I came to Chicago in the Fall of 1980 after doing the summer season at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Bloomington/Normal. I re-connected with actor Frank Farrell (who I had met when we both were members of the Merrimack Theater Company in Manchester, NH the year before). Frank was doing workshops a theater space controlled by Paul Sills (the space would later become the home of the Practical Theater Company, and then convert to Second City, etc). These workshops were based on Frank’s time at the RSC in London where he learned from John Russell Brown, a foremost expert on the performance of Shakespeare.
In “Free Shakespeare,” Russell Brown taught that Shakespeare’s plays must be performed in a robust and physical manner – taking into account the production and performance conditions of that the Bard worked under. SO – we started to do full length Shakespeare plays without a director or rehearsal! The Free Shakespeare Company was started in 1981 – Chicago’s first year-found Shakespeare theater!
We soon incorporated as a nonprofit and I became the Managing Director and learned about boards of directors, accounting, marketing, grant writing, and record keeping! I started a school education program, a full length touring program, and produced the first full length Shakespeare in Lincoln Park. We then produced “The Comedy of Errors” at at Oz Park where it was so successful it spawned the Oz park Festival.
Pegasus Players Theatre
I was the Managing Director at Pegasus Theatre for five years from 1985 to 1990 when it was known as Pegasus Players. I prduced over thirty shows there which won something like 15 Jefferson Awards for Exfellence in Theater – including one year when we won for Best Play (“Noises Off”) and Best Musical (“Anyone Can Whistle”). I introduced the computer to our management system in 1986, started the first health care coverage for non-union actors and stage workers, started the “flex ticket” concept, created what would become the theater ad co-op program which we handed off to the League of Chicago Theatres, and created the Advocacy Committee for the League. I pioneered the co-production concept at Pegasus and twice had three shows running at the same time. When I started, there was about 220 subscribers and when I left we were over 1,500. I created the Chicago Young Playwrights Festival for Pegasus in 1986 and in 2024 they will produce the 37th edition! I estimate that over 15,000 teens have writen plays for this program. We were well known fro producing the works of Stpehen Sondheim – including the first theatrical run of “Frogs” which was done in the simming pool at Truman College! I also produced the first production of an August Wilson play in Chicago, “Ma Rainey’s Blck Bottom,” which ran for over a year and introduced the amazing Harry Lennix to Chicago audiences.
To see some images from those days…
