Since we see so much theatre, plays about what goes on backstage hold a special interest for us. Here are some of our favorites.
(in chronological order)
An Actor Prepares, an adaptation of Stanislavski’s classic text by Mickle Maher: When the play opens, Stanislavski is wrestling with a bad case of writer’s block, hoping that delivering a lecture will sort out his thoughts and enable progress on the book he’s been mulling for 30 years. What could go wrong? The world premiere of An Actor Prepares, directed by Devon de Mayo, took place in 2012 on the University of Chicago campus, in its newly opened Logan Center for the Arts. Stanislavski and his seven alter egos were played by Maher’s Theatre Oobleck colleagues Colm O’Reilly and Diana Slickman, veteran Chicago actors Mildred Marie Langford and Christopher Acevedo, and four University of Chicago students—an interesting lineup for a play about training actors. An Actor Prepares was an unconventional, clever, and thoroughly entertaining journey into preparing for the stage, or at least trying to write about it.
Rich and Famous by John Guare: This offbeat story about a playwright hoping his 844th play will be his big breakthrough is a theatre-of-the-absurd-with-musical-accompaniment delight. Jackalope Theatre Company’s 2013 production, directed by Nate Silver, featured first-rate acting from Andrew Swanson (as the playwright) and Baize Buzan, Bernard Balbot, and Torian Miller (as everyone else). With music direction by Matt Edmonds, the three-piece band perfectly complemented the often surreal (or as one critic described it, Mel Brooksian) action on stage.
The Understudy by Theresa Rebeck: As you can tell from our list of favorite understudy performances, we have a soft spot for actors who step up on short notice to tackle what seems like an impossible task. That’s one of many reasons we enjoyed The Understudy, a charming and very funny play about an understudy rehearsal that doesn’t go as planned, when we saw it at Renaissance Theaterworks in Milwaukee in 2014, directed by Mallory Metoxen. As described in one review, the directorial choice was an interesting backstage story in its own right: “A word needs to be said about Metoxen and the women who run Renaissance, founded two decades ago to provide more opportunities for women in the theater. Metoxen has never directed a professional company before. She is in her mid 20s. But the women who run Renaissance were willing to take the gamble and roll the dice on a self-assured kid who seemed like she might actually be able to do this. On this roll of the dice, they came up with a natural.”
Season on the Line by Shawn Pfautsch: Season on the Line gets our vote for the funniest three-hour-plus play we’ve ever seen. It starts out funny and moves on to hilarious as it gently skewers the foibles of theatre companies, artistic directors, designers, actors, critics, and audiences alike. The House Theatre premiere in 2014, directed by Jess McLeod, featured an ideal cast and a set that wonderfully captured the indoor swimming pool of a defunct motel, where the fictional theatre company performs. The play’s three acts correspond to the three shows in their season: The Great Gatsby, Balm in Gilead, and the megalomaniacal artistic director’s obsession Moby Dick, each depicted from first rehearsal to wrap party. In response to budget problems, the artistic director decrees that they’ll make ends meet by using the same set for all three shows—the set for Moby Dick, of course. Near the end of each act, on a platform looking down on the proceedings, a curtain parts to reveal the critic for the city’s leading newspaper. He’s dressed in a white suit, and in a somber tone delivers his review of that act’s show. Chris Jones in his review of Season on the Line in the Chicago Tribune wryly observed, “It’s probably not overstating things to say that the writer of this review is cast as the whale.” Then he adds, “That may be my considerable ego talking; the world has many critics.” In what is one of our all-time favorite reviews, he had more to say about the critic in the play: “He also has a habit of showing up to the final preview, rather than the opening night, claiming that bigger theater companies command his attention on other nights. So it is surely apropos that this review is, merely by coincidence, based on the last preview performance of Season on the Line.”
Music Hall by Jean-Luc Lagarce, translated by Joseph Long: Most backstage plays tend to be comedies or satires based on the travails of theatrical life. Music Hall, directed by Zeljko Djukic for TUTA Theatre Chicago in 2015 is not without its humor, but the pathos and vulnerability of life on the stage are what stay with you long after the curtain falls. We included TUTA’s production of this fragile and poetic play in our Less Is More page because the direction, acting, and staging captured the poignancy of a theatrical career’s decline in a way we’d never seen on stage.
