It had a successful run at Goodman and made Time’s list of the best plays of the decade.īy this time, Falls said, he was in awe of Gilman’s work. Her next play was Boy Gets Girl, a disturbing thriller about a blind date gone bad that examines the line between infatuation and obsession. Stephen Louis Grush, Cliff Chamberlain, Heather Wood, and Sarah Charipar in “A True History of the Johnstown Flood” at Goodman Theatre. “It made me feel like I had a director who believed in me, and the Goodman could be my home theatre.” “I was thrilled and grateful,” Gilman said. But Gilman didn’t have to go back to temping, because the Goodman commissioned her to write another play. Although her play had been was successful, it only filled an auditorium of 350 people each night, she reasoned. “I don’t think it’s a secret that playwrights don’t make much money,” Gilman said. But when Gilman and Falls met to discuss next steps, she told him she was planning to go back to being a temp worker. When 1999’s Spinning Into Butter was staged at the Goodman, with Les Waters as director, Gilman was put at ease when she learned that Falls “heard my play the way I heard it in my head.”Ī torn-from-the-headlines play about racism in academia, Spinning Into Butter went on to Lincoln Center in 2000. Around the same time, Falls was directing Death of a Salesman at the Goodman, which went on win Tonys on Broadway. ![]() The Glory of Living had a short run at Chicago’s Circle Theatre in 1998, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2002. ![]() I just felt this was a unique and fantastic writer, and I wanted to meet her.” Yet the language and dialogue were so authentic. “I was struck and shocked by the play’s boldness and the quality of this voice, which had a sparseness to it. “I was gripped and terrified,” said Falls of the play. Booth, then in charge of new-play development at the Goodman (and now Falls’s successor as artistic director), who urged him to read her The Glory of Living, a bleak drama about a couple who lure young women into a den of abuse and murder. The four characters represent the current landscape of a political divide going on in our country today.”įalls was introduced to Gilman’s work by Susan V. “Are we losing our democracy? Are we permanently divided? Can we heal? I think it’s a play of the moment. “The play also deals with grief and loss for a way of life that is political,” Falls elaborated. “I think I’m trying to convey what it’s like to live in a place you love that you feel is heading in the wrong direction.” “Wisconsin is so wonderful and problematic,” Gilman said. Swing State offers a contemporary portrait of America’s heartland at a time when many folks feel their way of life is in danger of disappearing, and everyone seems to have a different idea of what it means to be an American. Swing State is set in Wisconsin, where Gilman currently resides, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a recently widowed retired school counselor finds herself caught in the middle of feuds among neighbors over the actions of an out-of-state power company. Their newest project puts politics right in the title: Swing State runs at the Goodman’s Owen Theatre Oct. They have since worked on six productions together, all of them of plays about American life, often with a political edge. ![]() The two first crossed paths when Gilman received the Scott McPherson Award from the Goodman Theatre in 1999, commissioning her to write Spinning Into Butter, which went on to become the third most-produced play in the U.S. ![]() “We fight about things similarly, like how we both view the theatre, how actors should tell stories, and the subject matter.” Fights aside, he said, “We respect each other, knowing we are working toward a common goal.” “Rebecca is my real soulmate,” said Falls. And now they’re about to embark on their latest collaboration, just as Falls makes his exit as artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, a post he’s held since 1986. After 25 years of working together, Robert Falls and Rebecca Gilman have developed a shorthand style of communication that transcends the traditional director-playwright relationship.
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