Polarity vs. Redmoon

The Fighting Polarity

But fortunately – two Polarity familes stepped up.  In first place with the most representation were the Trabue-Eppersons (or Epperson-Trabues) – with Jason “Front Line Slammer” Epperson shoring up the team and the lovely Abby “Got My Hands Full But I Still Look Good” Trabue cheering us on with the help of Jack “I’ll Be a Player Next Year” and Little Ethan “Mommy’s Chest is Much Cooler than Anywhere You Are” helping her out.  And then the fabulous Mathyer family rounded out the team: Mark “I May Have a Farmer’s Tan But I’ll Dive For It” Mathyer and his lovely (and fortunately very athletic) daughters Emily “Digging Them Off the Back Row” and Mary “Firing Them Back Over the Net.”  Well, there was also me, Laura “Sand Between My Teeth” Sturm, diving a lot and occasionally managing to hit a ball.  More diving than hitting, but …

The Trophy!

Our championship (and only) match was with the lovely (and RIDICULOUSLY athletic) Redmoon Theatre team.  It was a tough match, but they triumphed in the end.  Well, they actually kicked our butts sideways and backwards, but we all managed to have a lot of fun (even if most of us are still removing sand from the crevices of our body).  I will say for us a) We could have been a LOT worse and b) We played with passion – running and leaping and diving and working hard!

Keith Anwar, Playwright

[July 12, 2010 By Joan Giangrasse Kates, (c) Chicago Tribune]

Keith Anwar repaired trains and wrote plays with equal pride.

A maintenance technician with the Chicago Transit Authority for nearly 25 years, Mr. Anwar’s script “Kabulitis,” an Afghan term for dysentery and other intestinal illnesses, was awarded the 2010 Dionysos Cup at the Chicago Polarity Ensemble Theatre’s Festival of New Plays in June.

Last month, a staged reading of Mr. Anwar’s script was performed at the theater, and a fully staged play is being considered for the 2011-12 theater season.

“His reading had the force and emotional impact of a fully performed play,” said Richard Engling, co-founder and artistic director of the Polarity Ensemble Theatre. “That rarely happens and only with a great script.”

Mr. Anwar, 58, died of liver cancer on Monday, July 5, in his Oak Park home, his family said.

Mr. Anwar’s father was a native of Afghanistan who with his Brooklyn-born wife took part in an ill-fated attempt to promote secularism and modern thinking in mid-20th century Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan his parents received numerous death threats, in part because his mother refused to yield to demands she wear a veil — a stance her husband supported — and eventually were forced to leave the country.

“Kabulitis,” a touching drama based on his mother’s experiences, tells the story of an elderly American woman in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease who is haunted by memories of Afghanistan.

His parents returned to New York, where Mr. Anwar was born and raised. He received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1974 from Brandeis University, near Boston, then moved to Chicago and began working for Inland Steel Co. in East Chicago.

“He had studied the labor movement in college and then found himself experiencing firsthand the hard realities involving workers’ rights,” said his wife of 23 years, Connie Pfiffner.

In 1979, as a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 1010, Mr. Anwar was fired for his refusal to cross the picket line of another USWA local at that plant, his family said.

The campaign to get Mr. Anwar reinstated generated widespread support among steelworkers in the Chicago-Gary area. That support was critical in obtaining a favorable decision on his grievance by the National Labor Relations Board.

But the board’s decision was overturned in 1983 by a federal appeals court that backed the company, Mr. Anwar’s family said.

“Keith had acted in defense of a tradition that built the industrial unions in this country: Picket lines mean don’t cross,” said his brother, Bruce.

Mr. Anwar worked for two other Chicago-area manufacturing plants before landing a job as a maintenance technician with the CTA nearly 25 years ago.

“Keith took great pride in being what he called a ‘train repair man,’” his wife said.

Several years ago, Mr. Anwar joined the Oak Park Writers Group, Chicago Dramatists and the Dramatists Guild. He began writing a series of short plays, many of which were given staged readings in area theaters.

