From the SDC Journal Spring 2019 issue
Moderated by Chay Yew
Last fall, eight directors gathered with Chay Yew in a rehearsal room at Victory Gardens Theater to discuss what it means to be a director in Chicago and the qualities that make works feel truly representative of the city’s unique theatrical landscape and history.
DEVON DE MAYO recently directed the world premiere of Jenny Connell Davis’ The Scientific Method at Rivendell Theatre and teaches at the University of Chicago and Loyola University.
HENRY GODINEZ is Resident Artistic Associate at Goodman Theatre and a professor at Northwestern University, and recently directed Last Stop on Market Street for Chicago Children’s Theatre and The Children’s Theatre Company.
GARY GRIFFIN has directed more than 20 productions at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, as well as at Lyric Opera, Victory Gardens, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, regionally, and at the Stratford Festival and Donmar Warehouse. He has won 10 Jefferson Awards for Directing.
DADO GYURE is a Chicago theatre/visual artist and an ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theatre. She recently won the Edes Prize from the University of Chicago. Her experimental theatre collective is: c a K e.
CHIKA IKE is a freelance director and producer. She is also an ensemble member with the Gift Theatre Company and the Director of the 4802 Play Development Residency Program.
HALENA KAYS is Co-Founder of Barrel of Monkeys, a previous AD of The Hypocrites, and an Artistic Associate with The Neo-Futurists Theater. She is an assistant professor at Northwestern University and a proud Union Member.
GUS MENARY is a theatre director and Artistic Director of Jackalope Theatre.
CHAY YEW is a director and playwright. He has been the Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theater since 2011.
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CHAY | Why did you choose Chicago to create theatre? Why not New York, LA, Prague, or Seattle? What was the moment when you said, “This is it. I love creating work right here in Chicago.”
CHIKA | I grew up in Indiana, and I didn’t actually see theatre in Chicago or know about a theatre city outside of New York until college. I remember seeing Tracy Letts’ Three Sisters at Steppenwolf, directed by Anna Shapiro. But then I saw Ora Jones on stage in that show and thought, “She is up there doing Chekhov and she has the same hair as me, so that must be a good sign.” A black woman was on stage at one of the most reputable houses in the country (this was right after August: Osage County) and was making an author I had studied at school completely relatable. I thought, “I’ll move here. This will be fun.”
HALENA | I was drawn to this idea of a working-class theatre world. When I was in undergrad at Northwestern, I got to be in a production of The Children’s Hour at Shattered Globe. The women who played the leads were astounding to me. They all got back from their jobs at 5:30 and grabbed food and went to the theatre by 6:00. They were grown-ups, and I felt, “Oh, that’s a whole different world of making work.” I am so drawn to this idea that anybody can do this if you work hard.
DADO | My undergrad was in Los Angeles, and I was an actor and a director. I was really unhappy with the kind of jobs I was auditioning for in LA, so I looked at New York and San Francisco, and found it was much the same. But in Chicago, I realized they were doing plays on Tuesdays in an attic in the afternoon. So I figured I’m going to get work here eventually.
GUS | I was definitely drawn to the just-go-out-and-do-it sort of thing. It seemed to me that in other major cities, you have to tie yourself to a larger institution and work your way up the ladder just to get the opportunity to try and create something. In Chicago, it seemed like you didn’t need to go through the major institutions to be able to make work.
DEVON | I think for me it was the idea that Chicago was where ensembles happen. I was coming from Southern California, and I went to college in Ohio at a school that didn’t have a big theatre department. So I just wanted to go find my people. I wanted to find artists I wanted to work with and then begin my career, rather than saying, “I have a vision for my career,” which feels like how it works in other cities.
GARY | I grew up in Rockford, about 90 miles from here. I used to come into the city, and I started seeing what were essentially Broadway tours. But after a while, I started learning about the other theatre that was happening here. I saw some work at Steppenwolf and I was really blown away by it.
I did do an internship in New York when I was finishing my MFA in the mid-’80s. I knew I wasn’t going to move there, but I was fascinated by it. It was a good thing for me to learn about what goes on there.
