Being Bohemian: Eleanor Katz

BoHo Theatre Company Member and Studio Liaison Eleanor Katz explores what it means to be bohemian:

Our Chicago theatre community is special in many ways. Since moving here six years ago, I have found it to be welcoming, generous, loving and creative beyond measure. I have lived all around the world and consistently find my true home and comfort when I am with my fellow magic makers. In Chicago, this happened amongst a group of artists with the biggest hearts on their broad shoulders – my Bohemians.

I remember being in callbacks for Hauptmann and having the opportunity to explore and really play with the role for which I was reading. It was my first glimpse into BoHo as a company and how things operated. During the rehearsal process, we were taken care of, treated with the utmost respect and our imaginations were given the opportunity to flourish.

Flash forward to a coffee shop in the dead of winter about a year later, and my conversation with Executive Director Kaela Altman, about my desire to become a company member. It wasn’t just the experience that I had had on stage in a wonderful production, it was the sense of community that made me want to have my artistic home in Chicago be with BoHo. I was willing to help anywhere I was needed and be a pretty loud cheerleader as well! What I found was that I wasn’t unique in my enthusiasm. That is our entire company’s mantra. Being bohemian is having an open and free spirit that is full of kindness and commitment. We are small but mighty and everyone is willing to do their part, whether it be picking up a last minute item and running it over to the space for a renter, buying toilet paper and paper towels for our studio when we’ve run out or covering a box office shift because one of our company members went into labor 2 weeks early.

OK, full disclosure, that last one was me.

In early June of this year, I gave birth to our first child, Zev Miguel. My husband, Justin, and I had struggled to conceive for two and a half years but, in the end, we had the kiddo we were supposed to have. We firmly believe that. That span of time was one of the most difficult chapters in our lives and my fellow company members were with me every step of the way. They hurt when I hurt, helped me laugh through that pain and, ultimately, celebrated his arrival with the kind of joy and support that is characteristically BoHo. As a family, being bohemian means not having to ask or explain why our baby has to attend company meetings, audition monitoring or strikes. He’s a part of me and, therefore, a part of BoHo. He will know what it is like to be raised by a theatre family. It’s the best upbringing we can imagine. It is filled with originality, acceptance, diversity, joy and magnificent stories! We are so very lucky.

The "Being Bohemian" blog series first appeared during BoHo's celebrated 10th season. What does Bohemianism and BoHo Theatre mean to you? Let us know in the comments or on Facebook!

The Most Important Things

It's very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activities of running a theater company: who's going to go to the bank? Can someone check the mail? Did anyone get toilet paper for the theater? We need to schedule a meeting - who's available? Some days, it can be overwhelming and other days, incredibly humbling. But as we reflect on another year gone, Peter and I both find ourselves so genuinely grateful for every single moment that 2015 have provided.

Speaking from our hearts, it's been such a wonderful year: the Company celebrated two weddings and welcomed two beautiful babies who will now be considered lifelong Bohemians. Some company members branched out, pursuing higher education and seeking promotions while others sought new employment opportunities all together. Most days, I remind myself to mindfully stop, breathe, and soak in the fact that every single day is spent sharing and creating theatre with the most passionate group of people I've had the pleasure of knowing.

Gratitude comes from memories, built from a wealth of single moments. In the video below, we share some of those single moments with you. While many of them may not fully resonate to an outside observer the way they do for us, we believe they capture the spirit of our company and what continues to bring us together every year.

A few highlights:

