“The playwright is over there; he’s leaning against the wall. Would you like to meet him?” No, thank you, not right now. But I surely was interested in his “The Duck Variations,” a short new play with a remarkable talent for structuring common language into rhythmic speech. That was 1972, in the first-floor studio space of the Body Politic at 2261 N. Lincoln Ave., and it was the first time I encountered David Mamet.
Only 24, he already had a history in Chicago theater. He had been a busboy at Second City and had acted at Bob Sickinger’s Hull House Theatre. But he had been away from Chicago for a few years, teaching at Goddard College in Vermont, and this little play, a suite of conversations by two old men chatting on a park bench, was his first produced work in Chicago.
In those days, he always carried a backpack, with notebook and pens on hand for jotting down bits and pieces of dialogue. He was a writer, and a confident one, and in 1974, he put together a series of Second City-style sketches into an evening-length piece that director Stuart Gordon, then established with his Organic Theater at 4520 N. Beacon St., decided to produce.
I was on vacation when “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” opened, and when I returned to work I found that it had been given mostly negative reviews. Not the kind of thing the Organic should be doing, and so on. But I went anyway, just to see what Gordon was up to and to learn more about this young writer.
There were to be many more Mamet premieres in Chicago in the next couple of years, including his masterpiece “American Buffalo,” but it was “Sexual Perversity” that just about knocked me out with the pleasure of discovery. Shaped by Gordon so that its quick scenes flowed in an overpowering stream of emotion, this study of a failed love affair in the singles bar culture of the ’70s was filled with a sad beauty, as well as a raucous sense of humor; and its language, vulgar and vital, had an unmistakable poetic pulse. Also, it was unmistakably a Chicago play, bursting with energy.
On a roll
The following year saw “American Buffalo” produced as part of Goodman Theatre’s newly established Stage 2 program at the Ruth Page Center; and from then on, there was no stopping Mamet. He brought in two former Goddard students, director Steven Schachter and actor William H. Macy, to work with him. Along with Patricia Cox (now Patricia Cox Hunckler) working as an ebullient marketing manager, they formed the St. Nicholas Theatre Company, producing adult (“Squirrels”) and children’s plays (“The Revenge of the Space Pandas, or, Binky Rudich and the Two-Speed Clock,” which featured a Chicago newcomer, Robert Falls, as a roller-skating panda) and finally settling into a storefront at 2851 N. Halsted St.
They lived hand-to-mouth, but with immense zest and pride, and they didn’t let a thing go to waste. Always behind in their rent, they produced Mamet’s “The Poet and the Rent,” a joyous new play about an artist who couldn’t pay his rent.
At Goodman, Mamet formed an alliance with Gregory Mosher, just out of the Juilliard School in New York, as assistant to artistic director William Woodman. Mosher, who later succeeded Woodman, directed “Buffalo,” “Edmond,” “A Life in the Theatre,” “Glengarry Glen Ross” and a rare but major dud, “Lone Canoe,” all Mamet works, at the Goodman.
Mamet’s residency in Chicago was relatively brief. As New York discovered him, he gradually shifted home and work to the East Coast and eventually to filmmaking, as well as theater. “Buffalo” already had won the New York Drama Critics Circle award as best American play of the season in 1977. But just before “Buffalo” opened on Broadway, “A Life in the Theatre,” the playwright’s affectionate salute to the egos and eccentricities of actors, had its premiere by Goodman Stage 2 here at the Page. It was a joyous event. At the end of the play, with Mike Nussbaum and Joe Mantegna taking their bows, a cry went up from the audience for “Author!” and after a minute or so, Mamet came down from the balcony, where he had been watching his play, and took his bows, smiling mightily at the ovation he was receiving. It was a celebration of the hometown boy who had proven himself a major talent, and it was glorious.
Mamet’s ascendancy, while he was still in his 20s, was exceptional, and it played a key role in establishing Chicago as a hub of theater talent. But his case also was typical in its story of new, young people starting new, vital theaters. The scene was spreading rapidly from the old Lincoln Avenue center. Now it was scattered throughout the city and suburbs, and we called it off-Loop.