DEVON | When did you know you weren’t going to move there?
GARY | I’d seen enough work there and I was too impatient. I don’t have the kind of patience I think you would have to have at 25 to start a career in New York. And the acting work that’s done by an ensemble was really what I’ve always been about. That’s still true.
HENRY | I was trained as an actor too. We started a company called Teatro Vista because we were finding all these great Latino plays that nobody was producing. We went to the National Museum of Mexican Art because my buddy Eddie Torres, who co-founded the company, his teacher had just started this museum and said, “I’ll give you money to do a play, but you have to do a Mexican play.” So we found this awesome play called The Crossing by Hugo Salcedo that I directed. I had directed a play in college, and nobody else in the company really seemed to be interested. That’s how I became a director.
CHAY | So what defines Chicago theatre? From my own perception, a large part of our identity is ensemble theatre. Is there an aesthetic that defines the Chicago theatre experience?
GUS | I feel like when Chicago theatre is at its best, there’s a certain artistic trust that people have with each other, because we all lift each other up and hopefully lift the work up together. There’s a little bit of that Wile E. Coyote “Don’t look down or you’ll fall” kind of thing. If we all believe together, then this thing can continue to rise.
HALENA | Part of why that’s possible here is because we’re not distracted by getting jobs in film or TV. I don’t think that’s true in a lot of other markets where there are other reasons for being on stage. In Chicago, for better or worse, that’s it. It’s your six-week run, and there is no other thing but the art.
DEVON | I think the idea that we just do theatre whether we have the resources or not feels like the Chicago aesthetic. But as I was thinking about this earlier, I was also mourning a little bit the loss of Redmoon and the loss of The Hypocrites, and thinking about what the Chicago aesthetic is right now.
DADO | It’s hard to sense what the aesthetic is because it is shifting so quickly. It’s exciting, but I don’t feel that it’s at all stabilized in a way that I could articulate.
GARY | I could have told you really easily when I got here, because it was very much American. Naturalism. It was Sam Shepard, amongst every group. There was no Shakespeare company. There was nothing like Lookingglass or Redmoon. The diversity of work has grown incredibly.
GUS | When we started Jackalope, we were all very much in love with Sam Shepard’s pays. Americana. What we now refer to as white guys yelling at each other.
“We’ve got to continue to nurture new voices, and we need to see representation where we don’t expect it.” – Henry Godinez
CHAY | Throwing chairs.
GUS | Something about your father.
CHIKA | People in their twenties being mean to each other.
GUS | We came out of Columbia College really wanting to do these types of dusty plays, but when we started producing—literally, it feels like the first second that we started doing it—we were like, “Oh, we don’t want to do this.” Not only has this been done before, but we realized immediately that what was traditionally thought of as American and Americana was no longer synonymous with the real American identity.
CHAY | When was that shift?
GUS | We started in 2008.
HALENA | I was thinking about the Chicago aesthetic as far as why, sometimes, when Chicago plays go to New York, people respond so viscerally. The firsthand knowledge I have is when David Cromer brought Our Town to New York. Here he was just doing it for a love of this play and the people. He was far along in his career already. I remember that as a lesson of Chicago theatre, that when you love something, find your friends and make the thing. Everyone went into that just to make that play, not to go to New York. And that is unique and something that I think New York audiences responded to when it got there.
CHAY | Is there a flip side to ensemble theatres?
GARY | I think depending on what the rules are with the ensemble, it can be a conflict between casting the play the best way possible or making sure the ensemble is cast.
HENRY | Eddie [Torres] was an intern at Remains Theatre, and they also had an ensemble. His job was to read all these plays. When a Latinx play would come across his desk, he’d show it to the artistic team, and they would say, “Yeah, it’s a great play,” but [they] couldn’t actually do it. Martha Lavey, God rest her soul, I would send her plays, and when she was at Steppenwolf, she would say, “Yeah, I think it’s a great play, but we don’t have ensemble members to fill this play.”