• We're grateful for being able to support our local minor league baseball team, the Schaumburg Boomers! It wouldn't be summer without least one BoHo outing drinking beer, eating hot dogs and tacos, and finishing the evening with the running of the bases.
• We're grateful for being able to celebrate milestones with dear friends including their own opening nights outside of BoHo, new jobs, new relationships, new jobs, all while balancing a wonderful and special relationship as a Volunteer for us.
• We're grateful we welcomed new board members: Sara, Jelani, Nancy, Silvia, and Hatice into our leadership team. The work they are already doing alongside Jean, Dick, and Bob is extraordinary and they are truly the backbone of BoHo's future.
• We're grateful for three outstanding shows: Ordinary Days, a show we have tried to produce multiple times and finally brought to its feet this year; Scotland Road, which finally made it out of Season Selection and into the Heartland; and Dogfight, the sleeper candidate we weren't even sure we'd secure rights to.
• We're so incredibly grateful for the Chicago Theatre Community, who welcomes us into their camp year-over-year, supporting us, loving us, and creating new artistic voices to influence our productions.
• Last, but certainly not least, we are grateful for you - our patrons - whom the art is for. Thank you for taking the time, for buying a ticket, for sparing a dollar, and for coming out to rejoice in the beauty of BoHo and being a part of our artistic family.

We hope you'll consider sharing your personal favorite BoHo moment with us - or even a non-BoHo moment for which you are grateful.

Kaela Altman, Executive Director
and
Peter Marston Sullivan, Artistic Director

Making the Dogfight Poster

BoHo marketing director and graphic designer Charles Riffenburg, on the collaborative process behind designing the poster for Dogfight.

Out of all of the stuff I create for my clients, posters are my favorite. A poster is an opportunity to tell a story with a single image. It can communicate a lot or a little, depending on what you want. It can be bold and simple or complex, with overlapping ideas. But most of all, posters tend to be the projects that are most collaborative. A marketing or artistic director tells me the story and themes, I create some visuals, and then we evaluate what's hitting the mark in the right way, and then we continue to brainstorm and refine.

This summer I created the poster for BoHo Theatre's Dogfight, a musical about a squad of soldiers who use their last night before getting shipping over to Vietnam to stage a contest to find the ugliest date. This kind of contest was a real thing back in the 60s, and was called a dogfight. It's a show full of powerful emotion and deep themes, and it was the anchor of BoHo's 2015 season.

To kick off the design process, I asked the director, Peter Marston Sullivan, to tell me what ideas and themes resonated with him in the play and if there was any imagery that he thought would represent his show well. He told me he liked the idea of juxtaposing something "not so great with something that is," echoing the crass and cruel behavior of the young soldiers with the optimism and inner beauty of Rose, one of their targets. He talked about the theme of cruelty in the play and the ugliness of war, and how "the show is about unearthing beauty in these circumstances." In my own research into the play, I was also drawn to the objectification of women and the misogyny of the main characters. With these ideas in mind, I started thinking visually.

I start every poster design by researching what has come before. Dogfight is a relatively new show, so it doesn't have a long history of poster designs to look at. The original production poster is an illustration of the lead actors, which we didn't want for this show. Other posters have made different uses of dog tags and roses, which I didn't find to be particularly evocative and eye-catching. So instead, I started looking at imagery from the Vietnam War, which is the period the play is set in. Very quickly I was drawn to the idea of nose art.

Nose art is a kind of graffiti painted usually on the nose of an aircraft. It became popular during World War II, the first war in which airplanes played a major role. Because air combat and bombing raids were so dangerous, airmen developed strong bonds with their planes, and nose art was a form of bonding. The German forces were known for painting aggressive imagery on the noses of their planes— bared teeth and angry eyes— while the Allied forces painted cartoons, taunts, and pinup girls. The paintings were officially against regulations, but most commanding officers, knowing it was a moral booster, turned a blind eye.

Nose art was still present in the Vietnam War but not quite as common because of the types of aircraft used. In WWII, American forces relied on bombers and fighter planes, but in Vietnam the military's main aircraft were helicopters. Helicopters don't have as much fuselage space to paint on, but you could still find some crews painting on them when they could.

This seemed to me a perfect embodiment of the themes of the show: the juxtaposition of the soldiers' idealized concept of a woman painted onto a machine of war, one that would get dirty and torn up over time. Sullivan loved this idea when I presented it to him, so then I began finding the building blocks of what would become our poster design.

