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| Formation | 1969 |
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| Type | Theatre group |
| Location |
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Artistic director(s) | Stuart Gordon |
Organic Theater Company was founded in 1969 in Madison, Wisconsin by artistic director Stuart Gordon and his wife Carolyn Purdy Gordon.
Its first play was a production of Richard III but harassment from the local officials of Madison caused the production to be moved to three different venues before closing. In 1970 at the invitation of Paul Sills, Organic moved to Chicago where Sills helped the theater find a home in the Holy Covenant Church where they produced original adaptations of George Orwell's Animal Farm and Homer's Odyssey . When Sills took his production of Story Theater to Los Angeles that summer he invited Organic to produce at his Body Politic Theater on Lincoln Avenue. The company ended up staying there over three years where it produced Candide which was invited by Joseph Papp to the Public Theater in New York. They also produced Poe by playwright Stephen Most and Warp! by Stuart Gordon and Bury St. Edmund(pseudonym for Lenny Kleinfeld), an original science-fiction epic adventure in three parts. Warp! was produced on Broadway at the Ambassador Theater in 1973. [1]
Returning to Chicago, the company set up shop in the Uptown Center Hull House on Beacon Street. The new company included Joe Mantegna, Dennis Franz and Meshach Taylor. Their first production there was The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit by Ray Bradbury. This was followed by Bloody Bess - A Tale of Piracy and Revenge by John Ostrander and William J. Norris. In 1974 they presented the world premiere of Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet. That same year they embarked on their first European tour playing in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Hamburg.
Returning to Chicago they produced a two part adaptation of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . This production toured the United States and Europe. In the next few years Organic worked with Roald Dahl to present Switch Bitch and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s The Sirens of Titan In 1976 they created Bleacher Bums and toured the show throughout the United States and presented the show at The American Place Theater. It was adapted for television and aired nationally on PBS in 1979. In 1985, with Stuart Gordon directing, Organic Theatre, in collaboration with Goodman Theatre staged a shortened version of its earlier two-evening Huckleberry Finn in Chicago. The production was also recorded on stage for a WTTW-TV special. The cast included a young Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron Mitchell as Huck, Tom Towles as Pap, Meshach Taylor as Jim, Eric Berg as Tom Sawyer, and an ensemble consisting of Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Roberta Custer, Peter Van Wagner, Michael Fosberg, and Richard Henzel.
In 1981 Organic renovated the Buckingham Theater on Clark Street where it worked with author Mary Renault to adapt her book The King Must Die to the stage. This was followed by a musical adaptation of William Kotzwinkle's book Dr. Rat by June Shellene and Richard Fire and the company's longest running show E/R conceived by Dr. Ronald Berman.
Notable productions during founding artistic director Stuart Gordon's leadership included:
After “E/R Emergency Room,” Stuart Gordon went to the west coast to make his cult classic sci-fi film "Re-Animator".
Artistic directors after Stuart Gordon included Thomas Riccio [2] and Richard Fire. In 1996 Organic Theater Company and Touchstone Theatre merged under the leadership of Touchstone’s artistic director Ina Marlowe. (For two years the organization did business as Organic Touchstone but is now known again as Organic Theater Company.)
Notable productions during artistic director Ina Marlowe’s leadership included:
Ina Marlowe passed the torch to artistic director Alexander Gelman at the beginning of 2006. Gelman’s Organic Theater Company is now a company of actors touring with a rotating repertory. Since then the company has produced The $30,000 Bequest by Mark Twain, Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville, and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent . He also directed Eugène Ionesco's Man with Bags, Friedrich Durrenmatt's Play Strindberg , and Shimizu Kunio's The Dressing Room .
Over the years, Organic Theater Company venues have included: The Holy Covenant United Methodist Church 925 W. Diversey Parkway, Chicago, The Body Politic Theater (later Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater) 2257 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, The Uptown Center Hull House 4520 N. Beacon Street, Chicago, The Buckingham Theater 3319 N. Clark Street, Chicago.
And: 2851 N. Halsted Street, Chicago Loyola University’s Kathleen Mullady Theatre, Chicago, Ruth Page Theatre, LaCosta Theatre.
Meshach Taylor was an American actor, widely known for his role as Anthony Bouvier on the CBS sitcom Designing Women (1986–93), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. He was also known for his portrayal of Hollywood Montrose, a flamboyant window dresser in the 1987 film Mannequin and its 1991 sequel. He played Sheldon Baylor on the CBS sitcom Dave's World (1993–97), appeared as Tony on the NBC sitcom Buffalo Bill opposite Dabney Coleman, and appeared as the recurring character Alastair Wright, the social studies teacher on the Nickelodeon sitcom Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide.
Sexual Perversity in Chicago is a play written by David Mamet that examines the sex lives of two men and two women in the 1970s. The play is filled with profanity and regional jargon that reflects the working-class language of Chicago. The characters' relationships come to be hindered by the caustic nature of their words, as much of the dialogue includes insults and arguments. The play presents "intimate relationships [as] minefields of buried fears and misunderstandings."
Stuart Alan Gordon was an American filmmaker, theatre director, screenwriter, and playwright. Initially recognized for his provocative and frequently controversial work in experimental theatre, Gordon began directing films in 1985. Most of Gordon's cinematic output was in the horror genre, though he also ventured into science fiction and film noir.
Theater in Chicago describes not only theater performed in Chicago, Illinois, but also to the movement in Chicago that saw a number of small, meagerly funded companies grow to institutions of national and international significance. Chicago had long been a popular destination for touring productions, as well as original productions that transfer to Broadway and other cities. According to Variety editor Gordon Cox, beside New York City, Chicago has one of the most lively theater scenes in the United States. As many as 100 shows could be seen any given night from 200 companies as of 2018, some with national reputations and many in creative "storefront" theaters, demonstrating a vibrant theater scene "from the ground up". According to American Theatre magazine, Chicago's theater is "justly legendary".
Bleacher Bums is a 1977 play written collaboratively by members of Chicago's Organic Theater Company, from an idea by actor Joe Mantegna. Its original Chicago production was directed by Stuart Gordon. A 1979 performance of the play was taped for PBS television, and in 2002 a made-for-TV movie adaptation was produced.
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Warren Casey was an American theater composer, lyricist, writer, and actor. He was the writer and composer, with Jim Jacobs, of the stage musical Grease.
Touchstone Theatre is a professional theatre company in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, founded in 1976 by a group of University of British Columbia theatre graduates. Touchstone's focus is on the development and production of Canadian works. Since 2016, the Artistic Director has been Roy Surette, who previously held the position in the 1990s. Former Artistic Directors are Ian Fenwick, Gordon McCall, John Cooper and Katrina Dunn, who served in that position from 1997 to 2016.
Victory Gardens Theater is a theater company in Chicago, Illinois dedicated to the development and production of new plays and playwrights. The theater company was founded in 1974 when eight Chicago artists, Cecil O'Neal, Warren Casey, Stuart Gordon, Cordis Heard, Roberta Maguire, Mac McGuinnes, June Pyskaček, and David Rasche each fronted $1,000 to start a company outside the Chicago Loop and Gordon donated the light board of his Organic Theater Company. The theater's first production, The Velvet Rose, by Stacy Myatt, premiered on October 9, 1974.
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Warp!, also spelled Warp, was a trilogy of American science fiction plays created by the Organic Theatre Company of Chicago, Illinois, in 1971 by co-authors Stuart Gordon and Lenny Kleinfeld, the latter under the pseudonym Bury St. Edmund. The three parts were My Battlefield My Body, Unleashed! Unchained! and To Die Alive!.
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