CHAY | Being a part of an ensemble can be a wondrous thing. Working with artists whom you have known for years adds much to the process and production. I’ve seen this in many ensembles here in the city. To Gary’s point, there are times a part can go to an inappropriate ensemble member. I find ensembles extremely “exclusive,” and I do mean the two interpretations of this word: special and exclusionary. Ensembles can be very tribal. I’m more interested in intersections and connections. I believe an ensemble member who collaborates with other ensembles can learn something enlightening in their practice. Who knows? A new aesthetic can be born, or their ensemble aesthetic can evolve.
When I first started at Victory Gardens, an interviewer asked what kind of plays I liked. I said, “I’m not really into realism.” Soon after, I got calls and emails from artists and Victory Gardens ensemble playwrights saying, “What do you mean you don’t like realism? This is what we do here.”
HALENA | You were also taking over an established theatre where there were expectations in a different way, which is different than the experience of “I’m 23, I can do anything.” With younger directors in Chicago, even if the work is mediocre, people are like, “This might be something.” We had an easier time on certain levels [when I was just starting out]. But it goes in waves too. I feel like there was a period of time where the joke was that everyone in Chicago had a clown company.
CHAY | Really?
HALENA | There was a time when I thought Chicago was going to be the physical theatre capital of the world.
HENRY | Plasticene.
DEVON | Midnight Circus.
HALENA | When I saw Plasticene as a young artist, I changed everything I wanted to do.
CHAY | Sounds like there were many theatre companies that were diversified in terms of aesthetics, and we’re also acknowledging that some of these companies are slowly disappearing. What does it mean? What remains?
DEVON | For me, I feel there’s a really strong focus on diversifying the voices that we have on our stages, both in terms of actors and playwrights. That conversation feels so alive and so important and so powerful, and it’s great. But the thing I am mourning a little bit is the conversation about innovating forms. That conversation has quieted.
I did my masters abroad, so I was studying in other countries and came back to Chicago with all this energy about what I was seeing over there. I wanted to rip plays apart like, why do we need plot? What is structure? That conversation has really quieted.
CHAY | Do you think that the companies are not doing enough innovative work? It’s the egg-and-the-chicken situation because sometimes theatres respond to audience preferences. Is there a unique way that the Midwest, or Chicago in particular, responds to narratives?
GUS | The innovation, to me, feels like the narrative of the shows, the voices being represented, the viewpoints being explored. That feels like what that frontier is right now: finding the unique voices.
The “director as god” role where the vision and creativity flow downward is becoming less common. In Sam Mendes’ “Rules for Directors” article that was in Vanity Fair in 2014, he says if you want an ego trip, direct film. Theatre is a writer’s medium and an actor’s medium. I like that. I view being a director like being the conductor in the symphony. When you’re going to the Boston Philharmonic to see Yo-Yo Ma play, you’re probably not going to know the name of the conductor. Unless you’re a really big classical music nerd. That’s neat to me.
HALENA | There was an article I read in the Tribune bemoaning that there wasn’t more experimental theatre, and my response was, “Well, you won’t send your big critics to see it.” It’s not being written about. Fewer people are seeing it, so fewer people are learning how to see it. Like you, Chay, changing the ethos here and what kinds of stories are being told. You had to do it in a way that brought everyone along.
HENRY | We just finished New Stages Festival at the Goodman, which featured seven readings of new plays as well as a production of Mendoza by Los Colochos Teatro from Mexico City. Mendoza used a folding metal table and four metal folding chairs, and a lot of imagination and ensemble work. The lighting, as simple as it was, was incredibly evocative and powerful. It’s like every beat was reinventing the ensemble, and there was intimate connection, investment in the audience.
I started thinking, what if instead of commissioning playwrights, theatres would instead commission a team of designers and actors and a playwright and say, “Here’s a room. Here’s some money. You have a year. Go.”
DADO | I like that.
GUS | One thing that I noticed about Chicago is the intimacy of the shared viewing experience. Hearing you talk about that show reminds me of the productions I see at A Red Orchid Theatre, and how intimate they are, but how world-class the theatre being presented is. A lot of us are working in smaller spaces and maximizing what we can do in that. To achieve that level of artistry within a small space feels unique to Chicago.
