An Actor's Process

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."

Over the next several months, John and I looked at a lot of material: collections of short stories, photographs of Algren, essays and articles by and about Algren, letters, biographies, novels. We discussed them and how they related to John's initial vision, using City on the Make as the backbone of the piece to explore Algren's relationship to the city. John began adapting these pieces into a script, while I used the materials to begin piecing together a sketch of a character. Who was Algren? Did we want to create Algren himself as the main character or was our main character someone other than the author? If so, who was he? And how much of this character was actually me, the actor, telling Algren's stories?

Over the course of a year these questions began to be answered in workshops. Clearly, we are using Nelson Algren as a character, because the stories we use in the adaptation are told from his point-of-view, either as a character or as a narrator. But I don't think of the character that I've created as "Nelson Algren" so much as I think of him as the character of his Writer Voice. What this means is that I'm not attempting to do an impersonation of the historical Nelson Algren by attempting to duplicate his vocal or physical idiosyncrasies. Rather I am giving life to the voice that tells his stories. Of course, I am costumed based on photographic images of Algren, and the films do try to maintain the feeling and period of the Chicago that he described in his stories. But my goal is to create a character that tells stories about a city he loves in spite of, even because of, its paradoxes and struggles with itself. In the end, the relationship between city and writer is the dramatic arc of the piece, because we see the evolution of the writer's voice in response to that relationship.

My preparations for performance takes into account all of the different aspects of the show: I watch videos of the films that John has put together to evoke the settings, characters and atmospheres of the stories. Because the music in the show is so integral to its performance, I listen to music by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and others. I look at photographs of Algren and the people he loved and wrote about; the downtrodden people of the neighborhoods. I have images in my mind for all the characters Algren gives us: Ethel, Margo, Max, John the Greek, the "sandlot sprouts", the hustlers and the squares. I tell the stories to myself as I walk around the city, finding elements of the stories in what I see and hear. Finally, I go back in my mind to the living, breathing city of Chicago, its el trains, its neighborhoods, its streets and alleys, its history and its heart. I let myself see, hear, and feel the city that's around me every day. I soak up Chicago with its beautiful skyline that I am still entranced by; the grit of Lower Wacker and the ghosts who used to sleep there; the screech of the el train at Damen and Milwaukee; the hysterical spectacle of the city's politics. Ultimately, even though I am telling stories about Algren's relationship to Chicago, the piece is as much about my relationship, and yours, to this maddening and beautiful city.

This piece was originally written for the 2001 production of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day