To find that perfect idealized woman, I turned to a popular example of the objectification of women from the show's time period and earlier: classic pinup art. Once I found the right image, it was a relatively simple matter of scanning and isolating the image of the woman and overlaying it onto the fuselage of a military plane (in this case, a bomber from a photo I found online). By using digital brushes, masking, and other Photoshop wizardry, I was able to make the pinup art look like it had been painted directly onto the plane, and that it had, over time, gotten rubbed off and damaged. Despite all of the damage and wear though, the optimism and beauty of the underlying image still comes through, which fit the theme of the show. A smattering of bullet holes and metal rips helped show how much wear and tear this bird and received.

Beginning: cleaned up fuselage and initial image placement	Middle: Dirtied up the fuselage and painting, added text
Middle: more distressing overall and matched painting and fuselage lighting	Final marketing image

The final touch was the lettering. Almost every instance of American nose art has some kind of label or title to it. Sometimes it was a reminder of home, sometimes it was a taunt to the enemy. My first thought was to label the painting "Rose" after the show's main female character. Because the play is set in San Francisco, this became "San Francisco Rose." While not bad, Sullivan suggested that somebody had written "Eddie" over the painting so it read "Rose + Eddie" like graffiti. That was exactly what the image needed. Before, it was simply an interesting image that resonated the themes. But by adding that hand-drawn "Eddie" to the existing art, we had a story. Who is Eddie? What is/was his relationship to Rose? Was Rose a real person? Did he scribble his own name on the plane or was this a taunt by one of his buddies? Suddenly, the image was alive with story and possibility.

We went on to use this image in many different configurations, from transit ads, posters, and postcards, to web banners of all configurations. Like any good marketing image does, it became the public face of the show and was strong enough to support an 8-week marketing campaign. Dogfight went on to become one of the most popular and successful shows of BoHo's 10-year history. This poster started with a simple conversation about ideas and themes, and came to life through exploration and collaboration.

This article was originally published at Grab Bag Media.

A Change in Perspective: by Tony Churchill

The following is a guest post by scenic designer Tony Churchill, who has designed video projections for BoHo's Ordinary Days and Dogfight.

I got on board for Ordinary Days pretty much how everyone gets a design job in this business: I knew the director. Working with the BoHos really surprised me and turned my view of this thing I’ve been doing for almost 20 years upside down; I never thought so much of my reality would be altered.

By the time tech for Ordinary Days rolled around, we started cuing the show right after a huge snowstorm and it was pretty much the usual crew when we started. As the day progressed, more and more people showed up. Some nice lady with an infectious laugh and delicious baked goods. PR guys who were super nice, and weirdly helpful. “Hey I’m here to take some pictures for Facebook, oh do you need help moving those walls?” And then the head Peter (I had met six or seven Peters with some kind of title in the company since the first production meeting). All of these personalities filled the room and it was a little unnerving. I’ve been on shows where they end up being directed by committee, and it NEVER works out. Who do you listen to? Do you follow the herd or try and make your own voice heard? It was unnerving.

By the third day of tech, I realized that this is what collaboration was supposed to be. Everyone wasn’t in the space on their own thing, they were in the space on a common thing. At face value, it's a bunch of crazy and committed - and beautiful - people who shouldn’t be able to find a cab, let alone put up a show. But they are so happy to be there that all the crap sort of peels off and you realize you're working in this perfectly collaborative place. The people in the room are working for the show and nothing more (or less). They want the show to be the very best thing it can be, not because of vanity, but because of pride. They're so happy to be free to be making something beautiful and true that they love.

After Ordinary Days, Peter Prime, AKA Peter Marston Sullivan, introduced me to Dogfight - which I had never heard - and I connected to it so quickly because my Dogfight experience is my BoHo experience. I value a lot of things in Dogfight, but where it gets especially hard is when it shows how a lot of men see women and it doesn’t pull any punches. It’s a hard portrait of how guys deal with their fear and insecurities. I think this is an obvious show for BoHo because they’re so good at coping with fear and dread that theatre companies often face and fail at overcoming as a cohesive group with a common goal. There is no job too big for the group and no job too small for any individual. It’s something you experience in spurts when working in a collaborative space like theatre, but it’s a rare a beautiful gift to find it so alive and well with an entire group again and again.

