Arts & Entertainment
Goodman Theatre Marks 100 Years With 2 Rock Hall of Famers and ‘Messy’ Stories of Chicago
“Ashland Avenue” runs at the Goodman Theatre through Oct. 12. (Todd Rosenberg)
Goodman Theatre rings in 100 years with an anniversary season packed with nods to its hometown and an assist from a pair of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers.
Susan Booth joined the theater in 2022 as the heir to departing artistic director Robert Falls. Like Falls, Booth is also a director. She won accolades, including a regional Tony Award, leading the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.
But before Atlanta, Booth — who grew up in Ohio and Kansas — already had a strong local pedigree. She studied at Northwestern and DePaul, worked with Falls at the Goodman and was an associate artistic director at Northlight Theatre in Skokie. She even worked with the Neo-Futurists — acting in their 1993 show “70 Scenes of Halloween.”
WTTW News spoke with Booth before the opening of the new Chicago-centric play that she directed, “Ashland Avenue.”
WTTW News: Congratulations to the Goodman — not many theater companies last a century.
Susan Booth: It’s one of the landmark theaters, right? The thing that the Goodman’s committed to is never resting on its laurels and never patting itself on the back. The Goodman has always been interested in: Who are the artists who are changing or leading our field? What does our community want to talk about? How do they want to talk about it? That’s so rare and fantastic, and I gotta say that would only happen in Chicago. The Chicago audience is just a gift to anybody who makes theater.
You have an ambitious season planned — with David Byrne of Talking Heads and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine working on different shows.
Booth: The notion that in our 100th year we have two Rock and Roll Hall of Famers in the house, it’s super cool. Tom Morello’s show [“Revolution(s),” opening Oct. 4] started rehearsal early this week. The playwright [Zayd Ayers Dohrn] had reached out to Tom and said, ‘Would you let me write a piece of work using some of your music?’ Tom not only said yes, he’s been an active partner. He was in the theater in the last couple of days working with the company. The piece is set on the South Side of Chicago, so here we are starting our 100th year with deep Chicago stories on both of our stages.
Goodman Theatre artistic director Susan Booth (right) and “Ashland Avenue” playwright Lee Kirk (left). (Todd Rosenberg)
And what about David Byrne? His new show, ‘Theater of the Mind,’ will be at an off-campus site in the spring.
Booth: What I love about David, who I’ve gotten a chance to know a bit, is he’s got a curiosity as big as all outdoors. He was interested in how the brain worked, specifically why and how it is that we misremember — two people who grew up in the same household talk about one Christmas and have very different versions of what happened, and they’re both convinced they’re right. And so, being David Byrne, he started traveling to neuroscience labs and learning about the brain and doing experiments about how the brain perceives, and somewhere along the line, thankfully, he had this notion that there might be a show in there, an experience in there. And he road-tested a version of it at Stanford, and lo and behold, here we are opening it this spring in Chicago.
And ‘Ashland Avenue’ is now in previews. Tell us about that.
Booth: It’s a wildly Chicago story. Chicago is very much a character in the piece; it’s not just a backdrop. What I love about it is, it’s five direct, plainspoken people in a moment of emotional cataclysm. This is not high drama, this is not low comedy, this is the human comedy of people being messy in the way we all are.
And the story?
Booth: The central storyline is about a father who pretty much single-parented his daughter, his only child. He’s had a family business that excelled for a time and then ran into some headwinds, and it’s on its last legs. He is loath to let it go, and his vision is that his daughter, who’s been in the business with him, will save it. The only problem is, she’s never had any life besides being her father’s protege, and she’s reached a point where she needs to make some choices independent of him. That’s where the mess and the muck come from.
It’s a stellar cast, including Jenna Fischer of ‘The Office’ — although I’d call any show with Steppenwolf ensemble member Francis Guinan stellar.
Booth: You called it. Fran Guinan is just a brilliant artist, and the piece feels like the writer had known him for decades and wrote a play for him. It fits him like a glove. And what I love is the work ethics of these five actors. All of them have this common denominator; they buckle down, lean on their fellow players and make great work every day. They’re unafraid to make big, epic mistakes, which is absolutely key to good work. These five people make a kind of music together that is exceptional.
“Ashland Avenue” runs at the Goodman Theatre through Oct. 12. (Todd Rosenberg)
I know you’ve been busy, but have you had a chance to see any theater that you’re not actively involved with?
Booth: I don’t see nearly as much as I wish I could, but I’ll tell you, since I’ve been back, seeing the work of Remy Bumppo Theatre under Marti Lyons’ leadership is just so bracing. And ‘You Will Get Sick’ at Steppenwolf with Amy Morton and Namir Smallwood was just a beautiful piece of work; Audrey Francis [Steppenwolf co-executive director] is a wildly gifted director. We are so deeply stocked with writers, actors, directors and designers who are absolutely leading their field, and they choose to make their home here in Chicago. It knocks me out.
What do you recall from your first tenure at the Goodman in the ‘90s?
Booth: I worked at the Goodman when it was still over at the Art Institute. When it moved to its present location, I was off directing and then offered the job in Atlanta. This building, which has been around for quite some time now [December 2000] is still very new to me. But I used to work with Bob Falls, and I worked with executive director Roche Schulfer and a lot of folks who are still here. It’s a wonderful mix of very familiar and very forward-leaning.
Any parting words on the new season or your return to Chicago?
Booth: I’ve had the luxury of getting to make theater in a lot of places, and coming back here and sitting in a small theater with a rapturous audience on a Sunday matinee for a new play — you look left and right and realize, these are people for whom this is an essential part of their life. Going to theater, supporting theater is a part of their day-to-day life. That doesn’t happen everywhere, and I’m so grateful for it.
“Ashland Avenue” is in previews at the Goodman Theatre. It plays through Oct. 12.
Marc Vitali is the JCS Fund of the DuPage Foundation Arts Correspondent.
