JEFF NOMINATIONS ARE OUT:

A Red Orchid Theatre lands

7 Nominations!

  

Including nominations for:

 

*Production -- Abigail's Party

*Ensemble -- Abigail's Party

*New Work -- Craig Wright's Mistakes Were Made

*Director -- Shade Murray's Abigail's Party

*Actor in Prinicpal Role -- Michael Shannon in Mistakes Were Made

*Actress in Principal Role -- Kirsten Fitzgerald in Abigail's Party

*Actress in Supporting Role -- Natalie West in Abigail's Party

 

 

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!

 

 

And a sincere thank you to all our designers, directors, writers, technicians, performers, administrators, interns, board of directors and audience. Without whom none of this would be possible.

  

For a full list of 2009-2010 Nominees, check out JEFF's site

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Individual tickets for our first show of the 2010/11 season, LOUIS SLOTIN SONATA, are on sale now!! Grab those tickets, you won't want to miss out on this explosive production. 

Call us at 312.943.8722 between the hours of 12:30 and 5 on weekdays

OR jump on our website at www.aredorchidtheatre.org and order your tickets online.

We are very excited for the show, and we would love to share it with you.

So join us and get your tickets today!

We at A Red Orchid know it's that time of the year again...

 The time when sweet, sticky summer slowly makes it way back to bed, and leaves the front door open for crisp autumn to stroll straight on in. And as much as we'd all like to keep that summer feeling for longer and hold on to it's nostalgia, fall has started to creep on in, bringing the start of schools, long coats, colorful trees, hot chocolate, and new beginnings. And what goes better with your fall coat or the vibrant trees, than the beginning of a fresh Season here at A Red Orchid Theatre?


Don't be fooled, the weather may be cooling down, but we are just warming up...


FROM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, KIRSTEN FITZGERALD -

 On the heals of our most successful season to date, we maintain that theatre is potentially the greatest sustenance for the human spirit. Are we more ambitious animals than moral ones? More curious than kind? The exploring of these questions is often hilarious, sometimes horrifying and always carries the potential for deepened intimacy. Paul Mullen (our first playwright this season) recently posited that "theatre at it's best exists at the intersection of the intimate and the sublime." I would ad that life at it's best exists at that same intersection. As always, our 2010-2011 productions have been hand picked by our artistic ensemble.

drum roll please....

THE 2010/2011 SEASON:

The Midwest Premiere of
Louis Slotin Sonata

By Paul Mullin

Directed by Ensemble Member Karen Kessler

Will our innate curiosity and confidence kill us or lead us to greater awakenings? At 3:20 PM on Tuesday, May 21, 1946 Louis Slotin's hand slipped—a small, practically insignificant blunder, except that Slotin was the chief -bomb builder at Los Alamos, and at that fateful moment he held in his hands a plutonium bomb core named "Rufus". With a structure inspired by classical music's sonata allegro form, Louis Slotin Sonata traces the true story of a brilliant scientist's last nine days, as his body and mind gradually succumb to the chaos wrecked by radiation.
 

Homer’s The Iliad
By Craig Wright

Adapted from Robert Fagles’ translation

Directed by Steve Wilson and featuring the young women of the A Red Orchid Youth Ensemble

Adapted by Craig Wright specifically for our young, all-female cast, this version of The Iliad offers a provocative and playful new spin on Homer’s age-old tale of the Trojan War. Vengeance, loyalty, or honor: which is most important? And, in this saga of bloody battles and huge male egos, where exactly do women and children fit in? Packed with swordplay, gender politics, and even a few songs, this is one war you don’t want to miss.

The Midwest Premiere of

The New Electric Ballroom

By Enda Walsh

Directed by Robin Witt

Featuring Ensemble Member and founding Artistic Director, Guy Van Swearingen

Trapped in the years that have passed since their halcyon days at The New Electric Ballroom, three sisters relive memories of something resembling romance with hilarious and horrible effect. Interruptions from the local fishmonger only remind of the dangers of love and life outside. Words, in Mr. Walsh’s harsh but illuminating vision, are both the making of experience and its destruction. How do we share our history and how does it shape us?

 

Machiavelli’s The Mandrake

Adapted by Peter Constantine

Directed by Steve Scott

A young Italian merchant, Callimaco, dreams of loving the beautiful Lucrezia, but there are several obstacles. Lucrezia is married (to a real pea-brain) and her virtue seems beyond reproach. Callimaco enlists the help of Ligurio who devises an extraordinarily complicated, and hilarious, plan; Involving a corrupt Priest, Lucrezia’s mother, and the root of the Mandrake. With everyone behaving so badly, can anyone possibly win?
 
 
 
 

We want to share this fresh beginning, this exciting season, with you!

So call 312.943.8722 to subscribe to our season Flashpasses!

 

 

Yours truly,

 

A Red Orchid Theatre

 

 

Alright, just when we thought the smoke from our 2010 season had cleared...

Check out pg 94 for
the "Best of Theatre 2010"

Chicago Magazine's "Best of Chicago" issue just ended our explosive 2010 season with another blaze, launching A Red Orchid Theatre to stand with last season's theatre "standouts".

Among other brilliant Chicago artists such as director Rachel Rockwell, playwright Tanya Saracho, actor Francis Guinman, and Larry Adams, A Red Orchid has been recognized as a serious force to be reckoned with.

Chicago Magazine's Catey Sullivan writes:

There are other ferociously loyal ensembles in town, but only A Red Orchid has the ability to rip open the emotional jugular at point-blank range. Even with an Emmy nominee (Craig Wright), an Oscar nominee (Michael Shannon), and a fireman/artist (Guy Van Swearingen), the company operates on a stage the size of a walk-in closet. When Shannon had the fire-alarm meltdown in Wright's Mistakes Were Made, it seemed like the place would explode. (Which, by the way, it has. In Blasted, a bomb blew up the entire set four times a week.) When Kirsten Fitzgerald started pouring cocktails in Abigail's Party, we shrank in our seats, praying she wouldn't offer us one.