G Riley Mills and actor Turk Miller in rehearsal

Creating and developing a new work is never an easy task for a playwright but it is hardly any easier for a theatre or producer. It can be risky business and it takes a special commitment on the part of a producer or artistic director to take a chance on a play that has no brand name or built-in audience.

Which is why the work that Polarity Ensemble Theatre does with its Dionysos Cup Festival of New Plays is so extraordinary.

I had the great fortune of having my newest play, Deaths and Devils, selected as one of the four scripts chosen for the 2010 Dionysos Cup. To me, new plays are like lonely little orphans in the world, wandering through the wilderness looking for someone to take them in and give them a home. In Polarity and the Dionysos Cup, I found just the warm safe place I was looking for.

I first came across the inspiration for Deaths and Devils a few years back when I read a blurb in a magazine about John R. Brinkley, a curious and colorful character from the 1920s who made $12 million during the Great Depression by claiming he could cure impotent men by replacing their testicles with the healthy glands of the goat! Of course, being drawn to history and historical figures, I was immediately intrigued and began reading every book and article I could find about Brinkley. What I discovered was amazing. Not only had Brinkley been a wildly successful doctor in his lifetime, he was also a politician, a filmmaker and a pioneer of early radio (as well as a serial killer, of sorts)! I immersed myself in the world of John R. Brinkley, researching and sketching out the bones of what would eventually become Deaths and Devils.

Every playwright’s process is a little bit different. For me, I start writing the scenes that come to me first (the low hanging fruit, as it were). This meant, in the case of Deaths and Devils, that I began with the final courtroom confrontation between Brinkley and his nemesis. After about a year or writing and rewriting, I had finally completed the first draft of the script. Now (as any playwright knows) the most painful and difficult part of being a playwright really comes after the play is finished. There you are (at last!) with this exciting new work. But where do you go now? What do you do with it?

The sad truth is that few theater companies have the resources available to dedicate to the staging and development of completely new works. Also, new plays don’t generally come in neat little packages like the crisp, new scripts ordered from Samuel French. By their very nature, new plays are flawed, ugly little beasts—often overwritten, with characters that are underdeveloped and scenes that drag on too long or are simply extraneous. Of course, these are negative aspects to some, but for me, these are the attributes that make a new play so beautiful. New works need to be developed, read out loud and given the opportunity to be rewritten. It is this essential refining process (just like with diamonds) that makes a new play sparkle.

I have been fortunate enough over the years to have had plays commissioned and produced by such theaters as Lookingglass, Prop, Timeline, Emerald City and Chicago Children’s Theatre, among others. Each development process is a little bit different. With the Dionysos Cup, we had only four rehearsals before presenting the play to a paying audience at Polarity. Not a lot of time. Plus Death and Devils is a big show, with a large cast, that sweeps through time, much the same as a movie like The Aviator or There Will Be Blood. So the pressure was on from the start.

Fortunately, in Darren Callahan and Polarity, I had some very ambitious partners.

As anyone who has attended any previous Dionysos Cups knows, these are not run-of-the-mill play readings with actors sitting around a table. These are ambitious staged readings with lighting cues, sound cues, costumes and props. Darren Callahan—our brilliant and talented director—was a machine, pushing not only the cast, but also me as a playwright to go further in these four rehearsals then I had probably ever gone in any other new play development process. What was also exciting and inspiring, was that Polarity (specifically Richard, Ann and Laura) allowed us to do the work we needed to do while supporting us every step of the way. Add a scene? Go for it! Cut a character? Why not!

The process of the Dionysos Cup allowed me to continue to refine the script even between the first public reading and the second one. After each reading, there was a brief talkback. Though painful in some instances, talkbacks are essential in the process of new play development. To be able to hear firsthand what audience members took away from the story and characters (that for so long have been living only inside of your head) is invaluable. Audience feedback can be very eye opening and can provide a playwright with entirely new ways of thinking about a scene or character that might never have dawned on them before.

