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!

See you at the Viaduct in the fall!!!

Our secret subscription campaign is gaining steam, and our secrets are starting to leak!  So today we are going to set the record straight on the latest hearsay and confess to the info that has leaked.

So here it is:

BackStage Theatre Company opens its 11th season with the Chicago premiere of Jonathan Lichtenstein’s Memory!

This deceptively simple but deeply challenging play begins with several actors rehearsing in a room and expands to examine holocaust era Berlin and modern-day Israel and Palestine.  The play seems to be about a man who questions his estranged grandmother about the validity of a long-held family legend.  But ultimately, the play becomes about history, and the ways that humanity uses its art, its secrets and its memories to shape the history of our families, ourselves and our societies.

This is an exciting, inventive play by a unique emerging playwright, and we are deeply honored to give Mr. Lichtenstein’s play its Chicago premiere.

So there you have it!  Another secret has gone public.  We are thrilled to give you, our extended family, the information first hand.

The only drawback to verifying this information is that we now have to raise our subscription price again.  The current price for a subscription to our 2010-2011 two-show season of “Family Secrets” is now $30!  You can purchase those subscriptions here, and you’ll receive the discount after you enter the word MEMORY.

Only a few more details will be leaked before the subscription price is back up to its full price, so head over to the subscription link to take advantage of whatever remains of our secret campaign . . .

More soon.

Matthew Reeder, Artistic Director

Kim Van Tuyl, Managing Director

It’s true, we’ve been trying to keep a few secrets.  But secrets stay secret for only so long.  People talk.  Word gets out.  So.  As promised, it’s time to let you in on the first of many secrets!  The rest is going to stay hush-hush . . . at least, for a little while.

Richard Greenberg is one of America’s most prolific, incisive and transporting contemporary playwrights.  His 1998 play, Three Days of Rain, asks the question, can an entire life be a secret?  In this mysterious and funny play, an estranged brother and sister discover a cryptic journal that appears to be written by their enigmatic father, a famous architect.  The journal seems to open a door to the life of the secretive man, and yet it appears to be written in code.  It is just another secret.  This beautifully written and probing comedy raises the question of parental legacy, and asks us if we can ever really understand the lives of those who came before us.  We are thrilled to announce this wonderful play as a part of our 2010-2011 season of Family Secrets, and we can’t keep it to ourselves any longer!

We tried to hold onto that as long as possible to maintain the sight unseen price for our season subscription.  But alas, a secret has leaked and we have confirmed it.  So that means that the price of the subscription price has gone up!

So.  As it stands, the new price for our 2010-2011 Subscription is now $27, for two exciting productions!  That’s still only $13.50 per play!

Click here to buy a subscription to our 2010-2011 Season!  Enter the discount code THREEDAYS when prompted to get your discount.

But that price won’t last for long.  As soon as another secret is revealed, the price will go up again.  There’s a lot of whispering going on.  So now’s your chance.

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

– Robert Frost

Does your family have a secret?

I bet it does . . .

Some secrets are discovered, some are revealed and some secrets actually die with the keeper.  But all families have them.  Some of these secrets are personal; things that a parent does not want the children to know about, for instance.  Some secrets are collective; a detail, or an event or a circumstance that the entire family is guarding from the outside world.  Whether personal or collective, a secret is a secret, and we guard them sometimes as closely as we guard our lives.  And the effect of a secret in a family can have a diverse effect on the tribe.  A secret can protect a family and it can also tear a family apart.

But humans have also demonstrated that we have a strangely obsessive attraction to the secrets in the lives of others.  The popularity of tabloid and reality television in the last decade prove that this human curiosity is not fading, not in any way.  The truth about humans:  we obsess over the skeletons in other people’s closets.

So.  Now to the fun part.

BackStage Theatre Company has a family secret.  And we are going to reveal it you.  Eventually.