I’m thankful every time I’m able to work with the BoHo family because it reminds me what this whole thing is about. Their work is their pleasure - twenty-four seven, three sixty-five, they never close - and their passion is veritas. I’ve seen green interns on their first pro gig, making nothing but friends and memories, step up and single handedly do the work of four professional stagehands. I’ve seen the most senior member of the family take off their jacket and pick up a paint brush to get a set piece finished in time. It’s because you can feel it from the moment you’re in the room. You know - definitively - that you’re a part of something. A community. A family. A group of people who will not quit on you.

You want to do your very best because they want that from you too, and the BoHos will do anything - simply, quietly, beautifully - anything you need to be your very best. They challenge me gently and earnestly. They make me want to tweak and work things to death, because I can’t bear to let them down. That’s something you don’t find in every place - you don’t find it almost any place. If you get to work with BoHo, or you just support them by seeing the work, you’ll feel what I’m talking about too. This commitment - even in the hardest of times - is what it takes to make a show like Dogfight work. Boho is fearlessly committed to the truth - and love and beauty and freedom - because they go at it together. It’s not some silly mumbo jumbo - it’s real for them and everyone who gets to work with them. There’s not a lot of other companies that could make this piece work, because more often than not, most theatre companies shy away from the truth, especially when it’s tackling such difficult subjects.

At its core, theatre is pretty dumb. We’re not saving anyone’s life. We’re not feeding the hungry or healing the sick. We’re not even making anything lasting. But theatre at its best - like BoHo Theatre - is something that is vital to the human condition. It nurtures the soul by giving people something human that humans have always needed. A little time to tell stories with each other. More than 2000 years ago, the Greeks would build theaters next to hospitals because they believed these places were equally important to healing - one the body and one the soul. This is what I look for when I’m making theatre and it’s not easy to find. BoHo has it in spades. They sweat it out when they take over a space and make it a theatre - a real theatre. It’s the core of why theatre is one of the oldest traditions we share as humans. And it fills me with joy to be with them every time we make something together. Join, play, love.

-Anthony Churchill, Set and Media Designer

Why did our Artistic Director choose DOGFIGHT?

DIRECTOR PETER MARSTON SULLIVAN REVEALS WHY DOGFIGHT MOVES HIM

"The first time I listened to Dogfight, I was on a road trip on my own, listening to potential musicals for our 2015 season. When I finally popped in the cast recording, I listened to it three times in a row, each time growing more confident that this show was perfect for BoHo.

Dogfight starts as a party – dynamic full-cast numbers bursting with energy. The music is melodic and funny, driven and exciting. As I listened, I found myself caught up in the fun of the soldiers… then I slowly began to realize that this “fun” was misguided. I almost felt guilty for enjoying it at the start. But as the songs became increasingly haunting and heartbreaking, the show revealed itself to be an awkward yet charming love story. One woman, Rose – an ungainly, naive wallflower - has such purity in heart and spirit that she trusts, forgives, and ultimately loves unconditionally. Though perhaps not gorgeous in a conventional way, it became very clear to me that she is by far the most beautiful person in the show.

Peter Marston Sullivan leads the Dogfight cast in rehearsal

The response from our Dogfight audiences so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Yet there are still many people that have been wary of the show because of its central premise: a dogfight. One of BoHo’s staunchest supporters told me, “I knew what a dogfight was and found it repulsive.” And she’s right - it is. What I found so profoundly moving about this show - more so than the fantastic music and script - was how there was pure beauty to be found amongst this backdrop of repulsion. At a time, the 1960s, when we were so sure, so proud, and ultimately so naïve, when dogfights were commonplace and over 50% of the population had never heard of Vietnam, amidst all of that, there is one sole spark of beauty that contrasts all of the ugliness. The fact that it comes from someone that these Marines characterize as “a dog” is, in its own way, ironic and powerful.

In case you’re wondering what that same supporter felt after watching the show, her words may say it best: "Vietnam is part of my history, my era. Dogfight was sometimes outright painful to watch – even without the dogfight. Recalling how very certain all of us were, whatever our beliefs, it’s just heartbreaking. BoHo never flinched from that. It takes immense art and sensitivity to tell this story. You helped the audience find beauty [in it.]”