DEVON | The quality of acting and design and direction, if I can say it, is really impressive in a 50-seat house. It’s not like that is compromised work. The quality is just as good as the big theatres in Chicago. A lot of times, the same artists are working in both places.
CHAY | You are saying that intimate theatre is an aesthetic.
HENRY | It always has been. The first play I ever did in Chicago was Kabuki Medea at the old Wisdom Bridge on Howard Street—150 seats.
GARY | We often will get that thing too when a show has been seen in New York and then it comes here. You often hear that it’s better here because it’s intimate.
CHAY | I started out as a playwright, and my entire directing career has been devoted to new work. As a new play director, a large part of our practice is interpretation. In collaborating with a living playwright, we create a physical, kinetic world in concert and tension with the text. Personally, if the audiences can see my hand, [I feel] I’ve failed.
But another reality for me, as a director of color, has been that I’ve never been asked to direct a classic play (except once at Oregon Shakespeare Festival), nor a white play. I’m glad that this is changing for the next generation of directors of color. Recently, I’ve been exploring the reinterpretation of classics. In terms of your own directing life, where do you think you are now? What else do you want to do? What’s next?
HENRY | I also have been very blessed to work with a lot of good plays and with a lot of playwrights, and it’s been a wonderful, wonderful thing. But I am feeling more drawn to classical works that say something that I have a very strong response to. I feel a little bit like a traitor because I’ve always been so devoted to playwrights.
CHAY | We evolve, we change.
HENRY | I feel like now new plays are the work of the next generation of directors.
DADO | My graduate work was in Chicago, but then I went to Poland. I went to the Boska Komedia Festival because I felt like I had to see these experimental Eastern Europeans. I saw 15 plays in five days and it was really helpful. It did help me come back here and make me feel like I could push the envelope a little.
I also did this thing where I got my MFA in visual art. I didn’t want to be around the theatre. I didn’t want to talk to actors. I think that helped—it was like going to a chiropractor for an artist. They put me in a studio; I was very isolated, and it’s lonely. There is no green room. There is no bar. I was sad, but it was so helpful. I’m not saying everybody should do it.
CHAY | When I first worked in Chicago at the Goodman in 2006, I remember seeing a Time Out magazine cover with the question, “Why are Chicago theatres so white?” I thought it was thrilling that a publication was taking the theatre community to task. Where do you think we are with equity, diversity, and inclusion now? Do you think we are doing more? What are your thoughts on this? In your practice and at your theatres?
HENRY | Well, it was pretty rocking in here last night at the ALTA Awards [held at Victory Gardens on October 8]. We had 300 Latinx theatre artists in this building. Twenty-eight years ago, when we started Teatro Vista, you could hear the crickets when you talked about ethnically specific theatre. It’s not perfect right now, and there’s still a lot of work to do, but just the sheer quantity of individuals is awesome. And young people of all kinds, from musical theatre people to costume designers to actors and playwrights. Twenty-eight years ago, we couldn’t even begin to dream of that. We just wanted to put on a play, and have an audience that would come and see it.
I think now the new frontier is that we have to keep doing what we’re doing, in communities and in mainstream theatres at the highest levels. I feel that way about playwriting. We’ve got to continue to nurture new voices, and we need to see representation where we don’t expect it.
HALENA | Most of the theatre that I was drawn to when I first got here in the late ’90s was mostly white people. The Neo-Futurists, the Annoyance Theatre, these were amazing companies messing with form. It didn’t occur to me at that age, because I was so entranced by how subversive the work felt.
But that changed in me over time. I’ve thought a lot about how our city is laid out, and historically where people live and come from. It’s almost that despite these structures, the theatre community is helping to fight that history in a way that I find really exciting. But I think it’s super challenging because the segregation in this city is a harder thing to overcome. You don’t even think of the ways, like where your theatre company rehearses, where you have meetings. It’s all based on where people actually live and do their work
What makes us who we are is also what has harmed us, I think, in such a strong way, as far as different people coming together to create theatre.
