What was your first break? Theatre people give thanks.

BY Becky Brett

As we stuff our gullets with annual cuisine, drink too much and say things we regret well into the holiday season, let’s take a moment to remember those who helped us get where we are today. No one who is successful has made it alone, and this is especially true in the performing arts. Opportunities present themselves, and we take them, unsure of where we will end up, but knowing it has to be better than where we are right now.

Chicago is rife with theatrical opportunities, and we had the good fortune to talk with some people about their success—where they got their first break and to whom they owe their good fortune. (These are presented in alphabetical order.)

Adam Belcuore
Casting Director at the Goodman Theatre

Adam Belcuore believes that working as Steve Scott’s assistant at the Goodman was his big break. When casting director Tara Lonzo left, he was offered the position, but turned it down because at the time he was focused on running his theatre company. Fortunately the Goodman didn’t forget him and, as he remembers it, “Two or three years later when I was still waiting tables I said ‘yes.’”

Belcuore says he owes his success to Anna Shapiro, and Michelle Volansky who were his mentors when he was an intern at Steppenwolf. His history with Shapiro goes even farther back, though, to when she taught at the LaJolla Playhouse, where he had been working. She gave him the internship at Steppenwolf. Then, they helped him apply for the assistant job at the Goodman.

Dan Castellaneta
The voice of Homer Simpson

“My first big break was auditioning and getting in to the Second City. My second was being discovered there for ‘The Tracey Ullman Show.’ My third was the fact that the producers of ‘The Tracey Ullman Show’ didn’t want to spend extra money and hire another actor to do voices for a little cartoon they ran before and after the commercials so they asked me to do it.”

Castellaneta says he owes his success to many people, “but most importantly, my parents, Lou and Elsie, my wife Deb Lacusta, all my drama teachers, everyone at The Second City, George Wendt for mentioning me to Heidi Perlman and Tracey Ullman for ‘The Tracey Ullman Show,’Heidi Perlman and Tracey Ullman, Tim Kazarinsky and Vince Waldron for advising me to do ‘The Tracey Ullman Show,’ and of course all the producers, writers, actors and animators on ‘The Simpsons.’”

Dan Castellaneta will appear in The Bicycle Men at the Lakeshore Theatre Dec. 12-16.

Yolanda Cesta Cursach
Associate Director of performance programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art

“My big professional break was getting hired for my first paying job by Susan Lipman, executive director of Performing Arts Chicago, in August of 1995. I was hired to organize PAC’s first production office for its inaugural season as a presenter of theatre and dance. Our first presentation was in two months: Gaudeamus by the legendary Maly Theatre of St Petersburg. It was to be presented at the Athenaeum Theatre, abandoned for years until just three months before, when Fred Solari leased the property from St Alphonsus Church. My production was Fred’s first rental. I recruited Nancy McCarty, Corinne Lyon, and other friends from the International Theatre Festival of Chicago where I interned earlier. Together we hauled away years of stage sets, bricks, and mortar while tackling the formidable tech requirements for the Maly production. Talk about jumping in at the deep end!”

Cursach says she also owes her success to Jane Nicholl Sahlins and Bernie Sahlins, the cofounders of the International Theatre Festival of Chicago, where she started as an intern, and to Nancy McCarty, their production manager.

Susan Messing
Actress and Annoyance Theatre company member.

Trying to get a straight answer from any improviser is like trying to square off a bubble. However, the indomitable and always foul-mouthed Susan Messing made a noble effort for us. “My big break would be Mick Napier and the Annoyance Theatre. He was the one who told me if I was on stage I belonged there.”

When asked to whom she owes her success, Messing said, “My boyfriend Andrew Alexander and the Second City were dreamy. Del [Close] was dreamy. And Charna [Halpern] was dreamy. I keep saying dreamy. I can’t use the word rape, right? Oh, and the city of Chicago, who might have recognized by now that I’m a fucking hack but still agrees to watch me anyway. Thank you everyone.”

