There were emails that Andy was getting during the run, written by folks being like, “My brother just died of brain cancer, and I had tickets to this play, and I didn’t know if I should see it.” It seemed to be a magnet in some way for people who were questioning and hurting privately. A couple of people came up to me just the other day, in fact. Has that kind of reaction gotten back to you? I hear people talk about it in awestruck ways, even months later. Your work in Title and Deed seems to have had a particular impact. Both Jessica and RIC were very interested in that energy being part of it, that it’s okay to say, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair”-and to have a Richard who’s played by an actually disabled actor and who is actively trying to get out of the chair. One point of view you’re never supposed to espouse is rage. That’s the amazing thing about an institution as global as RIC getting behind the play: They’re not afraid to talk about that side of disability. And so, what does it look like if, kind of Iron Man–style, Richard created this thing, because he hates being disabled. So the idea is that if this person was actually disabled, they would be relegated to the dampest, coldest part of the castle with a lot of time on their hands. It’s essentially a suit that you kind of wear. There’s amazing technology being done these days with exoskeletons in terms of them helping paraplegics and quadriplegics to walk. We had some long conversations with Erica Daniels and Martha Lavey, and they said, “If the Gift will produce it, we want to have you in our space.” We also have a major, major sponsorship from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, so Richard’s gonna look a little different from how he’s ever looked before. Something should be done about this.” So Jessica and I sat down over a bottle of wine and talked about what that would look like, who would produce it. Tracy Letts reached out to us and was like, “This is terrible. The way the original production collapsed was maddening and unfortunate, to say the least. Later this season, you’re playing Richard III here at the Garage Theatre, a role you were supposed to have played last winter at Next. There are people on your bookshelf that you never believe you’ll have access to. This is a guy about whom I wrote a 100-page paper when I was at Iowa. he said, “If you guys want to do this, I’ll let you do it.” He could have gone to any other theater in the world, you know? It’s as bizarre and surreal as it sounds talking about it. he had a full draft, we did a Google Hangout read with him-which is kind of terrifying, knowing that this hero of yours is on the other end of the screen. With Good for Otto, he said, “I wrote a thing for a fund-raiser in the late ’90s I think I might want to turn this into something bigger.” That began a, what, three-year process of talking about it. He’s written a 10-minute play for us every year since.Ī 10-minute play is one thing getting to debut a new full-length play by a 75-year-old Tony winner is another. So Jeremy hooked me up with David’s email address I told him that we had already done Hurlyburly and Streamers and that we would love for him to consider our request, and he agreed. So for our 10-year anniversary, we asked playwrights we had produced if they would create a world-premiere, 10-minute play. There’s a buddy that I went through the school with named Jeremy Strong, and Jeremy knows Lily quite well. Largely thanks to the School at Steppenwolf. How did your relationship with him come about? That show will now be produced by the Gift at Steppenwolf’s Garage Theatre, where our conversation took place.Ī world premiere by David Rabe is a huge coup for the Gift. We talked with Thornton about that show and his two big projects this season: directing Good for Otto, a world premiere by Tony-winning playwright David Rabe, at the Gift’s Jeff Park storefront space and playing the title role in Shakespeare’s Richard III for director Jessica Thebus-a project they had underway at Evanston’s Next Theatre when it abruptly closed its doors last fall. Thornton’s performance in Title and Deed earned him your vote as best actor in our inaugural Theater Awards. That’s how being from somewhere works.” Unlike the unnamed traveler he played in that solo piece by Will Eno with Lookingglass Theatre Company last spring, Thornton is from here-specifically Jefferson Park, where he planted his own company, the Gift Theatre, in 2001. ”I’m not from here,” Michael Patrick Thornton said at the beginning of Title and Deed.
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