Goodman Theatre Blog

We sat down with the stage manager for The Happiest Song Plays Last and over 20 year veteran of the Goodman, Kim Osgood, to learn more about what it is like to work behind the scenes in the theater.

We asked playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes to share with us what music she listened to while writing The Happiest Song Plays Last. Here you will find Hudes' playlist, which contains an array of both Middle Eastern artists and Puerto Rican/Latin artists.

A special message for our subscribers from Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls.

Our next staff profile is long overdue, and we were lucky enough to grab a few moments with Kelly Rickert, the Goodman’s creative director, to talk about his work in our design office. All of the Goodman’s marketing materials are created by Kelly and his colleagues—a job that requires the keen artistic talent to evoke the essence of a play through imagery.

It’s a place where anything is possible, even miracles—and one you won’t find on a map! In anticipation of the Goodman’s Summer 2014 production of Brigadoon, the theater offers a deluxe travel package to give audiences a glimpse of the small Scottish town where it all began. Theater leaders will personally accompany patrons on a guided tour of the always-sunny Brigadoon while discussing their inspiration for bringing the play to life at Goodman Theatre.

Goodman Theatre is pleased to announce its third biennial 10-minute play competition for playwrights ages 12 - 23 in conjunction with its Latino Theatre Festival. Participation is entirely free. Two plays from each age group (12 - 15, 16 - 19 and 20 - 23) will be selected for a reading by a company of professional actors, to be performed on stage at the Goodman! 

Actors use many different tactics to learn more about their characters in preparation for a play. Many spend time with the play’s dramaturg to learn about the time and place the character is living in—they may also do independent research or spend time with the director. Often actors will spend time getting into the mind of their characters before the curtain goes up. Each practice can vary from play to play. For example, Teddy Ferrara star Ryan Heindl listens to a special playlist of songs that he thinks Teddy would have on his iPod and songs that make him think of Teddy. Some of the songs even appear in the production out the speakers of Teddy’s computer. We are sharing a selection of his playlist below.

We at the Goodman understand that once the final curtain goes down, the dialogue about a play is only beginning, and Teddy Ferrara is no exception. We’ve appreciated your comments so far and wanted to keep the conversation going, so we sent out a call for your questions on social media and forwarded them to Teddy Ferrara playwright Christopher Shinn, in the Goodman’s first “Ask Me Anything” (or “AMA” as it’s been popularized). Check out his responses below, and let’s continue the discussion!

There are a lot of special things about Christopher Shinn’s new play Teddy Ferrara—now in the Owen Theatre through March 9—but one of the greatest is the young, diverse cast. A key member of the ensemble is actor Jax Jackson, the first transgender actor to appear on the Goodman stage. In Teddy Ferrara, Jax plays a transgender male student named Jaq, who is fighting for the voice of the LGBTQ community within the university, which has been stricken with tragedy. We spoke with Jax about his experience as part of the Teddy Ferrara cast.

Other Desert Cities is closing this weekend, which means if you haven’t seen it already it’s your last chance to catch John Hoogenakker in his role as Trip Wyeth, the laid-back younger son in a family of politicians, artists, alcoholics and depressives. We caught up with this prolific Chicago actor inbetween performances for our Backstage interview.

For this edition of "Backstage with," we interviewed Paloma Nozicka, who plays Jenny in Teddy Ferrara now in the Owen Theatre. Find out what Paloma's pre- and post-show rituals are and her most desired roles in our questionaire.

While Other Desert Cities is now well underway, we thought you might enjoy getting a behind-the-scenes look at how the set came together. We asked Mike Durst, an electrician in the lighting department here at the Goodman, to snap a few Instagram photos for us during the construction process.

Last week the Goodman’s Scenemakers Board—our young professional’s advisory committee—hosted Cocktails & Cacti, a fun event designed to give young professionals a behind-the-scenes look at Jon Robin Baitz’s play Other Desert Cities. Scenemakers Board Member Lee Mickus gives us a recap of the evening after the jump.

“It’s almost like being in love!” Goodman Theatre proudly announces a Summer 2014 production of the 1947 musical Brigadoon, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe—marking the first major revival of the musical in nearly 20 years. 

Several weeks before rehearsals began, Other Desert Cities director Henry Wishcamper spoke with playwright Jon Robin Baitz about the play.

While A Christmas Carol rings in the holiday season in the Albert Theater, New Stages has started the celebration of new work in the Owen Theater. We sat down with the Goodman’s literary mavens, Director of New Play Development Tanya Palmer and Associate Dramaturg Neena Arndt to learn about what makes New Stages so special.

