Our 12th Season:  ”Faraway, So Close.”

It is with great pleasure that I announce the details of our upcoming 2011-2012 season.  Our 11th Season revolved around the exploration of “Family Secrets.”  In “Memory,” the first story of the season, a secret was guarded for most of a lifetime.  In the second story, “Three Days of Rain,” the quest to uncover the secret of a family nearly consumes a lifetime.  During the exploration of both of these stories, we uncovered the sub-theme of memory:  the realization of the truth that the way we remember something is often a choice.  Secrets, and the memories contained within them are often manifestations of the stories we have chosen to live by.

What a wonderful way to spend a season.

For our 2011-2012 Season, we present to you Faraway, So Close.

The exploration of family often means the exploration of proximity.  The distance between members of a family can be measured in love, in absence, in manipulation, in pain and in closeness.

This season, we present two stories of families who struggle at opposite poles.   In one story, a father’s emotional distance and desire to allow his daughter the freedom to pursue her own life at whatever the cost leads to heartbreaking events.  And in the second story, a father makes some astonishing choices in his obsessive desire to control the unknowns in his life and the life of his son.

Faraway . . . so close.

A Number, by Caryl Churchill:

Winter, at the Building Stage

A man questions his father about the possible existence of another estranged son, and the questions opens up a series of events that neither men could ever have expected.  Penned by one of the world’s most uncompromising playwrights,  Caryl Churchill’s A Number is a beguiling hour-long psychological thriller that blends topical scientific speculation with a stunning portrait of the relationship between fathers and their sons.

A Scent of Flowers, by James Saunders:

Summer, at the Building Stage

Zoe awakes on a couch in a strange room.  Soon, familiar people begin to flood unexpectedly into the room and Zoe finds herself on a propulsive and moving journey through the most significant and heartbreaking events of her young life. A Scent of Flowers is an epic and wildly inventive tale, immense in it’s scope and searing in it’s intimacy.  Written by James Saunders in 1965, this moving masterpiece is virtually unknown inside the United States.  BackStage Theatre Company is thrilled to bring this remarkable story to Chicago audiences for the very first time.

The Listening Series:

Fall and Winter

BackStage Theatre Company presents an exciting new off-night series.  The Listening Series will consist of chamber presentations of challenging short plays, designed to be experienced “by the ear.”  Come sit with us, sip a glass of wine and listen as the BSTC’s ensemble present enhanced readings of some remarkably inventive short plays accompanied by live music or immersive sound design.  Featuring lesser-known works by some of contemporary theatre’s most prominent voices, as well as inventive new works by local playwrights, The Listening Series is designed to provide a unique way to experience the dramatic word in untraditional locations, and to provide an opportunity for discussion and social interaction between the artists of BSTC and our audiences.

Subscription tickets are now available for our upcoming season! We hope to see you in the coming year!

Hey there, BackStage family!

We have the extreme pleasure of welcoming a special guest this Sunday for our post-show discussion after the show.   Miryam Rashid is the Director of the Middle East Program for the Chicago office of the American Friends Service Committee.   She lived in Palestine when she graduated from school and for several years during the first Intifada and before the wall, that is a central character in its own right in Memory, started to go up.   She’s seen and heard many personal stories about the families of Israelis and Palestinians, and now she has made it a central aim of hers to fight for peace, freedom, and equality with joint efforts from both Israelis and Palestinians together through unarmed resistance and the proper application of international law.   This is one dynamo of a speaker, and we’re so thrilled that she agreed to come and sit down with us and the company to  answer questions this Sunday.

The post-show discussion is open to anyone that has seen the show, and tickets are still available for all the shows coming up this weekend.   We’re glad that our work has merited the attention of people doing such important work in the world like Miryam, and we’re so thankful to share her with our patrons and donors this Sunday.  I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her to the family.

Memory runs just about 90 minutes and starts at 3pm this Sunday, so if you can’t make the show, stop by the Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N Western Ave, around 4:30pm to hear Miryam and the cast.  Click this link to purchase tickets through the Viaduct.

See you there,

David Zoltan
Assistant Development Director

Here I go, you haven’t even had a chance to meet me yet, and I’m already causing snickers in the ensemble.  Hardly seems fair that we don’t let the rest of the BackStage family, you noble readers and patrons, in on the fun, so here’s the scoop.

