Blogs

At Lookingglass, it’s a tradition to open up the first rehearsal of any production to all administrative staff members—the designers give a presentation, the actors have a read-through of the script, and everyone comes away with an intense feeling of community. As the Fall Marketing Intern, I was invited to attend said first rehearsal of "The Brothers Karamazov"—and so settled against the wall of the Lookingglass Studio this morning to watch.

Be sure to join us this Saturday, August 2, 2008 for the Lookingglass Alice Festival! It's free fun for the whole family:

- Raffle Prizes
- Giveaways
- Live circus performers from The Actors Gymnasium
- Face painting
- An 'Alice' costume contest: come dressed as Alice or the White Rabbit to win prizes

Festivities kick off at 12noon and go until 3:00 PM at the Water Tower Water Works on Michigan Avenue at Pearson. Come help us celebrate the success of the third smash year of Lookingglass Alice!

Did you see Nelson Algren: For Keeps and A Single Day? Do you want to share your opinion of the show?

We encourage audience members to join the conversation! Blog here with your review of the show for the chance to win a gift certificate to one of our restaurant partners.

Sunday, June 15, 2008 was a big night for Chicago theatre.

Not only did Chicago Shakespeare take home the Tony Award for Regional Theatre, but the Broadway production of Steppenwolf Theatre Company's August: Osage County won Best Play, Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, Best Featured Actress in a Play and Best Scenic Design.

Company members mentioned in this entry: John Musial and Thomas J Cox

Be sure to catch a special post-show discussion after select performances of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and A Single Day.  Lookingglass Artistic Director of New Work, Heidi Stillman, will lead the discussions along with Northwestern University Algren Scholar Bill Savage. Thomas J. Cox will contribute his insight into representing Algren onstage, and director/adaptor John Musial may stop by to participate.

This Saturday, June 14, 2008, you have the chance to meet famed Chicago photographer Art Shay at the Museum of Contemporary Art. He'll be signing his books, including Chicago's Nelson Algren, Art Shay: Chicago Accent, and Nelson Algren's Chicago. Art was good friends with Nelson Algren, and hand-picked the photographs for the exhibit.

Chicago's Nelson Algren was published in 2007, and has been a very popular book, especially approaching the centennial of Algren' birth.

Saturday, June 7, 2008 at the Printers Row Book Fair, you can catch Ensemble Members Thomas J. Cox and John Musial chatting with Algren scholar Bill Savage about Nelson Algren. They'll discuss Algren's role in the Chicago literary world, as well as why John Musial wanted to bring Algren's stories to the stage, and how he went about adapting the text. Thom Cox will contribute with his unique interpretation of the character of Nelson Algren.

Don't miss this one-of-a-kind opportunity to listen in on this fascinating discussion!

Hello everyone,

Right now at the MCA you can see dozens of fantastic photos by the renowned Chicago photographer Art Shay. He was good friends with Nelson Algren, and is well known for his depiction of the Chicago underbelly in which Algren lived. The exhibit runs through the end of our production, June 29, 2008. Enter the Museum of Contemporary Art on ground level at Pearson and Mies Van Der Rohe Way to peruse the photos.

Here's a little more information:

Company members mentioned in this entry: John Musial and Thomas J Cox

Ensemble member Thom Cox writes about how he first got involved in the what eventually became our production of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day.

Two years ago, I was performing in a Lookingglass production called The Great Fire, adapted and directed by John Musial using eyewitness accounts of the Chicago Fire of 1871. During the rehearsals for that show, as an ensemble, we examined and discussed our personal relationships to the city, and the show made an effort to have people become aware of their own. So, this idea of a personal relationship to Chicago was already present when John came to me with a slim book and asked me to read it. "I think we should do this," he said.

It was Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren.

I read the book that night, and was overwhelmed by the imagery and language that Algren used to portray his very personal relationship to this city. The poetic rhythms and beautiful images of a city struggling with itself were at the same time a revelation and very familiar to me. I found myself thinking, "I know this city, we've met."

Company members mentioned in this entry: John Musial

Ensemble member and director of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day John Musial writes about what first attracted him to the works of the great Chicago writer.

"For keeps and a single day" is a life sentence. It is what a judge would say when announcing the decision, driving home the point, "Your fate is sealed, there is no escape." This phrase is something that writer Nelson Algren heard spoken in the court rooms and on the streets of the city he chronicled some four decades ago. The man had a gift for hearing the language spoken around him and spinning it into poetry. He did the same for the lives and stories of the underclass people he saw all around him in his West Side three flat apartment - the struggling, dispossessed people society tried to ignore. Algren didn't ignore them. He knew their humanity and labored to be a voice for them. He believed that a writer had accomplished a pretty great task if, in one lifetime, he could tell the story of the block he lived on. Chicago of the 1940's, 50's and 60's was Algren's block, and it is a story he told more compellingly and with greater compassion and insight that any writer since Carl Sandburg.