After a long battle with colon cancer, actor Guy Adkins passed away at the age of 41.  We are grateful that he graced our stage, and will forever remember him fondly.

Guy Adkins in 'Visiting Mr. Green' with Mike Nussbaum, 1999

With Carey Cannon in 'Pride and Prejudice', 2005

At 35 years, Northlight is moving into elite territory as an institution that has a history which is intertwined in a meaningful way with the community.  So many of you have talked to me during this production of Awake and Sing! to tell me your story of Northlight’s place in your life.  This article in London’s Guardian shows us that this is by no means an unusual set of circumstances.  Theatres are destinations and create events that can be associated with moments in our own lives.  Certain plays or musicals can reflect incidents in our lives that resonate, refresh, or relieve us.  They can create an aura around important time frames and link them together.  More importantly, good theatre arises from our own lives.

Perhaps you would like to tell us your Northlight story. If you have been a subscriber for a number of years, use this blog to tell us of your earliest memories.  If you are a recent convert, tell us what production influenced your decision to join us.  If you have had a unique experience at Northlight either on the stage or in the audience, share it with us.  If you are in love with your seat and fight to keep it year after year, or if you have branched out to a new section in the theatre for a change of pace, share it!

This anniversary is yours, thirty-five years!

Congratulations…let the stories begin!

Rehearsal after four or five previews = very exciting day.  We had notes with Amy, and then did a speed-through of the show.  (That’s when you run it all, but fast!)   It’s mostly for muscle memory, but I find it useful and often find new moments.  This cast is so friendly and loving, and FUNNY.  We really enjoy each other, which is such a gift.  I had the company over to my house after the second show on Sunday.  We ate and drank and laughed a lot.   Is that ok to “blog”?  I’m new to this blogging thing… Anyway, tomorrow we have our first school matinee - 10:30am.  That’s early to be barreling through this play.  And I always feel, if I’m doing this one correctly, it’s as if I’ve been shot out of a cannon from the get-go.  So it’ll be interesting to see how it goes so early tomorrow.

I’m excited and nervous for our Sunday opening.  The 9-10 previews are a gift to an actor — we get to work the show each day, and run it for an audience each night.  So rare to get that kind of time.  I’m grateful to BJ and Tim and Janet, who really understand the actor’s process and how best to develop a good production.

Playing someone outside my personal comfort zone, like Bessie Berger, is exciting.  In this case, Bessie is so LOUD.  Amy [Morton, director] keeps telling me to have a megaphone at ALL times.  Bessie needs to be seen by everyone, and she’s loud.  It’s hard playing someone not too likeable.  I’m used to playing smaller, charactery, funny ladies who the audience finds “cute”.   So this is challenging.

Though Bessie is a “Jewish mother,” I don’t want to be stereotypical or general.  But I think I know these people well, having grown up around family who went through the depression and WWII - and were/are Jewish.  My grandfather, Irving Ozer, was a doctor in Philadelphia during that time.  He was one of the few in his family who was bringing in money, so he supported a lot of his family and various relatives lived in the house along with himself and my grandmother, Ray, and my Mom, Betty.  Must have been chaotic, but loving, I think.

Another interesting challenge has been to find the realism in such foreign-sounding language.  But it’s like doing Shakespeare, or any heightened text.  You figure out what the meaning is, and what you WANT, and play with it until it feels right. Tricky.  But Amy is genius at teasing out meaning.

“This is always my least favorite day, because everybody looks at me like I know something…but I don’t.”

So began Director Amy Morton at the first rehearsal of Awake and Sing! earlier this afternoon. I always love first rehearsal - the entire cast, production team and staff are invited to “meet-and-greet” each other, followed by informal presentations by the designers to describe some of the production elements (that they’ve already been working on for months) to the rest of us, and then a read-thru by the cast - for most of us, the first time we’ve ever heard the play out loud. Though many of us on the staff spend much of our time sitting in cubicles and working on computers - much like any office - first rehearsal is a time when we all come together and are reminded why we’re all here. And reminded that it takes all of us - on the stage, behind the scenes, and in the office - to make every production happen.

Awake and Sing! is a beautiful play - I’ve been excited about it since our Artistic team made the choice to include it in our season about this time last year. And Amy Morton, (though I confess, I can’t look at her without picturing her screaming at her August: Osage County family “I’m running things now!”) is an amazing artist who I’m thrilled is working here at Northlight. Contrary to her opening statement, clearly she knows a lot. I’m looking forward to seeing her vision take shape.

The importance of intiatives like Interplay for theatres like Northlight is vital.  So often a playwright would truly relish a reading, provided by sensitive and supportive artists and theatres where the work is appreciated and the environment is safe. That is the goal for us here at Northlight. The delight for me is in the opportunity to acquaint myself with these artists and to work with them in close quarters.

That paragraph is part of an article I wrote for The New Play Times in Fall 2007.   In the two years since then, I’m proud to say that many of our Interplay readings have gone on to productions around the country - most recently, Lisa Dillman’s Ground has been selected to appear at the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays this spring.  And as we get ready for our next reading on Monday, Katori Hall’s Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, I’m reminded again of how important Interplay is.

Read my full article for more of my thoughts on the struggle for and importance of new work.  And I hope you’ll join us for an Interplay reading this season.  I’d love to see you there.