I am extremely grateful to have been a part of the 2010 Dionysos Cup New Play Festival. Death and Devils took enormous strides forward because of its inclusion—becoming a tighter, richer, and more exciting play in the process. There are few theatres in Chicago that display the level of commitment that Polarity does to the development of new works (especially new works not written by a company’s ensemble member). For that reason, we should celebrate by raising a glass to both Polarity and, more specifically, the Dionysos Cup itself. Without the support of incubators such as these, where would the great new plays of tomorrow come from?

–G. Riley Mills
June 2010

Richard Engling, Artistic Director

Artistic Director Richard Engling: I am pleased to announce that Keith Anwar has won the Dionysos Cup for his script, Kabulitis, a truly touching, human drama with great characters, innovative story-telling and wonderful dialogue. The award will be presented at our June 19 Benefit and Season Preview. Congratulations to Keith and to Kabulitis director Laura Sturm, dramaturg Ann Keen, and a stellar cast including Susan Monts-Bologna, Brent Barnes, Ashley Moret, Rachael Proulx, Kamal Hans, Tesh Malhotra, Glenn Stanton, Adam El-Sharkawi and Zach Overstreet. Together they put on a staged reading that had the emotional impact of a fully-staged play. And thanks to the insightful audiences who gave Keith such great feedback after the performances to assist him with future revisions. Your input is invaluable.

This year’s Dionysos Cup Festival of New Plays was our best yet, featuring wonderfully staged readings with terrific casts and attracting our largest audiences for the festival ever. All four scripts were fascinating works for the theatre, and each received an extensive development cycle beginning in February. The playwrights are in the last stage of that now as they prepare their final revisions to submit for consideration in our 2011-2012 season. 

Keith Anwar, Playwright

Playwright Keith Anwar: No sooner had the Dionysos plays been announced than I received a note of encouragement from David Alex, a well-known Chicago playwright who had been through the 2008 Dionysos Cup, telling me it had been “a great experience”: “The company members are great; you and your play will profit from the process.” Was he ever right!

In the critique process with director Laura Sturm and dramaturg Ann Keen, and in a table reading about six weeks into the program, I tried to concentrate on the most fundamental of the criticisms. At times the revisions were severe–I think I might have frightened my collaborators that I was setting out to write an entirely new play. At one point Laura was casting for a main character that I had decided to do away with! But remarkably, despite major cuts, additions and alterations, Kabulitis remained true to the vision that had nourished the script from the very start.

In its current form, in fact, Kabulitis is very much the play I’ve been trying to write for four years. And for that I am deeply indebted to the Polarity Ensemble Theatre and their terrific program of new play development.

I submitted my play last fall to the Dionysos Cup without high expectations. Despite many drafts and several table readings, the script was still in rough shape. Its strengths were a compelling back story, which managed to be historical and topical at the same time, and the unforgettable character of Mildred, a fighter to the end. Attached to these elements were a number of half-sketched characters, confusing plot lines and a load of expository dialogue. In selecting Kabulitis for development in the Dionysos Cup, the Polarity Ensemble was able to recognize the inner power of this story and insist on a script that would give it its due credit.

Ann Keen, Dramaturg

Dramaturg (and Managing Director) Ann Keen: When I read Keith’s script, I immediately wanted to be dramaturg. The script was already so powerful when I first read it – but there were times it read like a novel. On my first meeting Keith, I wanted to know where he had gained his inspiration. I wanted to understand his process to this point. He simply replied “the inspiration is real life.” The story was based on true facts and stories of his parents and their journey. It is true that sometimes Real Life is better than fiction, but sometimes life does not give us the “best highlights strung together in 2 hours.” So the next steps seemed clear.

Once we started working on it, we wanted to make sure that we preserved the story but occasionally heightened the drama. The script took on a whole new journey. Not just the story of Afghanistan, but treatment of the elderly–painful decisions that we sometimes have to make for our parents, the sad truth of Alzheimer’s, and so many others. Keith approached this story as a testimony to the lives of his parents and their journey. Through the Dionysos Cup process, I think we all realized that the testimony is now much more far-reaching. Keith was so open to the process, and for me, as his dramaturg, it was a pleasure to watch him take our input into the world he created (with the help of his parents) and creatively forge new paths.