Talent explosion
In those palmy days of the mid-to-late’70s, the talent and the theaters multiplied quickly. Wisdom Bridge, Victory Gardens, Black Ensemble, Northlight, Court, Body Politic and Remains (so called because its members were the remains of a former troupe that had split up) all became mighty little powerhouses of off-Loop production. Actors such as Gary Cole, Aidan Quinn, William L. Petersen, D.W. Moffett, Amy Morton and the next generation of Second Cityzens — Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, John Belushi, Betty Thomas, Jim Sherman, Tim Kazurinsky, George Wendt, Shelley Long, Jim Belushi, among many others — made their early appearances here, and directors such as Robert Falls, Jackie Taylor, Michael Maggio, Frank Galati, Dennis Zacek and Barbara Gaines made their first impressions as Chicago artists.
Their productions were still on small stages in makeshift theaters, but, despite limited space and tiny budgets, the shows often were tremendous. The epic sweep of “Mother Courage” and “Hamlet” and the searing intensity of “In the Belly of the Beast” were brilliantly realized by Falls on Wisdom Bridge’s second-floor space. The haunting spell of “The Caretaker” was given a mesmerizing 1975 staging by Zacek, in his first directing assignment at Victory Gardens, with tremendous performances by Galati, William J. Norris and Michael Saad.
Mamet was the principal, but not the only, playwright in town in the ’70s and ’80s. Alan Gross’ social comedy “Lunching” and “The Man in 605,” which gave Chicago actor Byrne Piven a great role in 1978, were successes. Bruce Hickey, all of 23, in 1975 wrote “All I Want,” a pungent family melodrama set in Uptown starring his brother Brian, and it became a long-running hit at Victor Gardens. Sherman, after his Second City days, wrote “The God of Isaac” in 1985, the first of his many popular comedies at Victory Gardens, and John Logan, now making lots of money in the movies, made his debut as a playwright in 1985 at the tiny Stormfield Theatre with his take on the Leopold-Loeb murder trial, “Never the Sinner.”
Capturing city’s spirit
Chicago artists continued to mine their own back yard for theater stories. In 1977, the Organic premiered one of the great Chicago sagas in “Bleacher Bums,” a rousing “comedy in nine innings” that brilliantly captured the city’s spirit through a day of dreams and disasters with indomitable Cubs fans in the Wrigley Field bleachers. “Bagtime,” a musical based on a newspaper serial by Bob Greene and Paul Galloway about a supermarket bag boy, premiered at Wisdom Bridge Theatre in 1982. In 1973, William Pullinsi’s Forum Theatre in Summit even mounted “Boss!” — a Chicago musical about Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, adapted by Chicagoan Frank Galati from Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko’s book. Six years later at the Forum, “Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?” — a music theater adaptation of John R. Powers’ nostalgic account of his Catholic school days in Chicago — was mounted for $75,000 by neophyte Chicago producers Daniel Golman and Libby Mages. It became a huge local success, running for 3 1/2 years, rolling up $600,000 in profits and going on to countless revivals in theaters and high school auditoriums throughout the country. (Taken to Broadway in 1982, it was, to Powers’ great chagrin, an instant flop.)
And then there was Steppenwolf.
Now a company synonymous with Chicago theater, in 1975 it was a group of raggle-taggle kids, mostly from Illinois State University, who set up shop in the 89-seat basement auditorium of a Catholic churchschool in Highland Park. Gary Sinise, Jeff Perry and Terry Kinney were the co-founders, and none of them had read the Herman Hesse novel that they used for their theater’s name. It was just a title they had picked up from a defunct not-for-profit company (and thereby avoided paying incorporating fees).