As a quick introduction, I’m David Zoltan.  I’ve been brought in as the new Assistant Development Director, helping BSTC to really expand our reach and our service to our donors.  I’m already a blogger on my own blog about arts management, ArtsAppeal, so we figured I’d be a natural to help out here, as well.

So back to the aforementioned fun, it seems that there is a contingent that thinks that it’s ultimately ironic that someone of Jewish background (me) would go out as part of our new corporate push and find an incredible new corporate advertiser named the Pork Shoppe just in time for a show that touches on the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Go ahead and snicker at me.  I’ll wait…

Now that you can read without smirking, let me tell you what I told the ensemble.  This is an incredible show, and Pork Shoppe is an incredible BBQ company, one of the rare ones that wants to throw an amazing amount of support behind the arts and to work with us specifically.  While their food may not be halal or kosher, we are blessed by a BackStage family that also has many patrons that keep neither, this Jew included, and to prejudice ourselves against supporters of the arts because of something completely tangential to the very human stories happening in the play, seems wrong to me.

There is a beautiful quote from Memory, about how the war is between people with small differences.  I believe in that very strongly.  My hero, my grandma, who lived through the war and whom I see very strongly reflected in parts of the story, taught me how dangerous it was to hate.  She also taught me that she has been cooking her “veal” cutlets for years to everyone’s great satisfaction — except maybe the pig that “veal” came from — but, hey, pigs make the ultimate sacrifice for our bacon already.  It would be a sin to waste the rest of a perfectly good animal’s sacrifice.  My grandma is a very pragmatic lady.

So I prefer to look at my first contribution to our burgeoning corporate partnership program as a step towards embracing our diversity.  And if you really love BBQ, you are going to love the Pork Shoppe.  Their homemade BBQ sauces are to die for.  The spicy one is made from a habenero base and will make your mouth swoon in fiery pleasure.  If you’re into that sort of thing.  Stop on by and say hi from Zoltan and BackStage, and thank them for being one of the great brave supporters of the arts that they are.

David Zoltan
Assistant Development Director

We held on to them for as long as we could.  But secrets, so matter how deeply guarded, always have a way of bubbling to the surface.

So many things have been buzzing around here lately, and we’ve had a very hard time curbing our enthusiasm for this last secret.  And now, we simply can’t wait any longer.  

Casting is one of the greatest joys and steepest challenges that a company undertakes each season. We take extraordinary care to select shows that showcase the talents in our ensemble, but we are also careful to select projects that also afford us a chance to enlist and learn from exciting guest artists around this exceptionally talented city.  This season is no exception.  Our cast lists are final, and they are thrilling.

Here they are.  Our first production, the Chicago premiere of Jonathan Lichtenstein’s Memory will be performed by a terrific ensemble spearheaded by our very own Brenda Barrie.  Last seen on BSTC’s stage as Dan in last season’s Aunt Dan & Lemon, Ms. Barrie is a multiple Jeff nominee and has been hailed as a New Essential Chicagoan by Time Out Chicago, and was identified as one of Chicago’s Rising Stars by Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune.  She will be joined by fellow ensemble member (and Jeff nominee) Tony Bozzuto, whose work for BSTC has included How I Learned to Drive, and a Jeff nominated turn as Robert in On An Average Day.  Last season, Tony turned in a complex and critically acclaimed performance in Orange Flower Water.  Brenda and Tony are joined by BSTC alumni Patrick De Nicola who broke our hearts with a dazzlingly vulnerable turn as Boy in last season’s The Play About The Baby.  Joining this cast of ensemble members and alumni is Neo Futurist renaissance man and playwright Bilal Dardai, whose acclaimed adaptation of The Man Who Was Thursday for New Leaf Theatre was nominated for a Jeff award last season.  Also joining the cast is Samuel Buti, seen last season in New Leaf Theatre’s Acclaimed production of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class.  Filling out this muscular cast are Chicago up-and-comers Josh Hambrock and Shane Michael Murphy.  Needless to say?  We are excited.