Please join us as we present the 2010 Dionysos Cup (hand-crafted by Polarity patron and blown-glass artist James Hobart) at our June 19th Benefit.

Part two of the podcast: Death & Devils Interview, Part Two.

Darren Callahan

Darren Callahan, director and playwright, filed this report from the front lines of the 2010 Dionysos Cup festival, coming this May 13th through May 23rd from Polarity Ensemble Theatre.

Death! Devils! No, this is not a posting about one of the horror plays that I’ve sorta-kinda gotten known for in the Chicago theatre scene (such as Horror Academy or The White Airplane.) In fact, this isn’t one of my plays at all – I’m just the lowly director. But, don’t worry, as P.T. Anderson once famously declared: There Will Be Blood.

G. Riley Mills, Justin Cagney and Zach Uttich

Death & Devils is G. Riley Mills’ exceptional true-life drama about early 20th century charlatan John R. Brinkley. Settling in Kansas with his wife Minnie and his faithful shill Dwight Osborne, Brinkley made millions during the Great Depression. He sold snake oil, built a hospital, published, traveled, ran for Governor, and, not to be overlooked, became known for a suspect medical procedure that cured nearly every ill, a procedure that was particularly known as a cure for male impotence. It’s an absolutely terrific fall-from-grace story in the big tradition of Citizen Kane or All The King’s Men.

As the Dionysos Cup has many dozens of scripts submitted, I was lucky enough to read Death & Devils early in the process and nominate it up. I was absolutely thrilled to snag it when it made the final four. Old fashioned, muscular drama was always something I favored, and I couldn’t ask for a more dynamic and professional script to helped develop.

And the cast. Oh, I got lucky here, too.

Kevin Stark plays the charismatic Brinkley. I saw him in How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found and was blown away. He was one of those actors you can’t stop watching, and you miss when he’s not onstage. I had hoped for a chance to work with him and I’m just glad it came about so soon.

Then there’s Kaela Altman, playing Brinkley’s wife, Minnie. Kaela was in Horror Academy and literally kicked ass. She shot someone with a pistol with her hand stuck in a desk. She shot through a desk, my God! Through a desk! While crying! (Very believably, I should add.)

G. Riley Mills and Turk Miller

Ryan Ben as Dwight Osborne is the perfect mix of everyman appeal and dark humor. He was in my slasher film, Spikes, and is very adept at scaring the crapola out of people, should it come to that.

Turk Muller and Justin Cagney play the dueling lawyers who handle the climactic courtroom showdown with the same intense magic as Inherit the Wind, or Anatomy of a Murder. I love a play that ends in a courtroom – did I mention that? (I even enjoy Bob Clark’s late 80s film From The Hip, with Judd Nelson, for that very reason. So sue me.)

Charley Jordan, longtime Polarity Ensemble Member and Polonius in their acclaimed revival of Hamlet, rocks as pig farmer Bill Stittsworth, Brinkley’s first patient.  I basically needed someone who looks like he could intimidate Kevin Stark, and I think I found ‘em.

Alex Meyerchin and his banjo

Zach Uttich is new to Chicago and hasn’t stopped working. That dude is cast in everything. That should tell you something. He plays a multitude of roles here. Lauren Fisher was in acclaimed The Hopper Project for WNEP. And Alex Meyerchin plays one hell of a singing cowboy.

Now, onward!

John Walski as Davis and Mary Nigohosian as Joan

Playwright Darren Callahan conducted interviews and filed this report:

What is it like to act in a stage production that centers around a tough topic, yet present that topic with enough shades that an audience will respond, not just to the central theme, but to each character’s point-of-view? For Polarity Ensemble Theatre’s World Premiere production of Lisa Rosenthal’s original work The Good Harvest, the cast doesn’t aim for a bulls-eye – it’s more of an explosion that scatters in unexpected directions.