In celebration of our 35^th anniversary production of A Christmas Carol we asked our audience to send us your favorite, funniest and most heartwarming memories of the holiday classic. As always, they came through—and below is the first in a series of posts we’ll run throughout the month sharing responses. Enjoy! And send your favorite Christmas Carol memories toENews@GoodmanTheatre.org. 

This month for our Backstage interview we talked to actor Kevin Matthew Reyes, recent acting school grad making his professional debut in three different roles in Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s workshop production of The World of Extreme Happiness, as part of our New Stages festival. Read on to hear this California-transplant’s perspective on the play, the future and the dynamic theater scene in his new hometown, Chicago.

If you’re a regular Chicago theatergoer, you’ve probably seen John Judd on stage. For years he has been a fixture in the local theater scene, appearing regularly in work here at the Goodman (Shining City, A Christmas Carol, The Iceman Cometh) and at most major theaters throughout the area, effortlessly shifting from role to role with total command of the various characters—and accents—he takes on. John is currently appearing in Sweet Bird of Youth as the fearsome Boss Finley; here’s our Backstage interview with one of Chicago’s finest. 

For the third installment of our staff profile series, we talked with Production Stage Manager Joe Drummond. Joe is currently stage managing our 2012/2013 Season opener, Sweet Bird of Youth, now playing in the Albert Theatre. He’s one of our staffers with the longest tenure at the Goodman—almost 40 years—and during that time he has been an indispensable member of over 125 creative teams. 

We’re extremely proud to present Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men—Dael Orlandersmith’s riveting one-woman exploration of the cycle of violence and abuse in men. Here you will find a letter from our Artistic Director Robert Falls on why we chose to present it as one of our nine plays this season.

In Sweet Bird of Youth, 29-year-old Chance Wayne returns to his hometown—a sleepy Gulf Coast hamlet known as St. Cloud—to win back his girl, Heavenly. But once there, he is forced to confront the mistakes of his past and the people from his hometown that won’t let him forget. To keep all the names and faces from Chance’s past straight, we’ve compiled a guide to the residents—and visitors—of St. Cloud that Chance encounters on that day in 1959. 

With a sad farewell the Goodman 2011/2012 Season came to a close on Sunday with the final performance of Crowns. But then just two days later we welcomed in the 2012/2013 Season with the first rehearsal of Sweet Bird of Youth! Before we jump into the new season with all its rich and exciting content ahead, we wanted to take a minute to look back on a great RED HOT season and remember some of our favorite moments. We put out a call for stories onTwitter, Facebook and around the office. Here are some favorites.

Actor Melanie Brezill made her Goodman debut in this summer’s production of Crowns, but this Chicago native is no theatrical rookie—she’s already appeared in Broadway in The Book of Mormon and throughout Chicago. Here’s our backstage interview with this talented Chicago-grown thespian.

This is the second installment in our staff profiles series, a collection of interviews with the people who work behind the scenes here at the Goodman. For this profile we were lucky to grab a moment with one of our busiest staff members, Director of Development Dorlisa Martin. The Goodman is a nonprofit organization, and we rely on independent and government grants, as well as corporate and individual sponsorships, to supplement our ticket sales to keep the theater thriving. That’s where Dorlisa and her team come in, advocating for the art and fostering relationships.

Goodman Theatre has the high honor of celebrating the 10^th anniversary of Crowns, now as a soaring musical with an expanded production featuring a fleshed-out cast performing new choreography and never-before-heard songs. Much like Yolanda’s journey, writer and director Regina Taylor has undergone her own journey with Crowns. We sat down with her to discuss the experiences and impact this show has had on her own life. 

Goodman Theatre celebrated Women's Night and honored the contributions of Chicago area women to the community. Watch a video of these women sharing their own crowns and "hattitude" stories.

Now that you’ve met the creator of the costumes for the classy ladies of Crowns, here are some of the sketches to give you an idea of what the costumes looked like in their initial stages. Below each sketch is a caption that describes each character’s orisha and the colors that accompany it. Which Crowns costume is you favorite?

Chicago is world-renowned for its gospel community, and as part of a greater effort to connect this gospel musical to the community, select performances of Crowns will feature guest vocalists from the Chicago gospel scene singing the classic hymn How I Got Over. In honor of the city’s gospel tradition and its deep well of musical talent, Regina has tapped local luminaries.

This week we’re giving you an inside look at the creation of the costumes of Crowns from costume designer Karen Perry. We sat down with her to find out more about the amazing clothing of this tenth anniversary production.