Finally, for our production of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain, we have assembled a terrifically exciting trio of actors to tell this complex and mysterious story.  We lead the cast list with our very own Rebekah Ward-Hays!  Ms. Ward-Hays is a longtime BSTC ensemble member and Jeff Award Winning actress who has been seen on BSTC’s stages in Skin of Our Teeth (in a Jeff Award winning turn), Waiting For Lefty (another Jeff Nomination),  and The Memory of Water.  Last season, her haunting portrayal of the Lemon in Aunt Dan & Lemon earned her another Jeff Nomination.  Alongside Ms. Ward-Hays are two notable gentlemen:  BSTC’s own Tony Bozzuto (see above), and Chicago veteran John Henry Roberts.  Mr. Roberts makes his long overdue BackStage debut with Three Days of Rain.  Mr. Roberts is a company member over at Strawdog where he has churned out some astonishing performances in shows such as The Good Soul of Szechaun, R.U.R, Artisocrats, and Cherry Orchard among others.  Mr. Roberts also played alongside Ms. Ward-Hays last season in the House Theatre’s production of Wilson Wants it All.

So there you have it.  Are we gushing?  You bet we are.  This was a secret that was very hard to keep to ourselves.

So!  All the secrets are out.  For now.  But our 11th Season is only just underway, and there are plenty of secrets lurking in our stories that these amazing casts will help us reveal when the house lights go down.

Subscriptions are still available, right here. Even though all the secrets are out, and our subscriptions are back to full price, subscribing is still, by far, the cheapest way to see our shows!

We cannot wait to see you at the theatre.

Matthew Reeder
Artistic Director
BackStage Theatre Company

Our season is officially underway.  We’ve already had a few production meetings for Memory, and we’ve just concluded our very exciting and very crowded Season general auditions last night.  Things are in swing.  And that means it is pretty difficult to hang onto any secrets for much longer.

So here comes another leak:

Throughout the years, BackStage Theatre Company has been known for staging challenging stories in very unique locations.  BSTC’s first production (way back in 2000) was staged in an old mansion on the North Side of Chicago.   Last season, we took over the lower level studio of the Chopin Theatre and transformed it into various intriguing environments, including Lemon’s living room for Aunt Dan & Lemon,  a series of intensely intimate bedrooms for Orange Flower Water, and a strange psychological no-space for Albee’s The Play About The Baby.

And here’s the newest secret:  BSTC’s 11th Season will be produced at the Viaduct Theatre in Roscoe Village!  The Viaduct is a unique urban cultural mecca, presenting theatre,  film, art, dance, and music for Chicago. Nestled secretly beneath the Belmont overpass on Western Ave, the Viaduct’s notorious tiny red door and famous flickering neon sign cleverly disguise the thriving arts scene inside.  The theatre houses two wonderfully unique performances spaces (we will produce one show in each space), as well as a terrific pre-show lobby bar that was named the “Best Theatre Lobby Bar” by the Chicago Reader in 2008.  The Viaduct offers its audiences a hip, intimate theatregoing experience, and we are thrilled to call it our home for the season.

So there you have it!  Only one secret remains.  Soon, our entire season and all its tawdry details will be public knowledge.  If you’d still like to purchase our subscriptions at the discounted “secret” price, you’d better get on that, and soon.  Not only are subscriptions $33 (that’s only $16.50/show), but this is the last chance to purchase the season at the lowest fees possible!  Click here to purchase.

In a little more than a week, all of our secrets will be revealed, and the subscription price will be back to full!

In the meantime, Tony would like a share a little secret with you.

See you at the Viaduct in the fall!!!

The Jeff Committee recently released their list of nominees for 2010.  Among that list were four nominations for BackStage Theatre Company.  What an exciting way to end a 10th Anniversary Season.

Three of the nominations were for our production of John Kolvenbach’s On An Average Day.  BSTC ensemble member Tony Bozzuto was recognized for his heartbreaking and dangerous performance as Robert; a developmentally arrested man who has been waiting in the kitchen for the return of his father and his brother, both of whom abandoned him over a decade earlier.  Ensemble member Heath Hays was recognized for his incredible scenic design, which transformed every inch of the tiny Chemically Imbalanced Theatre space into the junk-riddled abandoned house in which Robert ceaselessly waited.  And guest artist Geoff Coates was recognized for his astonishing fight choreography, which remains (to this day) one of the most unsettling, dangerous and deeply heartbreaking fight scenes I have ever seen in a play.  Refrigerators were dented, baseball bats were swung, trashcans were smashed, beer cans were hurled, and a huge metal table was completely overturned . . . all done within inches of the toes of the audience, and still managed to be perfectly safe.  But at the heart of this remarkable fight was a chapter of the story that simply could not be told otherwise.  Geoff knew from the first rehearsal that his fight needed to continue the story when the characters could no longer communicate with words.

Lastly, BSTC ensemble member Rebekah Ward-Hays was recognized for her tremendously brave work in our production of Wallace Shawn’s Aunt Dan & Lemon. There are very few actors in this town who could manage the enormous task of sitting in a chair for an hour and a half and articulating horribly disturbing truths directly to an audience with a sweet smile, and then somehow manage to retain even an ounce of empathy.  Ms. Ward-Hays proved to be a storyteller of the most seductive and delicious kind; spellbinding the audience with rich nostalgic imagery, while simultaneously twisting their socio-political sensibilities around the spindle of her dangerous worldview with terrifying ease.

Also nominated for work outside of BackStage was ensemble member Brenda Barrie for her title role in LifeLine Theatre’s Mrs. Caliban. Although personally, we thought she was deadly brilliant as Aunt Dan to Rebekah Ward Hays’ Lemon, in Mrs. Caliban Ms. Barrie brought to vivid life a woman so deeply entangled in the extraordinary losses of her ordinary life, that she engages in a strange but deeply sensual and lifegiving affair with an amphibian monster.  Sound strange?  It was.  But in the skilled hands of Brenda Barrie, it was also deeply moving, cathartic and unexpectedly affirming.

The 2010 nominations included some of our favorite guest artists.  Jared Moore (who designed the lights for this years Orange Flower Water) was nominated for his work in New Leaf Theatre Co’s The Man Who Was Thursday. New Leaf Theatre is a wonderful company whose artistry we respect and admire, and so we were thrilled to see that Thursday was also given a second nod by recognizing the work of playwright Bilal Dardai who adapted the tricky novel to the stage in such a wonderfully unique way.  Frances Limoncelli (guest director for 2009′s The Memory of Water) was recognized twice for two separate adaptations for LifeLine; Busman’s Honeymoon and Mrs. Caliban.  And Jason Huysman (who appeared opposite Tony Bozzuto in our nominated production of On an Average Day, as well as this season’s Orange Flower Water) was recognized for his heartfelt performance as Biff in Raven Theatre’s production of Death of a Salesman.

Looking over Jeff’s impressive list of nominated artists, we at BackStage Theatre Company are deeply grateful to have been able to celebrate an Anniversary season in such rich company.  Congratulations to every single artist on that list.  Here’s to an equally enlivening 2010-2011 season!

Our production of Edward Albee’s The Play About The Baby opens tomorrow in the Chopin Studio Theatre.  One word you will not see in any publicity materials surrounding our upcoming production is “absurd.”  Or “absurdism.”  Or “absurdist.”  The Theatre of The Absurd is an academic term that attempts to classify certain plays and playwrights that resist such classification.  The notion of such a classification is counterproductive and is itself . . . well, absurd.  To make things worse, the term seems to organize or even dictate an audience’s reaction to one of these plays far in advance of the actual experience of it.  And truthfully?  Most contemporary, non-academic audiences will avoid “absurdist” plays like the plague, mistakenly believing that “absurdist” means impossible to understand or, even worse, impossible to enjoy which, of course, is unfortunate and simply untrue.

Albee’s plays are indeed challenging:  they challenge an audiences expectation of what happens when you walk into a theatre.  The plays challenge the traditional notions of dramatic narrative, of good and evil, of comedy and drama.  When pressed to answer the question “do you consider your plays to be comedies or dramas?” the playwright simply says “I consider them to be plays.”

A non-industry friend of mine asked me if The Play About the Baby could actually be part of an enjoyable night on the town.   My reaction?  “Hell yes.“  True, The Play About The Baby is a strange play, and like all of Albee’s plays, it has dark rumblings beneath its surface.  But it is also deeply funny, playfully sexy, full of wonder and mystery and high-paced vaudevillian humor that pulses with both the joy of life and the sweet misery of the broken heart.

There is nothing absurd about that.

Matthew Reeder

Artistic Director