Understudies

All this weekend, Nina O’Keefe will be playing Fern in Candles to the Sun. She’s understudying for Julie Daley, and she’s been working with us since the first rehearsal back in early February. I’ve watched her work with the cast in rehearsals, and I’m excited to see how her presence changes the show this weekend.
I [...]

Watch the acceptance speeches from the Jeff Awards

In case you weren’t at the Park West for the 34th annual Jeff Awards a few weeks ago, our friends at stagechannel have put together a compilation of all the acceptance speeches throughout the evening.
First up is Alfred Kemp, who barely had a chance to settle in before getting called up on stage to accept [...]

34th annual Jeff Awards

Congratulations to everyone who was honored with nominations and Citations from the Joseph Jefferson Committee this past Monday night, and especially to those we were fortunate enough to have the chance to work with - Eclipse finished the evening with five Citation Awards: 
Outstanding Production: Blues for an Alabama Sky
Outstanding Direction: Steven Fedoruk, Blues for an [...]

A backstage tour of Spinning into Butter

Gerardo Cardenas, who played Patrick Chibas in our production of Spinning into Butter this past summer, shared with me a collection of pictures he took during the final week of rehearsals.
His pictures are beautiful - they’re intimate moments with the cast and crew as they make their final preperations. Take a look through the photo [...]

Post-show discussions - November 25-December 3

Sorry for the delay - we’ve had a busy couple of weeks, with some great discussions, a reading of Blue Surge, a trip to see Suzan-Lori Parks’s 365 Days / 365 Plays (which we’ll be working on next September), and a performance without lights. I’ll try to catch up quickly here, and write about all [...]

Post-show discussion - Sunday, November 19

We had our best turnout yet for a post-show discussion Sunday afternoon - it was a sold-out show, and it seemed that almost everyone stuck around to talk.
One audience member asked Michelle Courvais (playing Theresa Bedell, a woman whose life is permanently and violently affected by her experiences as a victim of stalking) if she [...]

Post-show discussion - Saturday, November 18

We spent a good part of Saturday night’s post-show discussion talking about Rebecca Gilman - who she is, what her plays are like, and why we decided to spend a year telling her stories.
A few people were interested in our process of choosing each season’s playwright - we start with recommendations from company members, audiences [...]

Hey, we’re on TV!

Stage Channel has two clips of Boy Gets Girl currently running here.
If the link doesn’t take you right to the video, you may need to search for “Boy Gets Girl” on the StageChannel site.
This is Michelle Courvais and Scott Stangland, playing Theresa and Tony, on their ill-fated first date.

Theatre Thursday - November 9

I’m running a little behind here - our first post-show disussion for Boy Gets Girl was one week ago tonight, and I’m finally finding a moment to write a post. I was away from the show for a few days (my sister had an absolutely beautiful wedding in New York last weekend, and James Joseph played [...]

Opening Night

Boy Gets Girl opened Sunday night after a great weekend of previews. We got a lot of feedback - from the surveys we give our preview audiences, from conversations in the lobby after the show, and from the energy in the theatre each night.
Tomorrow is our first post-show discussion - the League of Chicago Theatres‘ [...]

Dress rehearsal

We had our first audience last night for Boy Gets Girl (well, our second, really) - about ten or twelve people, mostly friends of the cast and crew, came in to watch our dress rehearsal. We’re still making minor adjustments, but the show’s pretty much as it will be when we open on Sunday.
It was [...]

Breaking the fourth wall

Speaking of breaking the fourth wall, there’s a great conversation going in the comments to Gary’s post from last week - check it out here, and share your thoughts and questions in the comments there or anywhere on the blog to join the discussion.

An evening at the Newberry Library

CeCe and I visited Maren’s class at the Newberry Library the other night, and joined her students in a discussion of the theatrical process in general and Boy Gets Girl in particular. The course description explains the focus of the class like this:
We seek to break “the fourth wall” and establish discussion between those who see theater [...]

A field trip to Boy Gets Girl

We had a small audience last night - students from Maren’s class at the Newberry Library joined us to watch a run through. We’re not really at a point where we’re ready for an “audience” yet, but they seemed to enjoy the glimpse into the rehearsal process, and it was pretty cool for us as [...]

The King of the Nudies and the generation gap

One of the characters in Boy Gets Girl (Les Kennkat, played by Len Bajenski in our production) was partially based on the filmmaker Russ Meyer. If you’re not familiar with Meyer (I wasn’t until we started looking at dramaturgical research at the beginning of the rehearsal process), Wikipedia neatly summarizes the man’s work in two short [...]

So you’re being stalked…

We performed a scene from Boy Gets Girl at an ITA conference in Arlington Heights last weekend, and along with the sneak peek of the show we also had a conversation between director Steve Scott and playwright Rebecca Gilman. Steve led Rebecca through a wonderful informal interview, talking about her process in writing this script [...]

Greetings from the guy playing Howard

Hello.  I’m Gary Simmers.  I’ve been an ensemble member of Eclipse since the 99 season.  It is my privilege to be playing Howard in the upcoming production of Boy Gets Girl.
I’m really looking forward to the group discussions following this show.  This is a tough subject to wrap your mind around.  I think that men [...]

Boy Gets Girl

Rehearsals for Boy Gets Girl started last week (sorry for the late start; I just got Internet hooked up at my new place); we’ll be opening Nov 2 at the brand-new Victory Gardens Greenhouse (it’s the same place as before, newly rechristened since Victory Gardens decided they didn’t want to be our rommate anymore and [...]

Taking a break (for the moment)

Spinning into Butter had its last performance the Sunday before last - we didn’t have a post-show discussion since we had to take the set apart and vacate our temporary home.
We’ll be back soon though - rehearsals start in just over a week for Boy Gets Girl, and the blog will be back as well [...]

The Newberry Library looks ‘Behind the Scenes”

Eclipse company member, dramaturg and actor Maren Robinson will be teaching a course at the Newberry Library this fall, giving students an incredible opportunity to see how and why small theatre companies in Chicago do what we do.
This is going to be a fantastic class - Maren’s enthusiasm and curiosity are contagious, and she’ll be [...]

Common threads

One of the things that attracted me to Eclipse back in 1999 when I started working with this fine group of folks was the ability to see common threads between the plays written by each individual playright. I came on board late in the Cocteau season, so I really experienced this for the first time when [...]