For right now . . . we will drop a few hints.  Firstly, the secret itself is about our upcoming 2010-2011 Season.  Next season features an extraordinary pair of plays, a Chicago premiere and a reexamination of a contemporary classic . . . both revolving around the idea of family secrets.

And that’s all we’re saying . . . for now.

But in the meantime, we are making our 2010-2011 subscriptions available to you, and in honor of the theme of Family Secrets, we are keeping the delicious details to ourselves.  If you’d like to purchase one of our Secret Subscriptions, you can follow this link right here and with the code word SECRET, you can buy a subscription to our 2010-2011 Season sight unseen . . . at a 33 percent discount.  And you will be the first to know the details of the Secret Season as they are uncovered.

But here’s the thing.  We cannot hold onto this secret forever.  People talk.  Details leak.  We know this.  So, each time a piece of the secret is revealed, the price will go up.  And if you wait until the secret season is fully revealed, you will pay our normal subscription price.

So.  What are you waiting for?  Be the first to know.

And stay tuned . . .

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!

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

But the interest in developing a blog-based site went beyond the need to keep our spending in check.  During our brainstorming sessions (primarily directed by the always inspiring Mr. Keenan) we decided that we wanted to use our site to not only promote our mission and our seasons, but to engage directly with our growing audiences.  We wanted to the new site/blog to be a kind of constant conversation between the artists and the audience that make up our theatre family.

Our seasons are a carefully programmed, thematically linked trio of productions that we hope will spark an open conversation between the artists and the audience.  We want our audiences to take part in the conversation; both positive and critical, in the stories that we are, essentially, programming for them.  Our stories are are both a challenge and a gift to those who come to see them.

So today, we are thrilled to unveil a extraordinarily simple but vital new feature of our website.  We are turning on a new feature that will allow our audiences and our artists to respond to each individual show, right on the show page.

What does this mean?

This means that an audience member will be encouraged go to our website after attending a BSTC production and leave a comment, a question or even a mini-review on the very page that is the central hub for information and news on the show.  That means that anyone who buys a ticket to the show through our website (our primary gateway to tickets) will be able to see the user-generated reviews and comments, and the responses left in turn, by the the producing artists: us.  Potential ticket-buyers will be able to see the conversation that is already happening around the shows before they buy their tickets.  The idea is not without risk: it could surely backfire if we don’t live up to the high artistic standards we set for ourselves.  (And we commit ourselves to leaving the negative responses up with the positive.)  But the risk is worth it.   It is an effort to increase transparency: to localize and popularize the narrative surrounding the experiences that our audiences have when attending our shows.  We want our audiences to learn from us, and we want to learn from them.  That is the point of any meaningful conversation.

So here we go!  From here on out, any show you see at BackStage Theatre Company is open for discussion.  Let’s start with Orange Flower Water.  Seen it yet?

If so, tell us what you thought.  Start the conversation.

Matthew Reeder

Artistic Director.

“…I really feel I’ve had a great life, because of what I’ve learned from the people I knew.”

– Lemon, “Aunt Dan & Lemon”

At the end of this wonderful adventure with “Aunt Dan & Lemon”, this line is one that leaves the strongest impression, as we finish yet another chapter in the BackStage family story.

I thought about all the lines of logic and argument Lemon and Dan share with the audience, the political, moral, and social considerations and challenges Wallace Shawn presents, and the obvious “family” issues present in Lemon’s childhood.

But as I pondered how I wanted to say goodbye and what words would best convey my feelings about this incomparable experience, what I am left with is the family I gained through this production – “the people I knew”.

Matthew Reeder, Artistic Director of BackStage Theatre, and our fearless leader for “Aunt Dan & Lemon” taught me to have faith in not knowing.  To trust the unseen, the formidable “gray”, and know the truth lies within.

Brenda Barrie showed me an artist’s path that exemplified grace and poise.  Her questions or times where the journey to Dan was less clear were never larger than her quiet strength and determination.

Ron Kuzava is a warrior – an actor who never let a personal challenge interfere with finding and gloriously executing a role made for him.

Eric Paskey is fearless.  Let me tell you, this man knows how to play. He spent many nights in rehearsal owning the room and setting, then raising, the bar for fun.

Anita Deely is an actor that lives in the present – all the time.  I learned how to accept each rehearsal and performance for their own splendid individuality, accomplishment, and success – and released expectation for empty duplications.

Caitlin Emmons reminded me to see things new – from the beginning of an actors’ journey – with anticipation and excitement.  She is eager to learn and wise beyond her years as a result of her brave vulnerability.

Michael Reyes is a force of positivity.  He took each day and saw its gifts.  Our strides and growth as a family were constantly celebrated by him, and our mistakes were brushed away with love.

Jen Poulin, Heath Hays, Brandon Wardell, Tom Haigh, Joanna Melville, Elise Kauzlaric, Geoff Coates & Megan Frei created a magical world for us, and generously listened and addressed every concern and idea.  The ability these artists possess to see a world from several new lenses and then collaborate, bringing the best of each to an astonishing collective whole, reminded me of every piece’s value – seen and unseen.

Our board and donors, our staff, our subscribers – you showed us commitment and dedication in the midst of uncertainty with this controversial play.  Your championing of BackStage Theatre humbles me to be a part of such a strongly supported vision.

Part of finishing a story is accepting you’ve reached the end, but the amazing thing is that still, in my memory, what I’ve learned from the family of “Aunt Dan & Lemon” will continue on and on…

And I will be forever grateful.

Rebekah Ward-Hays

Lemon recalls so vividly that some of Aunt Dan’s favorite memories included a week long rendezvous with a married man eating decadent foods and hardly leaving the bed as well as that pivotal moment of falling in love with a woman sitting stark naked on the sofa sharing the secrets of her life.  And just as I was enjoying learning about this interesting woman Lemon calls Aunt Dan, (though of no relation), I was stunned to find this whole other complicated layer.  Something took Aunt Dan off guard, shaking her inner being and coloring the rest of her life–and that something makes her fight hard to give everything she can to Lemon while destroying a very close friendship with Lemon’s mother.

As I got further into the play, it became clear to me that this “wordy” play, as some critics have complained, is rather a complex set of images, thoughts, powerful moments and truths—and though on the surface there’s no action in the play, I’ve learned that the action is in these characters’ hearts and minds—the evolution of the thoughts and emotions is the action.

As I sat with Aunt Dan, taking her on word for word, her firm concepts on war blew me away.  I became afraid of letting myself become this woman on stage.  She faces the heart of conflict and the ugly truths of war dead on and sharply asks “what about the things that would have happened the next day if the bomb hadn’t been dropped?”  She tears downs critics and journalists who mock our country’s leaders, saying they would be begging for help if they found themselves in the middle of the jungle facing the enemy.  She continues to say that these critics and journalists are cowards who never had to make such weighted decisions and instead they live this great way of life that is only possible because of our country’s leaders making grave choices.  Her intense views on Henry Kissinger’s role in the Vietnam War simply shocked me.  I do not share the same views as her, or at least I didn’t think I did at first—and this has been challenging to me as an actor.  How am I supposed to let awful images pour out of my mouth and with such venom?  And such things that people argue to this day are war crimes?

In preparing for rehearsals, I sifted through the events of the Indochina War leading to the Vietnam War and read through excerpts of the book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger.  But then I found that reading the black and white of the war still distanced me from the core of emotional truth that Aunt Dan harbors towards Henry Kissinger and why she so strongly believes in preemptive war.  My homework has had to become more visceral, looking at images and reading personal accounts of Vietnam and even the atomic bombs dropped in WWII.  The more I search to the find the truth in what Aunt Dan’s saying, the more I understand where she’s coming from—and that scares me beyond belief. War is happening right now, but that doesn’t cross our minds as we’re sitting in Starbucks.  I don’t know, it makes sense that I was initially stunned by some of Aunt Dan’s ideas, but they started to make sense.  She says “if there are people attacking our friends in Southeast Asia, you and I don’t have to go over there and fight them with rifles—we just get Kissinger to fight them for us . . . all these other people use force so we don’t have to, so we can sit her in this garden and be incredibly nice.” I had moments where I felt uncomfortable by how much I could begin to understand her perspective.  I have to think–if we believe our friends in another country are being murdered by power hungry people who are confiscating our friends’ farms and raping their children, why wouldn’t we fight to end that?  And if there are only one or two countries where this is happening, why would we wait until the number of countries we’ll have to fight are twice the number we’d have to fight now?

This piece is wildly intimidating–as Wallace Shawn states and doesn’t shy away from, evil triumphs in this play.  It’s as if the actor and audience is asked to let their mind ponder darker thoughts of what would happen if we truly were outright killing for power.  I am thankful that director Matthew Reeder dedicated the entire first week of rehearsals to discussion, table work, and several full read throughs of the play.  We started to dissect and digest this play from the onset, and as we put this play on its feet, the questions and discussions didn’t stop.

This play takes us through some very dark and murky places, but I have to say I am captivated.  I read something somewhere that if it doesn’t scare you, it’s not courageous.  I am sitting here right now so thankful for BSTC’s courage, my fellow cast member’s courage, and I am very much looking forward to seeing the audience take this journey with us.

–Brenda Barrie

Despite Professor Lunatic, I did learn a few things, especially about the definition of risk. Most people in the finance industry publicly define risk as volatility (the variance from what is expected). But this professor insisted that risk is something you should rationally expect to get rewarded for, not just any degree of uncertainty. Every investment entails some risk that you will lose your money, of course. But if you expect the same gain, on average, from two different investments, and one of them has more ups and downs on the way, you’d be stupid to take the more volatile one, right? His point was that risk is what comes with reward, and any additional “risk” beyond that point is not risk–just bad decision making.

Semantics, perhaps? Yes. The English language is rich enough that the word risk can carry with it lots of subtle texture and shading. Half the time, when I hear the word risk, I think of Kamchatka. But lets get to the lesson from this. We mentally connect risk and reward, as well we should! Great rewards often require great risks. Getting married is a pretty big risk in this culture. The rational approach to marriage is not to insist that a couple is immune to this risk for whatever reason. The rational approach is to determine whether the potential rewards from marriage are worth the risk. That is not only rational, but much more romantic.

See? There is romance in rationality. Which brings us to theatre. Theatre carries LOADS of risk. Each practitioner risks economic stability, mental health, and relationships. Each company risks economic stability, reputation, and audiences. Audience members risk their consumable income and their time. Donors risk the chance to support somebody else that will reflect better on them, and foundations even risk their mission. Why? Don’t give me “for the love.” We all take these risks because we think that we’re going to get something profound in return. If we don’t think we’re going to get something profound in return, truly, then it isn’t really a risk–just bad decision-making.

And, so what? How should theatre approach decision-making that contains uncertainty? How do you choose a season or a new AD? Or decide to go for your first Equity contract? Or try to take a production to NYC?

1. Decide what rewards you really want. This hopefully, goes beyond survival as a company. More on this in part 2.
2. Look at each path towards your goals, and figure out what risks will be required to get you there. Whenever you have multiple roads to the same goal, be smart and choose the one with the least volatility. Don’t take a risk that doesn’t have a bigger, and more preferred, payoff than your less risky option. This will help keep the drama onstage.
3. Examine all the risks you’re currently taking, and determine which ones take you to rewards you really don’t want (or the ones that don’t take you anywhere).  As we’d say in investing, close those positions. Realize that was a bad decision, and get out of it.

Part 2 will discuss some examples, particular to Chicago storefront theatre. If you’d like to contribute to that discussion, or weigh-in on this one, please comment below!