My Wish for 2011 Theater

I've decided in the year of 2011 to build up my blog with more reviews regarding Theater, Music, Television, Movies, Special performances, Solo performances, Reality shows, and Concerts. I promise not one sports review will grace this blog unless it's The Goodman versus Steppenwolf or Patti LuPone going "Million Dollar Baby" on Bernadette Peters (actually after reading her autobiography I think its Lloyd Webber she’d turn into a meat pie.)

I also plan on doing features about theaters in the past that had a profound effect on me in my life. The wonderful theaters of yesteryear like The Candlelight and the Candlelight Forum, Appletree, Drury Lane Evergreen Park, The Briar Street (before it became overrun by those Smurfs), The Wisdom Bridge, Organic, Touchstone, Bailiwick, The Halsted Theatre Center, Wellington/Ivanhoe, St. Nicholas and so many more all the ones that hopefully will not still carry a grudge against me for future reviews. I also want to do pieces of the history of the current theaters in Chicago and what makes them special enough to keep going. Chicago is a wonderful town where we have a tradition that is deep and has produced some amazing things both artistically (some of the things I’ve seen the original "Wings" at the Goodman, famous “Shear Madness” at the Blackstone, or financially a hit "Bleacher Bums at the Organic. The pluses and the negatives are when one theater company falls under another one will raise from the ashes much like the phoenix.

I also would like to do pieces of the local Chicago Actors such as Hollis Resnik (who I used to wait for after every show just to meet her because to me she was IT to me until that time she tried to run me down with her car on the way to Hello,l Dolly! At Amaish Acres), Paula Scrofano and her husband John Reeger, Susan Moniz (vocally the greatest Eva Peron I have ever heard), David Darlow, Mary Ernster, Felicia Fields, Dale Benson, Kathy Taylor, Larry Yando, Henry Godeniz and his wife Nancy Voights, Lisa Dodson, E. Faye Butler, Gene Weygandt, Anne Gunn, and the entire ensemble of Steppenwolf (both past and present, I'm looking at you Jim True and Glenn Headly.)

Even the ones who have moved on to different stages and other mediums like Anne Dudek who was on House but I fondly remember at Court Theatre in both The Iphigenia Cycle and Mirror of the Invisible World at the Goodman Studio theatre, Harry Althaus who with a three way punch knocked me over with the "The Lisbon Traviata", "The Misanthrope" and "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde" gave performances that I haven't and will never forgot. Joan Allen pre Oscar Nomination when she was good enough for the Chicago stage who I remember last seeing on the Steppenwolf Stage opposite Kevin Anderson and Sally Murphy in an out of this world production of Anne Tyler's "Earthly Possessions" or husband and wife team Kathy Santen and Sean Grennan who were so great they were able to move from musical theater Marriott's production of “1776” (where they both played an Adams) to straight drama a searing never forgotten production of "The Marriage of Bette & Boo at Appletree Theatre that had some walk out on and a kid like me never forget.

My hope for this blog is that just like when I was 15 and I ushered my first production of “Curse of the Starving Class” at Steppenwolf Theater that I can pass down my knowledge of what I used to see as legends. I still remember finding out where the stage door was for ever theater in Chicago which wasn’t that hard it usually was the door where the audience went in and I would walk up to the actor, lead or chorus and recite every show they were in and how I even noticed the smallest detail.

StevenD