of a digital video camera. We’ll be posting more interviews with actors and designers as the show rolls along – the first is Sasha Gioppo, who plays Heather in Blue Surge – watch the video below:
We’ve been working on a series of video interviews and rehearsal scenes that we’ll start posting today, and I’ve got a lot of writing to catch up on as we head into tech rehearsals this weekend, but for now – it’s Friday, and that means our regular weekly look back …
This picture comes courtesy of lighting designer Seth Reinick, who was nice enough to let me add his photos to our Flickr set. Seth is with us again now, designing lights for Rebecca Gilman’s Blue Surge. Which means we’ll have lots of great pictures…
This is from a tech rehearsal – that’s director Steven Fedoruk in the foreground, giving notes to TayLar and Alfred Kemp on stage. I designed the lights for this show, and I was as suprised as anyone by the way TayLar’s robe catches the blues and purples here.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that 2010 was the stuff of sci-fi fantasy stories; a year when cars would fly, robots would live among us, and we would make contact with a giant baby floating through space. Or something like that.
And yet there it is, sitting just over the horizon in the very real and non-fantasy way the immediate future always sits there. Maybe we will have flying cars and indestructible cyborgs in the next nine months, but it’s probably more realistic to assume that next year will be mostly like this one, and get to the work of planning what we’ll do then.
For us, that means choosing a new playwright. After a two-year celebration of our mission statement, we’re ready to dig back in to a full year-long exploration of a single storyteller. And although 2010 still feels a long way off, it’s getting closer every day, and we’re well on our way through the process of finding the next artistic voice to embrace.
The process started months ago, when we formed a five-person Artistic Committee within the ensemble and started reading. A lot. We had a list of over a dozen playwrights to consider – recommendations from ensemble and board members, subscribers, friends and playwrights (and yes, many of those groups overlap). The committee spent months reading plays by everyone on the list, discussed, argued, and narrowed the list to four. There are a lot of things to think about as we decide which writers to include on this list, but in the end it comes down to a search for stories that we feel a connection to – stories that we feel we need to tell.
The first public part of this process is only a couple of weeks away: we’ll be performing scenes from the four playwrights at the Total Eclipse Benefit on Sunday, March 8th (and yes, tickets are still available). We’ll be looking for feedback from the audience there, and we’d love to hear your thoughts here as well. Here’s the lineup for the Total Eclipse performance:
The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh Broken Glass by Arthur Miller The Action Against Sol Schumann by Jeffrey Sweet The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek by Naomi Wallace
Tomorrow afternoon (Saturday April 10th, 2:00 pm at the Greenhouse Theater) we’ll be reading and discussing Arthur Miller’s first full-length play, The Man Who Had All the Luck. It’s kind of like Death of a Salesman in reverse – everything goes right for David Beeves, and his good fortune drives him slowly to the point of madness as he watches everyone around him struggle with their lack of luck. Miller called this “a fable,” and the story is by turns tragic, funny, instructive and cautionary. It’s a fun script to explore, and a fascinating look at a legendary playwright’s early ideas.
Kat’s passion, intelligence and artistic vision will be missed as much as her friendship. The outpouring of support and love from throughout our extended family in the Chicago theatre community has been nothing short of amazing, and a wonderful reminder about the lives she touched.
Admission is free ($5 suggested donation for non-subscribers).
With a career that spans over seven decades, and a body of work that includes some of the most well-known and most frequently produced dramas in the world, Arthur Miller may be this country’s greatest storyteller. His plays range from realistic psychological dramas to abstract dreamscapes; exploring social dynamics, personal connections and political conflict. 
I received an email yesterday morning from the 
In less than two weeks, we’ll begin rehearsals for A Song for Coretta, a beautiful play about five women who gather in the rain outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church to pay their respects for the late Coretta Scott King. As each woman shares her reasons for being here, Pearl Cleage explores the impact that Mrs. King had on their lives, and the connections that they build with one another through her memory and legacy.