They were brash, cocky and talented, convinced that they were the best. Galati remembers seeing founding members John Malkovich and Laurie Metcalf in performance when they were still at ISU, and, he says, “Oh, my, the bells began to ring.” They were an ensemble, or, as Steve Eich, who served for several years at the company’s managing director, described them, “a great, dysfunctional family.” They argued with each other, made love with each other, fought pitched battles over who should clean up the toilet; and, when they were on stage together, they were afire with their commitment to each other. Nothing they did was half-hearted, and when they tore into a play in their little basement theater, you were swept up with them in their attack.
A magical match
In 1982, when Sinise and Malkovich took the Steppenwolf revitalization of Sam Shepard’s “True West” to New York, I had a jovial lunch with them and their wives, Moira Harris and Glenne Headly, in Manhattan. As we left the restaurant, and as I trailed behind with Harris and Headly, the two actors ahead got into a shouting match, pushing and shoving each other with increasing agitation. Heads turned, and I thought we were in for real trouble, but, oh, no, Harris assured me, “They’re just arguing about some little thing they do in the play.” That night, I went to see “True West” in its off-Broadway theater, and they were brilliant together.
Steppenwolf’s success in New York, which began with “True West” and was followed up with “And a Nightingale Sang” (1983), “Orphans” (1986) and their masterpiece “Balm in Gilead” (1984), was crucial to the development of theater in Chicago. The Steppenwolf energy stamped a distinctive rock ‘n’ roll style on acting here, giving the city a reputation for vital, daring work.
The company had moved from Highland Park to Chicago, first in Hull House Theatre and later in the old St. Nicholas space, and they were a tremendous success here. But Sinise, among others, knew from the start that in order to go beyond being a local phenomenon, in order to gain national recognition, Steppenwolf had to get its work seen in the media bowl of New York City. Once that happened, once Steppenwolf had been taken up as the darling of the day, the doors opened for the actors, for the company and for theater in Chicago in general. As Nussbaum, an actor who lives in Chicago and whose work extends from coast to coast, put it, “Chicago actors went from the back of the line to the front.”
It was still in many ways a homemade business, built on the shoulders of small theaters started by enterprising individuals. In 1977, producer Byron Shaffer and his wife, Ruth Higgins, scouted sites for a theater they wanted to open by sending their actors out on bicycles to check the city’s neighborhoods for an old building they might use. Cycling around, they found it at 1225 W. Belmont Ave., and, with Shaffer doing some of the contract work himself, they carved three auditoriums out of an old warehouse and called it The Theatre Building. Twenty-five years old this season, it still serves as a welcome rental house for productions by Chicago theaters without a permanent home.
These little theaters were now turning out extremely sophisticated work, and their enterprise was spreading beyond Chicago.
At Goodman, artistic director Mosher encouraged more national attention with a pre-New York tryout in 1984 of David Rabe’s “Hurly Burly,” directed by Mike Nichols, with a starry cast that included William Hurt, Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel and Sigourney Weaver.
The Academy Festival Theatre in Lake Forest, which had been founded by the pioneering producer Marshall Migatz, mounted three hit revivals in the mid-’70s: “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” with Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst; “Sweet Bird of Youth,” with Walken and Irene Worth, and a surprise hit, a charming revival of the 1939 comedy “Morning’s at Seven.” All three went on to acclaimed New York runs.
Getting their attention
Stage and film actors from outside the city were beginning to work in strictly Chicago productions too. Brian Dennehy, rooming in a Sheridan Road motel that was near Wisdom Bridge Theatre on Howard Street, made his Chicago stage debut in 1985 playing off-Loop in “Rat in the Skull” at the Bridge.
Theater here had gone from a shoestring operation to a growing industry, attracting attention and drawing artists from across the country. Local productions of major musicals such as “Follies,” in its Chicago area premiere at Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in 1981, and of important dramas, such as Brian Friel’s luminous “Translations,” in a Chicago premiere production directed by and featuring James O’Reilly, were of sterling quality, far better in their resident stagings than any road show that might have been sent out on tour.
It was productions such as these, peopled exclusively with Chicago talent, that were for me among the most rewarding theater-going experiences that the city could offer. Often small in scale, they were big in heart, their emotional and intellectual power fueled by risk-taking artist/adventurers who were developing a theater culture and forging themselves into a true community.