DEVON | I think that one of the things that has to happen next, from a very subversive standpoint, if it’s all right, is that leadership has to change. I think that is the next step for how we do diversity and inclusion better. We have to have new leadership, if for no other reason than new voices will bring new ideas. I am somebody who likes the British model of artistic directors turning over every 10 years or so. I think that’s admirable because it means that they are moving in and out of freelancing and then moving into leadership. I think that that is healthy for the art.
GARY | We’ve been watching this progress of institutions growing. I stepped away from a position about a year and a half ago for this very reason, because I could see that the conversation was not going to improve until other people were involved.
DADO | I feel very encouraged academically, because at University of Illinois at Chicago and DePaul, it looks like diversity is improving. It feels like they are making great strides to balance things out in a way that is representative of the country and of the world.
Now, I have this really interesting straddle where I also work at this tiny little liberal arts college in Northwest Indiana. A lot of my students there aren’t even college students—they’re these kids from a high school in Gary, IN, who are learning Introduction to Performance. What I find has been very valuable is to immediately show them two of my very favorite artists in Chicago, William Pope.L and Theaster Gates, who happen to both be African American and work in more urban areas in Chicago. Right away, my students recognize the neighborhoods. Some of them have even been to the Stony Island Arts Bank, so it feels accessible and they feel included in the conversation.
GUS | One thing that I’m trying to do is ensure that people on my creative teams are hired diversely. It’s not uncommon to see a production with a playwright who is a person of color, but literally every single person on your production team is white. A lot of times it feels like we’re just trying to get the art at the same level as the people that we’re all hanging out with at the bar.
CHAY | Any more observations about equity, diversity, and inclusion in Chicago that you feel should be challenged and changed?
CHIKA | How do we make lasting change? A lot of times I feel like the conversation ends with a change in artistic leadership, and I’m like, “Where else can we go? What is the next model of art?”
GARY | I’m constantly curious about how much you’re including the audience in the conversation. I don’t think an audience is as connected to the mission as we want them to be. And I think, why is that not happening? And sometimes the audience says, “Well, I used to love this and now I don’t feel like going anymore.” We want to expand, and that’s okay if we lose some people. But I’m hearing questions about this. The audience is wondering, “Why am I not being better communicated with about [a theatre’s evolving mission]?”
CHAY | I’m not of the belief that directors are automatically qualified to run theatres. Some of the best artistic directors have been producers and dramaturgs. I challenge our current theatre leaders in Chicago to groom and mentor the next generation of leaders, especially people of color and women. I’m doubtful our ensemble theatres will experience meaningful leadership change if they keep looking for leadership from within their own ranks. Then it’s just musical chairs with the usual suspects. Diversifying your ensemble and producing plays of color don’t automatically make your theatre equitable or inclusive. Your artistic leadership also needs to reflect the same values. Otherwise, it’s still colonialism.
What about gender parity in Chicago? What more needs to be done?
HENRY | I was on a panel last year with Karen Zacarías and Jose Luis Valenzuela, and all three of us were blindsided by some young Latinx folks in the audience whose lived reality and view of diversity and inclusion wasn’t about race anymore. It was about gender. All three of us in a way had this odd feeling like we were in the way. Or somehow we didn’t see that in our long-term fight around diversity we had neglected gender.
DEVON | I was talking to a friend who is in her mid-thirties, and she moved away from Chicago and was pointing out a ton of our peers who have moved away. There’s a feeling, especially for women, this sense of there being nowhere else to go unless you leave town. If you want to be a leader of an organization, if I want to move up in academia, there is a bottleneck that feels like these jobs are just held on to indefinitely, and you can only freelance for a small amount of money for so long—especially as I just had my second child. The bottleneck is particularly strong for moms who direct. I have seen and felt that a lot in the past couple years.
I think that is a gender issue because I see that that is where the rub is happening. I’d also like to pull back and say that board leadership is also a part of the EDI conversation. If there was gender parity on boards, I feel like that would change the conversation.
GARY | Right, because I guarantee you every major regional theatre that’s searching right now for an artistic director is saying they want to look at people of color and women.