It appears we hit a nerve.

We're sending this city's pulse vibrating right into next season!

Come and Join ABIGAIL'S PARTY one last time at Theatre on the Lake!

ABIGAIL'S PARTY

Written by Mike Leigh

Directed by Shade Murray

Featuring Kirsten Fitzgerald, Mierka Girten, Larry Grimm, Steve Wilson and Natalie West


The year is 1977, the place somewhere in suburban England. While fifteen-year-old Abigail is throwing a raucus party, the adults have gathered down the street to party on their own. As the night goes on and the drinks are poured, the night goes horrifically and hilariously awry, laying bare the obsessions, prejudices, flaws and aspirations of the guests. Developed through improvisation by the original cast, thirty years later Abigail's Party has become a classic comedy of manners and a scathing satire that still offers timely social commentary and forces us to question our assumptions about relationships with one another.


GET YOUR TICKETS NOW, Abigail's Party runs from June 30th to July 4th!

June 30-July 3 at 7:30 pm

*July 4 at 6:30 pm

*Come and stay for the fireworks!


Call the Box Office for Theatre on the Lake today at (312)-742-87994 to reserve your seats! General admission tickets are $17.50 each! For more information, visit the Theatre on the Lake Website at www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/theatreonthelake

Praise from the production:

"AT ONCE HILARIOUS, CORROSIVE AND POIGNANT"-- Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times

"THE VIBE IS AS RELENTLESSLY GROOVY AS THE MOOD LIGHTING AND THE PINEAPPLE-AND-CHEESE-CHUNKS CANAPES. BEVERLY IS DETERMINED THAT EVERYONE HAVE FUN. EVEN IF SHE HAS TO BRUTALIZE THEM WITH THE HI-FI."-- Catey Sullivan, Chicago Examiner

"ABIGAIL'S IS ONE SOIREE THAT'S NOT TO BE MISSED"- Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

"ABIGAIL'S PARTY AT A RED ORCHID NAILS SUBURBAN ENNUI"-- Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED with 3.5 stars

Don't miss out!

Getting Ready to Party...

Previews for Abigail's Party are this Friday, February 12th and Saturday, February 13th at 8:00 PM, and Sunday the 14th at 3:00 PM. Check out what we're working on...

Wouldn't you like to party here? Call (312) 943-8722 for tickets!

A New Year, A New Sign

We're starting off 2010 in style with a gorgeous new sign outside of A Red Orchid's Wells St. home. 

How I Became an Orchid

by Co-Founder and Ensemble member Larry Grimm

I have spent much of my life trying to justify being an…… actor.  At moments I have even denied that I was an actor. But this little theatre will keep you a little honest and that’s where my story begins.

After I graduated college I won a post-graduate fellowship. In short, I was awarded a chunk of change to travel around the globe writing about cultural differences in comedy ( I was fascinated by stand-up at the time – in the 80’s there was a big stand-up comedy boom and I falsely thought it was more powerful than theatre ever could be.) And although I had fleeting thoughts about being a post 90’s Gilbert Gottfried ( hey --I was 21)  and knew in my soul that I was an actor, this fellowship thing was an extremely convenient way to blanket myself in a protective pseudo-academia, to detach and insulate from being the dreaded  and clichéd image of a starving and unemployed actor. When I came back to Chicago and started doing shows, one of which was a breakaway sensation for Red Orchid called “Born Guilty”, it was clear that the bug had bitten in a way that was impossible to hide from.

But hey, that didn’t mean I couldn’t still try to hide.

If I was going to be an actor around town, I thought, I would not make the mistake of joining a dysfunctional theatre company that thought they could offer some new and cutting edge style of performance to the already crowded and overly noble minded storefront scene.

I had already witnessed the theatre’s founder, Guy Van Swearingen, go through a painful changing of the guard with the initial ensemble he created so when Guy, his sister Jody and Mike Shannon approached me with the idea of being an ensemble member, I shared a polite “Thanks, but no thanks.” I soon found out that the theatre already had stationary made and my name was listed under the ensemble heading.  I guess they weren’t expecting me to turn them down. In Guy’s characteristic warm-hearted fire house humor he said, “Don’t worry Lar, we’ll keep your name on the stationary even though you don’t want to be an ensemble member”. Although I think this was less a token of kindness and more about not wanting to pay for new stationary, I was touched enough to be roped in for the rest of the “new ensemble meeting”.

The meeting’s key highlight was Guy administering the four person gathering with a strict adherence to Robert’s Rules of Order as if we were members of the city council and Mike pacing back and forth mumbling, “This theatre needs to make more money this year than it ever has. We need to have a benefit that makes a f*** of a lot of money.” I smiled and thought privately, “This place is never gonna make it – I made the right decision.”  But the fact was that a decision had been made for me. In the same way that I fooled myself into thinking I could be a stoic non-participant in stand-up comedy, a detached academic observer of a craft, I foolishly thought that my name could remain on the company stationary and that I wouldn’t have to participate. I could move on.

I haven’t moved on. I remain today, ironically, a cofounder of the ensemble when what I initially offered was nothing but a firm commitment of tepid reluctance. But like much of A Red Orchid’s affairs things are unofficially official.  A Red Orchid is a little theatre that keeps you a little honest -  a theatre that keeps you whether you want to be on the stationary or not. A little like…. your family.

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See Larry in Red Orchid's upcoming Chicago Premiere of Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh