Facebook Friends Unite! Help us secure $20K in funding!

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 [...]

Friday photo rescue

From last year’s Total Eclipse 2009 … There’s still time to get your tickets for this year’s party, Sunday March 7th at 12 noon.

Saying goodbye to a friend

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 [...]

Getting ready for a Lunar Eclipse

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 [...]

Join the fun at our second Lunar Eclipse party!

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 [...]

Lunar Eclipse: Save the Date!

Put it in your calendar now - Saturday, September 26th, 7:00 pm at the Eclipse Space (4001 N Ravenswood)! Join Eclipse ensemble members, guest artists and friends as we celebrate our next journey: the 2010 Arthur Miller season …

A Song for Coretta is nominated for two Black Theatre Alliance Awards!

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 [...]

Three playwright, three weeks

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 [...]

The 2010 Featured Playwright

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 [...]

Friday photo rescue

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 [...]

Blue Surge honored with two Jeff Awards

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 [...]

Eclipse nominated for four Jeff Awards!

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 [...]

2010: a new odyssey

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 [...]

Total Eclipse 2009

It’s only a few weeks now until our big annual benefit, Total Eclipse 2009. The party this year will be at Rockit Bar & Grill (22 W Hubbard), with performances from ensemble members, silent and live auctions, a 50/50 raffle, and the first annual Eclipse Corona Award (the link is there to explain the reason [...]

Meet some new friends

As we start the new season, we’re also welcoming seven new artists into the Eclipse ensemble. They’ve all been working with us over the last few years, and we’re really lucky to have each one of them in our family. We’ll be posting photos, bios and interviews of each new ensemble member over the coming months [...]

A look back at 2008

At our first ensemble meeting of the new year, one of the agenda items was to look back at the 2008 season and talk about how we did – what worked, what didn’t, what lessons to take into the second half of the Celebration Series. We weren’t sure what to expect as we started the Celebration [...]

A conversation with the director

If you haven’t discovered Theatre in Chicago‘s podcast interviews, you’ve missed a lot of great conversations with Chicago’s best artists. And now’s a great time to discover them – I sat down for my first interview last week, and it was posted yesterday. It’s a 30 minute or so conversation that wanders around through our [...]

Special significance

I was interviewed yesterday by a student at DePaul University, who is preparing a presentation for an Intro to Theatre class and chose to present the history of Eclipse Theatre Company. Before the interview, she emailed me a quick list of the questions she wanted to focus on. The first question on that list set [...]

Exploring Cocteau’s World

This Saturday we’ll be checking in with another one of our past featured playwrights; Jean Cocteau, who kicked this party off back in 1997/98. That was the first season of Eclipse’s “One Playwright – One Season” mission statement, and the beginning of a new direction for us. I first worked with Eclipse as the lighting [...]

Load In

This is a busy week, so blogging might be a little light (and I brilliantly managed to get sick just as we started loading the set into the theater, which isn’t helping), but we’ll have pictures and videos of the load in process and tech rehearsals for Candles to the Sun as I can find [...]

Total Eclipse 2008

Still looking for somewhere to go for brunch this Sunday? Join us at the Bluewater Grill (520 N Dearborn) from 12 pm – 3 pm for Total Eclipse 2008, our annual benefit and celebration of the upcoming season. Along with a great brunch (mimosas or bloody marys included, of course), you’ll also have the chance [...]

Interview with the Artistic Director

As we were closing out last year’s Pearl Cleage season, and as I was getting ready to step into the role of Eclipse’s new Artistic Director, I sat down for a long interview with ensemble member Cecil Averett. Here’s a short clip from that conversation – Cecil had asked me to talk about our mission [...]

Be a fan

Check out Eclipse Theatre on Facebook – and register as a fan to get event updates, see photos and videos, and write on our wall. Be careful – I’m starting to realize it’s very addictive …

Speed Theater

The Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater, our home for five years now, is having an Open House tonight – it’s a free event with food, drinks, and performances from Eclipse, Shattered Globe, MPAACT and Victory Gardens. We’ll be presenting a scene from Candles to the Sun, which is now a week into rehearsals. The “Speed Theater” [...]

The beginning of the ride

In the spring of 1999, I played a young boy in Tennessee Williams’s Confessional (I think the character’s name was actually YOUNG BOY, or maybe just BOY) who was on the last legs of a bike ride from Iowa to Mexico. I wore ridiculously short shorts and a T-shirt that said, in big block letters [...]

In case you missed it …

You can watch a clip from last Saturday’s Playwright Scholar Series event, From the Page to the Stage: This is Steven Fedoruk reading part of “Monogamy Blues,” from The Brass Bed and Other Stories. Ensemble members read excerpts from What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, Deals With the Devil and Other Reasons to [...]

An interview with the director and producer

A few weeks ago, director Ron OJ Parson and I sat down with Dr. David Unumb, host of Northeastern Illinois University‘s Vantage Point radio show (which airs Sunday mornings at 6:30 on WTMX), for an in-depth interview about Bourbon at the Border, Pearl Cleage and Eclipse Theatre Company in general. In case you weren’t up [...]