DEVON | The board members don’t reflect that.
GARY | I think when it comes down to it, the board is like, what New York credits do they have?
HALENA | When you’re early in your career, you can do anything. I didn’t sleep. I worked 100 jobs. I loved it. Then I procreated—huge error in my career in Chicago, because then time became money, literal money to pay a human to look after another human while I work. And sometimes that’s “work” in quotes. Nobody wants to say that because we don’t want people to stop hiring mothers, but for me that’s the reality of women leaving Chicago at a certain age. Because it’s just not tenable any more.
CHAY | Do you think it’s true for other cities as well?
HALENA | Probably. I think the gender parity issue comes up everywhere. Eventually, money and time become an issue.
CHAY | In an ideal world, what would you need to function both as parent and artist?
HALENA | The theatre needs to look at our work environment in a way that other industries do. The theatre thinks we’re so progressive, but we’re so backwards when it comes to this. I mean the places that I’ve pumped milk in my life are so foul and not private I can’t even tell you. And while I can say we’re taking a 20-minute break because I’ve got two boobs, theatre isn’t structured for the realities of parenting. We all work a six-day-a-week schedule and it’s beautiful, but it’s very challenging. And that’s true for men that have families, too.
I have a whole standup routine of the guy, and I’ve seen this literally, who brings his baby to rehearsal and everyone’s like, “You’re amazing!” I brought my baby once and people did not respond that way.
GUS | What a hero.
HALENA | What a hero this guy was. And I was pretty unprofessional that day.
GUS | I was at the TCG Conference two years ago in Portland, and I remember there was talk of the sea change happening at several theatres. I remember a white woman stood up and was like, “I’m just worried about being replaced by a young person of color.” I remember being like, “Wow. You really went there, lady.”
There’s a part of me that thinks that maybe at a larger level that leadership shift is happening. I hope it’s also because audiences are shifting.
CHAY | There have been some directors who say that certain plays need to be directed by certain people. For example, a play written by a woman has to be directed by a woman and a play written by a certain artist of color has to be directed by someone in that community. What are your thoughts on this issue?
DEVON | I think it’s case-by-case. I don’t think there should be a blanket rule. I know for myself I will probably never direct August Wilson, and that is okay. I will appreciate and love those plays. But there are other plays by African American artists I would love to direct, and I would make the case that I am exactly the right person to direct them. So I just think it depends on the play.
CHAY | Are there plays you shouldn’t direct? Is there a “rule” we should abide?
DEVON | Well, August Wilson is writing for a community that I am not a part of, so I think his plays deserve a director from that community to honor who the work is intended for. So, maybe that is part of the rule. And with new work, it’s often: do I have a relationship with the playwright?
GARY | August really stipulated that he wanted his plays to be done by African American directors. I respect that. God, I would kill to do an August Wilson play, but whether I’m right or not, that’s just selfish. But I’ve been asked to do things that are far from my own experience. Paula Vogel said it wasn’t important that the director of Indecent be Jewish. She was more concerned about the musicality of the artistry, and finding the right person to tackle that aspect of the show. I tend to trust and believe the playwright. But I think there’d be nothing more boring for me than a play that’s generally about the life I live.
HENRY | I think generalizations are dangerous, period. I certainly don’t ever want someone to say I can’t direct a Shakespeare play because I’m not British, or I can’t direct Sam Shepard because I’m not white.
CHAY | You’ve had that said to you?
HENRY | Yes, but not to my face. But I do think it’s hard. I wonder if August was that insistent because he understood that opportunities for African American directors were much fewer and farther between than for other directors. I think in general, when a story is so particular to a community, it stands to reason that a director from that community will be able to help usher and flesh out the story with lived, personal experience. That said, I think Lisa Peterson can direct a kick-ass version of Electricidad [Luis Alfaro’s adaptation of Electra at Center Theatre Group in 2005], and I would never say that she couldn’t. So I think that while we have to always make sure that opportunities are there for people that are underrepresented, we have to continue to envision a day where theatre can just be theatre.