In 1985, Steppenwolf received the Tony Award as an outstanding regional theater (Sinise rented a tux for the occasion), and five years later, Galati was up on stage in New York at the Tonys, receiving the prize for best director and for the season’s best play, his adaptation of “The Grapes of Wrath,” which Steppenwolf had premiered here in 1988 and had taken on tour to London in 1989.
No more the kids in the church basement, Steppenwolf had become a producing organization of immense influence, its artists going on to celebrated careers in movies, television and the international stage.
They symbolized the miracles that could happen in Chicago theater, and their success led to a new flock of young artists who wanted to plant their flags here, eager to prove their talents in this great and fertile breeding ground.
There was more to come.
The main acts
1975 — Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire opens.
1975 — Steppenwolf Theatre is founded in Highland Park
1975 — “American Buffalo” by David Mamet premieres at Goodman Stage 2.
1976 — Jackie Taylor founds Black Ensemble
Theatre.
1977 — The
Theatre Building opens.
1979 — The Latino Chicago troupe is founded.
1980 — “Balm in Gilead” opens at Steppenwolf.
1982 — Steppenwolf’s “True West” transfers to off-Broadway in New York, creating a sensation.
1985 — Brian Dennehy makes his Chicago stage debut in “Rat in the Skull” at Wisdom Bridge Theatre.
1985 — Steppenwolf wins the Tony Award for regional theaters.
1990 — Steppenwolf’s “The Grapes of Wrath” wins the Tony as best drama of the Broadway season.
FRANK GALATI/ ACTOR, AUTHOR, DIRECTOR
`I couldn’t even get a job at Kroch’s bookstore’
“I never thought of myself as someone destined to work in the theater. I wanted to teach, but after I got my PhD at Northwestern, I couldn’t get a job teaching. I couldn’t even get a job as a clerk at Kroch’s bookstore because they said I was overqualified. So I went on unemployment and I worked in a publisher’s stockroom for a while. In 1972, I got an acting job with Bill Pullinsi, who was opening `The National Health’ at his new Forum Theatre in Summit. After that — lo and behold! — I got invited to do a lot of things — and I did join the Northwestern faculty. It was a very exhilarating time. The energy was spreading like wildfire. And I thought, well, maybe it is possible to have a life and work in the theater.”
BARBARA GAINES/ DIRECTOR
`I made a lot of money, but I was so homesick’
“I started out as an actress in Chicago and was doing pretty well; won a Jeff Award in 1975. But I left and spent four years in New York, 1976 to 1980. I made a lot of money, but I was so homesick I had to come back. When I returned, it was a whole different scene, much bigger and busier, and anyway, I had to have leg surgery, which kept me off stage for a couple years. Because I wasn’t skilled to do anything else, and because I was almost broke, I started giving workshops in Shakespeare. That was in 1983, and now that little Shakespeare class of 12 actors has grown into Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier, with 22,000 subscribers and a $9.4 million annual budget. Wow.”
ROBERT FALLS/DIRECTOR
`Anything was possible’
“I directed my first play [`Moonchildren’ in 1975] in Chicago when I was still going to the University of Illinois. After graduation, I came back and supported myself selling shoes for $60 a week. At the same time, I directed `Of Mice and Men’ on a budget of about $25 at Wisdom Bridge. It did well, but I still thought of becoming an actor. After I had auditioned for `The Tempest’ at Court Theatre, Nick Rudall, who was running the theater, asked me if I would be interested in directing it, which I thought was hilarious, because I had just tried out as an actor for it. But I took the job. Things were so loose that anything was possible. It was more manageable then, but Chicago can still be an exciting place for a young person who wants to work in the theater.”
———-
Feb. 10
1959 to early 1970s
Planting the seeds of the resident theater movement.
TODAY
1970s to 1985
The “renaissance” of Chicago theater.
Feb. 24
1985 to present
A global reach amid changing times.
March 3
Final words
Christiansen’s last column as chief critic, and some of his favorite productions.