When you see BoHo’s Dogfight, what awaits you is a story that grabs you right from the start with energy and enthusiasm, laughter and immensely likable characters. What you leave with, I hope, is a feeling of beauty and love, comfort in the fact that even when there is ugliness all around us, there is always beauty to be found. This is why I love this show. This is why I wanted to tell this story.”


Peter Marston Sullivan
BoHo Theatre Artistic Director

BoHo Announces Bold 2016 Season

BoHo Theatre is thrilled to announce plans for its upcoming 2016 season. Building on its rich, 12-year history, BoHo continues to bring an eclectic mix of musicals, dramas, and classic plays to Chicago stages focusing on emotional human relationships. The company is dedicated to being an incubator for up-and-coming Chicago talent by creating safe, supportive artistic environments for our artists to experiment and grow. With these goals in mind, BoHo’s 2016 season will feature the innovative song cycle Fugitive Songs by Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen, a groundbreaking new adaption of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya by playwright Annie Baker, and the hit Broadway rock musical Next To Normal by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt.

The Season In Depth

FUGITIVE SONGS

Music by Chris Miller and lyrics by Nathan Tysen
February 11 – March 13, 2016 at the Heartland Studio

Fugitive Songs is an innovative song cycle focusing on everyday people on the run: a disgruntled Subway sandwich employee, a jilted ex-cheerleader, a pair of Patty Hearst fanatics, a stoner forced to rob a convenience store against his will, and many others. The writing team of Miller and Tysen blend traditional folk music with contemporary pop and gospel to create a moving portrait of restlessness in America. While many of BoHo’s shows have focused on the reasons people come together, this production instead looks at why people choose to run away from the relationships in their lives.

“The journey of running away can teach us about who we are,” says Artistic Director Peter Marston Sullivan. “Too often, we’re not running from another person or a situation, we’re running from ourselves and the hard choices we need to make. To me, it’s when we realize why we’re running and stop that we find true freedom.” Following on the success of BoHo’s previous intimate musicals Myths & Hymns and Ordinary Days, Fugitive Songs will be staged at the company’s Heartland Studio space in Rogers Park and will open during Chicago Theatre Week.

UNCLE VANYA

By Anton Chekhov
in a new adaptation by Annie Baker,
working with a literal translation by Margarita Shalina and the original Russian text
May 25 – June 26, 2016 at the Heartland Studio

When the ailing Professor Serebryakov retires to the country with his new, beautiful, younger wife Yelena after a lifetime of posh metropolitan living, it throws his entire estate into turmoil. The estate originally belonged to Serebryakov’s first wife, and her mother, daughter, and brother still live there. Soon passions are flaring, with several of the gentlemen declaring their love for Yelena and Professor Serebryakov announcing his intention to sell off the estate. For as much as the family has lamented the stagnation of their lives, the introduction of change is even more frightening to them.

This intimate, immersive new adaptation of Chekhov's classic from critically-acclaimed playwright Annie Baker (Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation, The Flick), brings colloquial language to this beloved story of human relationships and yearning. Written with the “goal of creating a version that sounds to our contemporary American ears the way the play sounded to Russian ears during the play’s first productions in the provinces in 1898,” Ms. Baker's Uncle Vanya introduces 21st century audiences to Chekhov's enduring wit, insight, and emotional depth. BoHo is excited to bring its trademark focus on character and relationships to this new work, focusing on the inner desires and turmoil that lives underneath the surface of our everyday lives.

NEXT TO NORMAL

Book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Music by Tom Kitt
Fall 2016 (dates TBD) at Theater Wit

The Goodmans seem to be an normal, average suburban American family. Dan is an architect; Diana rushes to pack lunches and pour cereal; their daughter and son are bright, wise-cracking teens. And yet their lives are anything but normal. Diana has been struggling with bipolar disorder and hallucinations for 16 years, and the strain of keeping this locked up within the family threatens to tear them apart. The harder the family tries to be “normal”—including medication and a variety of therapies—the farther they move from being true to themselves.