More anon,

Beej

It’s the week after the opening of Souvenir and our audiences and the critics appear to be most pleased.  It’s funny, charming and surprisingly moving, but what appears to fascinate our audience the most is that it is about a real person.

Over the years, work that reflects our human condition seems to resonate quite strongly.  Character driven, and quirky plays and musicals like last season’s Grey Gardens, or Side Show, the musical about the conjoined twins, always strike a chord with our subscribers and it’s one of the reasons I look for these interesting pieces when considering our upcoming seasons.

I like to find work that shakes up our perceptions of social and political issues, like Permanent Collection, Gee’s Bend, or Ground, a play that we commissioned and will premier at the Humana Festival this year in Louisville.

I mention this now, as I am in process of choosing next season and often I am asked by subscribers how I choose our seasons and how far in advance we work on it.  I tell them we are always looking for work that they will respond to.  We have had the rights to Souvenir for two seasons but we found other plays that felt more appropriate and timely, so we did those first.

The mixture is a curious chemistry set and there are no set rules or patterns that we follow.  When people ask me how I choose the work, the answer is so complex and fluid that I feel hard-pressed to simplify it into an “elevator speech.”  But in the last few weeks, I have put together a bit of a manifesto that might tell you what our ideal criteria would be.

• Will it challenge and engage our audience?
• Does it excite Northlight as an artistic institution?
• Will it further expand our reputation as one of Chicago’s leading artistic institutions?
• Will Northlight reach new constituencies and perhaps build on those encounters for longer and more meaningful relationships?
• Will the work reflect our community to the world…and
• Will this work bring the world to our community?

These are lofty ideals, admittedly, and we try to achieve them with every production.  It’s a lot to ask of 5 plays or musicals, but we succeed more than we fail, and year after year over 8,100 subscribers agree and tell us that our consistency is the key to their loyalty.  I hear it in the lobby at the intermission of Souvenir or after the show, and as you all know, I respond to your phone calls and e-mails should you reach out to share your thoughts.

There are several plays that we have thought about for a couple of seasons that might find their way into our season.  And there are some new works that have piqued our interest and may demand that we produce them right away.  If you attend Interplay, our reading series, you might catch a glimpse of what or who as playwrights we are interested in and even weigh in with your thoughts at the post-show talk-back.  Dec. 14th is the next one and it’s a new play called Saturday Night, Sunday Morning by Katori Hall. It’s a fascinating process, and we’d love to have you join us.

Next up is Amy Morton’s production of Awake and Sing!, and we fully expect it to fulfill each of our aesthetic criteria.

See you then.

More Anon,
Beej

“Temperley also probes such fascinating matters as how singers really never hear what everyone else hears, and thus they don’t really know how they sound. They all take things on trust. More interesting yet, the piece also explores the question as to whether such little things as correct notes, pitch and rhythm really matter as much as the guardians of culture say they do. If you can move people without them - maybe move people more because you don’t have them - then who needs them?” -Chicago Tribune

“[Powers] succeeds in making Jenkins seem less a figure of fun than a true American original. She has a game foil in Anders, who brings out the tenderness in McMoon’s reluctant ability to overlook his patron’s flaws, which might otherwise seem like opportunism.” -Time Out Chicago

“Everyone with a need for artistic self-expression is not necessarily artistic. But who is to say what is art? Florence Foster Jenkins had the means to do what she felt was her destiny.” -TheaterWorld.com

“[Cosme McMoon] accepted a well-paying gig he thought would be short-lived and under-the-radar, but it turned out to be life-changing as for years he provided impeccable musical accompaniment for a woman who seemed blithely unaware of how dreadful her singing was, or, if she knew, simply believed that art was simply what you imagined it to be in all its glory.” -Chicago Sun-Times

I really think that theatre has a lot of magic in it.   I’m really lucky to have a job where there is a little bit of magic in every day.  This week’s magic looked like this~

Five minutes before The Marvelous Wonderettes closed:

Two hours after The Marvelous Wonderettes closed:

Twelve hours after it closed the stage looked like this:

And 36 hours after it closed it looks like this:

Not only does that seem magical to me, it seems kind of impossible.  We do the impossible and the magical all the time around here.  It’s our job.  I can’t wait to see what Northlight looks like tomorrow.

Best Song
WINNER: Rock Around the Clock (36.3%)
Only You (22.5%)
Unchained Melody (18.1%)
In the Still of the Night (17.5%)
Teddy Bear (5.6%)

Worst Song
WINNER (or LOSER, in this case): Purple People Eater (42.8%)
Doggie in the Window (30.2%)
Sea Cruise (18.9%)
Sh-Boom (8.2%)

Favorite Musical Artist
WINNER:  Elvis Presley (33.8%)
Bobby Darin (21.0%)
Buddy Holly (19.7%)
Doris Day (14.6%)
Chuck Berry (10.8%)

Celebrity Crush (Male)
WINNER:  Ricky Nelson (38.2%)
Troy Donahue (27.8%)
Elvis Presley (21.5%)
Sam Cooke (6.3%)
Johnny Ray (6.3%)

Celebrity Crush (Female)
WINNER: Annette Funicello (35.7%)
Marilyn Monroe (28.0%)
Sandra Dee (19.6%)
Rita Hayworth (16.8%)