In a pre-show chat with actors Mary Nigohosian (“Joan”) and John Walski (“Davis”) both were candid how the material has played with audiences in the show’s early performances.

“There’s so much drama in the script,” says Ms. Nigohosian, “if the crowd is quiet, you know they’re engaged. There’s not a lot of shuffling in seats. They’re trying to figure out these people.” In a play that, in summary, sounds like a very simple story (woman tries to carry a successful pregnancy after her ideal adoption candidate is killed), there is an immensely complex set of relationships between Joan, Davis, and their triplets.

Continues Mr. Walski, “Davis’s relationship with the triplets is more a part of the story than fertility, or selective reduction, or any of the other controversial topics. Just as with the characters, five different perspectives can bring out five different connections with the audience. One audience member would pick up on a line or an emotion and think, rightly so, that this was the meaning of the scene, whereas for someone who identifies with another perspective would see the outcome completely differently. Lisa’s script is rare in that way.”

When asked about choosing a point of view, an important part of the actor constructing the character, Ms. Nigohosian adds, “Marriage, abandonment, birth – these concepts are so different for people, all depending on where they’re coming from. Our experience has to be the experience of our character. What people have told me about the show, or written about the show, can be very striking, very insightful. But it’s also just as surprising, because sometimes it reflects more of their worldview than the worldview of my character.”

Mr. Walski adds, “Even the funny moments – and there are many good ones – get a different reaction every night. Each audience has its own experience, but what’s important is that they’re paying attention to all the information in the play.”

“There’s no roadmap in the program,” says Ms. Nigohosian. “They have to figure out the story’s backward and forward in time, the ‘who is who’ of it, and it’s our job, along with Richard and Lisa’s, to keep things in place.”

When director Richard Engling’s name is raised, it gives the two actors a chance to comment on his style. “He’s very different from other directors – very positive, but always pushing,” observes Ms. Nigohosian. “He’s made a safe place for us to open our hearts, be vulnerable.” Mr. Walski agrees, “He’s firm with his own choices. He’s known from Day One how to tell this story. It’s the most ‘framed’ script I’ve ever worked with. Lisa’s been working alongside us the entire eight weeks of rehearsals. That’s a testimony to how well this cast and crew works together.”

Performances of The Good Harvest take place at the Polarity Ensemble Theatre in Wicker Park at the Josephinum Academy, 1500 N Bell, Chicago, through May 2, 2010. Showtimes are Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 3pm. Regular performances: $19. $15 seniors over 65. $10 students with ID. All tickets are general admission. Tickets may be purchased by calling 1-800-838-3006 or visiting BrownPaperTickets.com.

The Good Harvest team prepares for an audience event

Playwright Darren Callahan conducted interviews and contributed to this report:

“We have the most exciting audience in town,” says Richard Engling, Artistic Director for Chicago’s Polarity Ensemble Theatre. “That’s why we’re able to do the things we do. There is a risk in bringing new works to the stage. But our audience embraces the adventure of it. They believe that there’s no place like Chicago for theatre. They want to take part in the latest work from our local writers produced by an exciting ensemble of artists who take the time and the care to perfect the vision. That’s why right now is such an exciting time at Polarity. We are in the final weeks of Lisa Rosenthal’s deeply emotional new play The Good Harvest. We are rehearsing the four amazing new plays of the Dionysos Cup, which will open two weeks after The Good Harvest closes. And we are casting Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, the great American classic in which our distinguished guest director Susan Padveen will breathe new life.”

When asked what makes an audience exciting, Engling says: “It’s about the connection they make. It’s a network. They find us because they want to be part of this dialogue. They take part in this ensemble ideal we have that means creating and keeping connections among an ever-widening group of actors, writers, designers, directors and audience. They become an integral part of creating this art. Audience members participated a number of times along the way in shaping The Good Harvest, for instance. And that makes it yet more important to them to see the results. And we continue the dialogue. This Friday (April 23) I’ll host a talk-back event after the performance with playwright Lisa Rosenthal and others. We’ll discuss The Good Harvest and the process of writing and mounting a new play. We’re even going to a Cubs game with our audience.”