“What is so powerful about this show is not only the exploration of what mental illness does to one person, but also what it does to everyone around them,” says Sullivan. “The struggle to maintain identity and retain relationships in the midst of mental illness is what makes Next to Normal so fascinating… and so emotional.” Having taken Broadway by storm (Next To Normal won three 2009 Tony Awards including Best Musical Score and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize), BoHo is eager to bring its trademark intimacy and focus on characters to this affecting and timely story.

Season Memberships On Sale Now

BoHo Memberships are unique subscription packages that allow for flexibility in choosing productions and dates, as well as reserved seating and invitations to exclusive events. Membership packages for BoHo’s 2016 season are on sale now at www.BoHoTheatre.com or (866) 811-4111.

2015 Season Concludes This Fall with Dogfight

BoHo’s 2015 Season isn’t quite done yet! The 11th Season will come to a close with Dogfight, with performances beginning September 5 at Theater Wit. Tickets and more information are available at www.BoHoTheatre.com

# # #


BoHo Theatre’s mission is to create bold theatre that challenges convention through innovative storytelling and unites artist and audience in the examination of Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love through the lens of human relationships. Its vision is to create a shared community of artists and patrons in which all members are moved through art to make thoughtful, well-examined, caring relationships the highest priority in their lives.

BoHo Theatre Announces Shift In Upcoming Programming

Beginning with our 2016 season, BoHo Theatre is excited to announce a bold new direction for the company’s artistic programming. For the past eleven seasons, BoHo has produced a strong mixture of musicals, plays, and classic works, garnering over 130 Jeff Award nominations in the process. “At this point, we feel we’ve accomplished what BoHo’s founders set out to create,” says BoHo Executive Director Kaela Altman, “which is a rich community of actors, designers, and audiences who put art and relationships first in their lives. So what’s the next logical step?”

Citing a strong demand from our online and local communities, starting with our 12th season BoHo will reposition our artistic voice by becoming Chicago’s first exclusively pet theatre. For our inaugural animal season, we will focus on casting pets from within our community of artists and audiences. “This change has been a long time coming,” muses Altman. “We’ve seen exponential growth in pet-related content online, and we’ve found that social media posts about our pets are some of our most well-received content. This was a natural evolution of the BoHo brand.”

BoHo’s 12th season will kick off with a one-animal show based on the hit movie Gravity. This musical adaptation created by Artistic Director Peter Marston Sullivan will feature Brutus, Sullivan’s 2-year old pug, as Dr. Ryan Stone, a lost astronaut who must make her way back to earth after a catastrophic accident in orbit. Gravity will open at the Heartland Studio on February 10th, 2016.

The second show of our 2016 season will be an innovative reimagining of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida by BoHo Associate Artistic Director Peter Robel. “Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays,’” observes Artistic Director Sullivan. “Peter Robel’s unique staging will allow audiences to approach this classic work from a fresh perspective.” Performed on a multi-level set, this 6-hour uncut marathon production will feature Robel’s cat Shelley and Executive Director Altman’s cat Dwight in the title roles, with Marketing Director Charles Riffenburg’s cat NCK making a special guest appearance as Agamemnon. Troilus and Cressida opens at the Actor’s Gymnasium on May 13th, 2016.

The third and final show of our exciting 2016 season will be the Chicago storefront premiere of Kinky Boots, the hit musical by Harvey Firestein and Cyndi Lauper. The musical tells the story of a young man who inherits a shoe factory and partners with a cabaret performer and drag queen to help save the business. This production, staged in partnership with the Lincoln Park Zoo, will mark the stage debut of Bean, Casting Associate Stephanie Sullivan’s pug, in the lead role of Lola, and feature tap choreography from Managing Director Ryan Guhde. Kinky Boots will be directed by Sully, pet cat of Studio Liaison Eleanor Katz, and open at Theater Wit in late September of 2016.

Tickets and season memberships for the 2016 season go on sale June 1, 2015. Discount tickets available with the donation of pet food. Visit BoHoTheatre.com for more information.