The BackStage Blog

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!

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!