What made him interested in this particular play? From Mr. Engling’s perspective, the playwright can sometimes come before the play. “I love the connection Lisa has with us as much as I love the play.” Impressed by Chicago playwright Ms. Rosenthal as a person, as a force, and as a writer, he became committed to developing a partnership that would result in a world premiere.

In 2006, Polarity began its Dionysos Cup Festival of New Plays, a series of staged readings where four plays from Chicago playwrights receive development and two performances each—one of the events in which the audience has a profound and direct influence on the work of the ensemble. Ms. Rosenthal’s Retreat was one of the hits of the festival. This started talk from Polarity about a possible collaboration.

Polarity continued to produce works, such as new takes on Hamlet, Othello in mask, and A Streetcar Named Desire, and also original works, such as the surreal mystery The White Airplane and the genuinely creepy Ghost Watch.

When the 2008 Dionysos Cup rolled around, Ms. Rosenthal’s The Good Harvest made an even more favorable impression with the company. “The play itself is a wonderful portrait of relationships,” says Engling. “But it also has the added drama of obsession that disturbs the characters in the play at the point where it twists all their lives.”

A story of artificial insemination, multiples, and the lost child of Joan, a dead woman who appears in flashbacks, The Good Harvest uniquely refines the family drama to the sharpest point.

“Chicago Dramatists Resident Playwright Lisa Rosenthal’s wonderful new play The Good Harvest paints a compelling and highly original family portrait,” adds Russ Tutterow, Artistic Director of Chicago Dramatists and another champion of Ms. Rosenthal. “She is a ferocious worker who always has more new projects in the works than you would think would be humanly possible – and she somehow manages all of them with great care and detailed attention.”

For instance, Ms. Rosenthal is founder of the international grassroots organization, the Vet Art Project (vetartproject.com). She was inspired by hearing a radio interview with Edward Tick, Ph.D. author of War and the Soul speak about the healing power of storytelling for veterans beyond the peer group and counseling setting. This initiative offers creative arts opportunities for veterans and their family members to learn techniques from artists to explore their stories of war and service, sometimes for public performance. Since beginning this project Rosenthal refers to herself more as a social artist because she says “she can only make art that makes a difference.”

When asked if The Good Harvest, a play that was written before the creation of the Vet Art Project, is still representative of her changing worldview, she thinks for a long moment. “My playwriting is now more connected to war and service, it’s true. But this play speaks to the journey that many experience involving childbirth and again helps us realize there is a community of others who travel our path with us.” The play has undergone quite a few changes since the Dionysos Cup: new scenes and changed order and I’ve eliminated quite a bit of extraneous text. Richard has been a great resource in this refining process, too.” She remains excited by the story and feels that Mr. Engling, who also directed the production, really understood what’s required. Rosenthal also mentions her gratitude to Laura Sturm who directed the reading of this play for the Dionysos Cup and Ann Keen for her helpful feedback, too. Says Rosenthal, “Polarity is a great company of diverse artists and I feel that Richard really is a great collaborator.”

Engling is asked if the play might have a life beyond this production, maybe even a life as long as some of the classics Polarity has taken on. “When we do a new play, we really like to take the playwright’s intention as far as it will go, so it becomes, as much as possible, the definitive version. We go into it with great hope and with great engagement with our audience. There’s not much we can do for Shakespeare that hasn’t been done, but we have a lot of fun doing him. But when we take a new play, we have to give it its absolute best shot at a life beyond that first production.”

Performances of The Good Harvest take place at the Polarity Ensemble Theatre in Wicker Park at the Josephinum Academy, 1500 N Bell, Chicago, through May 2, 2010. Showtimes are Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 3pm. Regular performances: $19. $15 seniors over 65. $10 students with ID. All tickets are general admission. Tickets may be purchased by calling 1-800-838-3006 or visiting BrownPaperTickets.com.