This week the theater is abuzz with gospel tunes as the Crowns cast prepare for the first preview performance on Saturday. With the launch of the run just days away, we have compiled the second half of our guide to the tunes that inspired this 10^th anniversary production of Crowns. Check out these classic hymns—you can also listen to a playlist that includes Opus 1 of “All Hymns Considered” on the Goodman’s YouTube page. 

Because of your extraordinary support, more than 42,000 Subscribers and ticket buyers were able to experience this monumental work, dubbed "one of the most significant productions in Chicago theater history," by the Chicago Tribune.

We’re still a few weeks away from the premiere of Regina Taylor’s revamped production of Crowns (performances start June 30), but tomorrow you can check out a sneak peek of some of the songs and dances from the gospel musical for FREE. In celebration of Chicago’s annual Gospel Festival, the cast of Crowns will appear in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millenium Park to kick things off on the first night of the festival. The performance is completely free and open to the public—you don’t even need to reserve tickets. Just drop by the park around 6:30 to experience the songs of Crowns!

Six weeks ago we checked in with The Iceman Cometh’s Tara Sissom as she and her cast mates began what was likely to be one of the most exhausting (and exhilarating) experiences of their stage careers. With nearly 40 performances of the four hour and 45-minute epic ahead of her, we wanted to see how she was feeling as the show opened and compare it to how she felt with all those performances behind her. Now, with only three performances of Iceman left, we caught up with Tara and asked her the same set of questions as before—check out her old interview to see how her answers have changed.

A major part of the popular appeal of Crowns is Regina’s seamless integration of several gospel standards into the musical, creating a score that is moving, celebratory, familiar and fun. To get into the spirit of Crowns, we’ve compiled a “greatest hits” guide to some of the classic tunes you may hear in the production. It’s an introduction to the music of Crowns and a mini-history of some of gospel music’s pioneers and most enduring voices.

It may take a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to put on plays and keep an organization like the Goodman humming along. We’re creating a new series of blog posts to reveal the men and women behind the curtain; check back here for monthly interviews with Goodman staffers about their work, their passion for theater and their lives outside the Goodman.

In his many years as a New York–based actor, John Douglas Thompson has built a reputation so stellar that he is now “regarded by some as the best classical actor in America,” according a recent profile in The New Yorker. But John’s gripping performance as Joe Mott in the Goodman’s production of The Iceman Cometh marks only the second Chicago production for this celebrated actor, and his first on the Goodman stage. Here’s our Backstage interview with this extraordinarily talented actor.

To gain a sense of the sights and sounds that inspired Kipling to create these wild, wonderful stories, Mary and her design team traveled to India last December; she was kind enough to let us share a few photos of their travels with you.

The last time Marc Grapey appeared on the Goodman stage was in February as attorney Jack Lawson in Race, a snappy four-character legal drama by David Mamet that speeds by in just over an hour. Just two months after its run ended Marc returned to the Goodman to take on the role of Chuck Morello in The Iceman Cometh, which has a cast of 18 and clocks in at 4 hours and 45 minutes—our longest play of the season. With Marc’s two Goodman experiences this season at the opposite end of the running-time spectrum, we asked him to share his thoughts on how the length of a play affects an actor’s experience—from the rehearsal process to performance.

In our first two installments of The Iceman Speaketh, we explored drinking terms and insults. Now for the miscellaneous catetory: words and phrases that O’Neill uses in Iceman that you don’t hear everyday.

With nearly 50 performances of Iceman scheduled, the actors who work every day to bring this piece to life may have one perspective at the beginning of the eight-week run—when expectations are high and the general excitement of opening a show is pervasive—and another towards the end of the long run. We talked to Iceman cast member Tara Sissom, who plays one of the “tarts,” Pearl, to compare her perspective at the beginning of the run to her perspective at the end. Stay tuned to for our follow-up with Tara in mid-June.

We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to capture a tiny bit of rehearsal and turn our footage into a behind-the-scenes video of the making of The Iceman Cometh. This video includes about the only rehearsal footage you’ll ever see of this production, plus exclusive interviews with members of the cast and director Robert Falls.

If you want a poetically snarky insult, then William Shakespeare is probably your man (“you starveling, you elf-skin,”  “thou hast the most unsavoury similes,” etc.). But if you want a down-and-dirty dig without the floweriness of the bard, then Eugene O’Neill delivers.

For each Goodman production we’ll feature one “Backstage”—an informal Q & A designed to help us better know a cast member. Check back often to learn more about your favorite Goodman actors!  For Fish Men we talked with Howard Witt.