CHIKA | I wonder if part of the conversation is the question of who is in your room? Who are the casting agents, theatre schools, literary offices, etc. thinking of? Because that’s who you’re pulling from. Especially as a young freelance director—this is very selfish, but one of the only ways I can move up is through working with living playwrights. Sometimes I do question, “Why that particular director with that particular playwright?” It’s complicated, but it’s also part of a larger conversation to me on the nature of theatre in America, and who has access where.
HENRY | Something that I think is true about Chicago theatre is that here you can go to almost any theatre and, at some point, get to talk to the artistic director and say, “I have an idea.” Sometimes you can say, “Hey, there’s this awesome young director, and I really think you should know her.”
CHAY | Are we saying that we have a directing community in Chicago? I know all of you. I’ve seen most everyone’s work, but we haven’t all found a way to collide more frequently, more collectively. Why is that? Is it geography or time, given that Chicago directors work all the time?
GUS | Facebook also lies to us, because it makes us feel like we are all connected, but really we are just connecting with avatars of each other. I think that you see it when we are together, even if that’s at the bar or at the ALTA Awards, or people making fun of the Jeff Awards at the Jeff Awards. That’s the Chicago theatre community. That feels real to me.
“We just do theatre whether we have the resources or not.”
– Devon de Mayo
HENRY | That’s what I miss most about going to bars and being an older adult person with a family and all that. I envy you. I remember those days.
GUS | It’s probably true in every big city, but my god. The great conversations you have in bars and the people you see from other shows and other companies.
GARY | I think we also assume that anybody who’s been here for a bit of time must be one of us, or they would’ve already left. I’ve brought actors to Chicago because I thought they would love that experience. I’d work with them in New York or Williamsport, and I could tell they would die for the experience of working in a Chicago ensemble. I think it’s important that we share that. If we identify people that are like-minded, that we bring them here.
CHAY | What hopes do you have for our community? Where do you see Chicago theatre in five to 10 years?
GUS | I hope we jumpstart that new audience we talk about. I hope that every generation finds that connection and/or continues that connection upwards. Because the work is going to continue to get better and better and better. And I hope that there are lots of people to see it happen.
CHIKA | My hope is that theatre artists can continue to find homes for their work and for themselves. I hope for sustainable models of theatremaking for the new Millennial generation.
DEVON | I hope that we have a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright in the next five years be a Chicagoan. Because I think our playwrights are incredible right now and that should happen.
HENRY | I hope that we can, especially in Chicago, have conversations about things like legacy, and representation, and resist the temptation to be vicious in the meantime.
HALENA | I agree with Henry. There is a kindness and an empathy that you can have for the experiences that the artists before us have had. This is an ongoing conversation, and I feel like Chicago can remain a community that draws all of these young artists to it. And I hope that we can sustain those artists so that they don’t go away when they turn 35.
CHAY | My own struggle with theatre is we often preach to the converted, people who share the same belief system as us. I’m wondering if there’s another model in Chicago where we can invite other people, who may not vote nor believe in the same God like us, to experience a theatre work with us. We can feel, laugh, breathe together in the same space. We don’t have to agree, but the fact that we can sit together and dialogue about what we saw could be a potential shift in making us more unified as a country.
GUS | At a show recently, I overheard someone saying, “Oh well, how could you humanize these types of people?” Meaning really terrible people, and I just remember thinking, “That is literally what we’re supposed to be doing.” We’re trying to engender empathy. I don’t feel like I’m gonna change anybody’s mind about something, but maybe I can have them recognize a shared humanity.
GARY | Doing plays is not getting easier for me. It’s more challenging, more frightening, more demanding. It doesn’t get easier at all.
GUS | Oh. Good to know, good to know.
GARY | I always find I have a lot more to learn. You have to embrace that. I love doing work more than I ever have, but it’s not easier. It’s more worthwhile.
CHAY | Thank you all for your time and incredible thoughts on the state of our art and craft.
“I challenge our current theatre leaders in Chicago to groom and mentor the next generation of leaders, especially people of color and women.” – Chay Yew
Photos by Laua Alcala Baker
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