Ethnicity in Theatre

Last summer Time Out Chicago had a feature article discussing the race barrier in Chicago. Prior to the articles publication Eclipse had already announced their 2007 season playwright, African American writer Pearl Cleage. A mostly white theater company producing an entire season of theater by an African American playwright. Could this work? Eclipse has had [...]

Make plans with Pearl this fall

We’ve been making some changes to the blog recently – in addition to the Bourbon at the Border dramaturgical information and the sleek new layout (I think it’s sleek, anyway – let us know what you think), we’ve now added to the right-hand sidebar a link to a full calendar of Eclipse performances and events [...]

Opening night

2 by Pearl opened Sunday night after a couple of great previews – we were working on the technical elements and directors Chuck Smith and Thomas Jones were giving notes to the actors through the weekend as we got ready for the opening performance. One of the most interesting things to see (for me, anyway) [...]

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 [...]

Ten playwrights, ten seasons

I spent most of my time in two places in the summer of 1998 – the standing room only section at Wrigley Field, where I watched my new neighbors chase the Wild Card and Sammy Sosa chase history; and a little black box theater in Bucktown, where I designed the lights for Eclipse Theatre Company‘s [...]

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 [...]

A hollering place

It’s a fun month (and year) for Pearl Cleage fans in Chicago – our production of Blues for an Alabama Sky opens tonight at the Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater, Flyin’ West opened at Court Theatre yesterday, and Ms. Cleage herself will be in town next weekend, attending performances of each production and public discussions of [...]

Total Eclipse 2007

Our second annual Total Eclipse Benefit at the Bluewater Grill is going to include a new twist in the entertainment – a sneak peek at the next two seasons and a chance to tell us exactly what those two seasons should be. In addition to celebrating the beginning of the 2007 Pearl Cleage season, we’ll [...]

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 [...]

Blue Surge Reading Dec 2

We’ll be reading Rebecca Gilman’s Blue Surge on Saturday, December 2 - in addition to the three full productions each season, we also like to give our audiences the opportunity to explore as much of the playwright’s work as possible. It’s a free event, starting at 3 pm in the upstairs studio at the Victory Gardens [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Will you be our friend?

We have a brand-new myspace page (www.myspace.com/eclipsetheatre, or just “/eclipsetheatre” as the cool kids would say it) - it’s about time we caught up with the hottest online trend of seven years ago. The coolest thing about it, aside from the ability to network and announce events easily, is the new slide show we put together for [...]

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 [...]

The Greenhouse opens on Tuesday

I just got a press release and a great picture promoting the Greenhouse Open House taking place this coming Tuesday, August 29 at the soon-to-be-former Victory Gardens Theater (the official new name: the Victory Gardens Theater Greenhouse). I’ll let the release speak for itself; come join us on Tuesday night for a great party. Representatives [...]

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 [...]

Post-show discussion – Saturday, August 12

We passed the “seat of the pants” test, according to the first comment from an audience member after Saturday’s show (I think that’s what she called it, anyway – if someone else heard her differently please correct me): She told us that she never squirmed, never felt uncomfortable in her seat, and (although she may [...]

The Greenhouse blooms: an update

The official invitation to the Open House on August 29 (click on the image for a full-size version):   We’ll be presenting a scene from Spinning into Butter and talking about the future of Eclipse Theatre Company and the Greenhouse in general. The other resident companies will be performing scenes from their current or upcoming productions [...]

A look at what’s growing in the Greenhouse

In just over a month, Victory Gardens Theater will be celebrating their new home, just up the road at the Biograph Theater. They’ll be leaving behind a group of small, young and passionate theatre companies (including us, of course) to continue working in the building at 2257 N Lincoln (and it’ll still be their building, so [...]

Post-show discussion – Saturday, August 5

A few quick notes from Saturday’s discussion – it was a smaller group that stuck around after the show, but it was one of our best conversations so far. An audience member asked Anish how he was able to work with the actors to create the “covert insecurities” each character seems to have. As a [...]

Performances added

Anish announced at last night’s performance that we’ll be adding two shows during the run of Spinning into Butter – Wednesday, August 23 at 8 p.m., and Wednesday, August 30 at 8 p.m. Visit Eclipse Theatre’s Web site or call 773-871-3000 to reserve tickets. The reason we’re adding shows, of course, is that the ones [...]

Discussion topics

A post-show discussion can go in any direction an audience wants to take it, but there are some specific questions and topics I expect will be a part of the Spinning into Butter discussions, and I want to mention them here briefly as we approach the first of those discussions this Saturday and Sunday. Some topics are general; questions we’ve [...]

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 [...]

Opening the discussion

In a little more than two weeks, we’ll be opening Rebecca Gilman‘s Spinning into Butter. As always, we’ll invite audiences to join us after most Sunday shows to talk to the cast and crew. We’ve been doing this for years, and they’ve always been a lot of fun - sometimes it’s just a few people talking [...]