Cándido Tirado’s new play Fish Men, now playing in the Owen, is a fast-paced firecracker of a play that takes place on a sweltering afternoon in Washington Square Park, where a quick-witted group of chess hustlers play spirited matches hoping to make a profit off of unsuspecting “fish.” It’s a funny, sharp, exciting piece of theater, but it’s also a play that’s unafraid to tackle a dark and complex subject matter, as it’s quickly revealed that its central character, Rey Reyes, is a survivor of the Guatemalan civil war.

The gang at Harry Hope’s have all known each other for years and all ages, professions, nationalities and creeds are welcome under Harry’s roof. Since the cast is so large and the characters so varied, we’ve compiled an intro to these colorfully drawn characters, each with a history and a pipe dream that is uniquely their own. 

Cándido Tirado’s Fish Men, now playing in the Owen Theatre, chronicles an afternoon in Washington Square Park with a group of chess hustlers who play a series of lightning-fast games designed to confuse and swindle any “fish” foolish enough to take them up on a match. But as audiences observe the speedy matches they may not know that the actors on stage aren’t just randomly moving pieces around as quickly as possible—they’re playing actual moves of actual games that they’ve memorized just like their lines and their blocking.

The Iceman is here, and he’s brought the language of 1912 with him.

After six weeks of rehearsal and nine months of anticipation, The Iceman Cometh begins preview performances in the Albert Theatre tomorrow night. Audiences, and especially O’Neillphiles, are in for a special treat, as the four-and-a-half-hour classic features a virtuoso ensemble that seamlessly become the residents of Harry Hope’s saloon, the Greenwich Village flophouse in which The Iceman Cometh is set.

Cándido Tirado’s new play Fish Men began preview performances last weekend, and when audiences arrived for the world premiere production in the Owen they entered into a rare setting for the Goodman: a theater configured stadium-style, with the stage planted in the center of the auditorium and seats built up around it on all four sides.

The new Goodman website will bring you closer than ever to the magic of live theater, with exhaustive archives, interactive features and new ways to experience the drama—wherever the internet may find you!

During my tenure as artistic director I have had the privilege of bringing some of the most notable directors now working on the world stage to the Goodman, including Peter Sellars, JoAnne Akalaitis, Ivo van Hove, Elizabeth LeCompte, Flora Lauten (fromthe esteemed Cuban company Teatro Buendía) and our own Mary Zimmerman. Although vastly different in style and approach, these directors share a passion for exploring new ways of theatrical storytelling, an uncompromising singularity of vision and a radical (and often controversial) way of reimagining classical texts. To this group I am extremely proud to add Calixto Bieito, a Barcelona-based director whose soaring, radical interpretations of everything from classic operas to Shakespeare have astonished, inflamed and challenged audiences throughout Europe and South America.

“When a white person asks a black person a question such as, ‘What is it like to be black?’ the black person knows that it is not a question as a means of inquiry and discovery, but a test for which the white person perceives a right or wrong answer of which that white person is presumed to be the judge." This it seems to me is the role that David Mamet has assumed as the author of Race...

The transition from war zone to home front can often be difficult for the troops returning, their families and their communities. In recognition of the official withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Goodman Theatre, in collaboration with partners across the city, presents a series of events for military personnel, their families and our community to foster conversations and spark dialogue about the price of freedom.

Chicago Boys, the second play in our New Stages Amplified series, explores the economic policies that shaped the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. Named after a group of young Chilean economists who trained largely under the renowned economist Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago or the affiliate Catholic University of Chile, Chicago Boys offers a glimpse into the revolutionary ideas that went on to form the foundations of Chilean economic policy under the regime of Augusto Pinochet.

In Red, playwright John Logan paints Mark Rothko as the anti-cool, anti-pop, anti-name-brand-recognition man. As I watched the play and heard Rothko furiously exclaim the likes of Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol were “…trying to kill [him]!” I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d think of his own place in pop culture today.

Red chronicles a two-year period in the life of artist Mark Rothko, as he labors on a series of murals commissioned for the opulent Four Seasons restaurant in the newly built Seagram Building. Education and Community Engagement Associate Teresa Rende explores the elaborate design concept of this restaurant, and what led the planners to Mark Rothko.

While Red primarily explores the life and work of Mark Rothko, it also briefly mentions two of Rothko's celebrated contemporaries—Mies van der Rohe and Jackson Pollock, two artists whose work is featured prominently throughout Chicago. Today, we take a tour through the city to find local relics of these artistic luminaries.