Susan Messing can be seen every Thursday night at the Annoyance in Messing with a Friend.

Jennifer Rudnicke and Mickie Paskal
Casting Directors

The ladies of Tenner Paskal and Rudnicke Casting have been working their tushies off this year. However, success still feels elusive at times. When asked about her big break, Mickie Paskal retorts, “You mean I’ve already had my big break? Crap. I’m still waiting for my big break!” However, she does happily acknowledge Jane Brody for hiring her. “She gave me my first job, and then she sold the company to me.”

Paskal’s business partner, Jennifer Rudnicke, traces her success back to high school. “I owe my success to Thom Smith, my high school drama teacher at William Fremd in Palatine.”

Sheldon Patinkin
Chair of Columbia College’s Theatre Department, an artistic consultant to The Second City and Steppenwolf Theatre, and ensemble member of The Gift Theatre

Sheldon Patinkin says his big break was simply “going to the University of Chicago and running into all those people in extracurricular theatre.” Of course “all those people” includes the likes of comedy legends Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Paul Sills (the son of Viola Spolin, widely considered the mother of modern improvisation for the theatre), and many others with whom he would go on to found The Second City.

When asked to whom he feels he owes his success, he laughs, “What makes you think I have success?” OK, Mr. Snarkypants. Now that we’ve got that out of the way… “I owe my success to a lot of people, including Paul Sills and Bernie Sahlins. The people who hired me at Columbia College Chicago. And all the things I’ve failed at.”

Jonathan Pitts
Executive director of Chicago Improv Festival Productions, which produces the Chicago Improv Festival, Teen Fest and the College Comedy Championships

Jonathan Pitts traces his success back to several people, all of whom taught him the skills needed to run a major international festival. Love and knowledge of improv came from Second City: “Alan Baranowski who was the stage manager at Second City’s touring company was teaching improv in the early 80s when Del was in rehab. Back then there was no Second City training center. He invited me to come observe a workshop, and I’ve been going ever since. At one point I had no money, so Don DePollo gave me a scholarship so I could keep taking classes.”

He also credits several people with providing him with the practical experience he draws on day-to-day. Lucy Rosen taught him about publicity when Pitts started an improv theatre company in New Mexico. David Schein helped him get started producing festivals with his work on Around the Coyote, and Nancy McCarty, had hired him to work with her on the International Theatre Festival.

Steve Scott
Associate producer at the Goodman Theatre (and check out his spiffy new headshot)

“Basically, my big ‘break’ happened like this: I had just moved to Chicago, having quit a dead-end teaching job in Kansas. About a week after I got here, I got a call from a friend, whose husband was the assistant house manager at the Goodman. The year before, the Goodman had established an educational outreach program, but the woman who had founded it was leaving, and they were looking for a replacement for her. I was pretty sure that I was not exactly what anyone at the Goodman had in mind for this; I’d had some teaching experience, and some directing experience in summer stock—but I was fresh from Kansas, for God’s sake!

“So after about a week, I happened to be downtown, and I decided to drop off my resume, mostly so I could say that I’d done that. I was sent to the upstairs office at the old Goodman (as I recall, I got lost backstage several times trying to find it, which added to my certainty that this wasn’t where I belonged). When I finally made it to the receptionist’s desk, she greeted me with appropriately courteous boredom, until she looked at the resume. All of a sudden she said something like, “Where have you been? We’ve been expecting you,” and she ran off to get the outgoing education person, who came out and greeted me like a long-lost friend.

“Apparently, an offer had been made for the position, and had been turned down by the recipient literally about five minutes before—and there was no one else that anyone wanted to hire. I went in for an interview with Roche Schulfer, then another one with Greg Mosher (the artistic director at the time)—and to my everlasting shock, I got a job offer—on my 30th birthday, no less. It was the luckiest thing that has happened to me, before or since—and I guess I owe all of it to Roche, to Greg, and to that person who had just turned down the job.”