Chicago, often regarded as an actor’s ensemble town, has been turning into a much-lauded playwriting center. Unlike a previous popular trend of company’s importing works from other geographic locations, local writers are receiving an unprecedented number of world premieres at Windy City theatres–Stage Left, Northlight, Victory Gardens, Goodman and more–this season. Prolific young playwright Brett Neveu calls this first decade of the new millennium "The Golden Age of the Chicago Playwright."

PerformInk interviewed 10 Chicago playwrights at the top of their creative games: David Barr III, Carson Grace Becker, John Green, McKinley Johnson, Jenny Laird, G.Riley Mills, Mia McCullough, Brett Neveu, Ann Noble and Douglas Post. All have affiliations with playwright development centers, like Chicago Dramatists, Victory Gardens and Prop Thtr. This season, they will debut new works (some, multiple new works) at several area theatres. The writers agree that Chicago fosters a highly collaborative and supportive environment for theatre artists. Becker calls Chicago "Shangri-la" for emerging playwrights. It’s affordable, with many opportunities to have scripts read by top-notch talent.

A challenge, they admit, is gaining national recognition (ultimately, many have to get their work produced in New York or even tap into screenwriting possibilities in LA). It’s still difficult to earn a living here as a full-time playwright. But they wax ecstatic about the esteemed and nurturing organizations here that respect the playwriting craft.

These local writers share insights into how they move their work from page to stage–and the writer-friendly programs/mentors who helped kick-start their journeys.

David Barr III

Barr, 39, has been the associate artistic director and playwright in residence at Chicago Theatre Company since 1994 and is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists. He is drawn to stories rooted in history–like The State of Mississippi vs. Emmett Till and Bronzeville. As a stage actor, Barr became disgruntled with the inaccurate way many African-American characters were being written. So he set out to write his own plays: "I wanted to have my art reflect the images of Blacks that I know, live with and associate with in my daily life–living, breathing, hard-working human beings with depth of character, flaws, tragedies and triumphs. Real people."

This season, Barr has co-written a play with Carson Grace Becker, By the Music of the Spheres, that will make its debut at the Goodman in February. It’s a 19th century period piece about a half-brother (a recently emancipated slave) and his sister (a defrocked daughter of the Confederacy), who are deaf and erroneously find themselves in a nightmarish insane asylum in the tumultuous days following the Civil War. They are then co-writing two more plays as part of a trilogy. Both plays carry similar political and sociological themes. One will be set in the 20th century. Its working title is The Upper Room and is based on the true story of an Austrian-Jewish professor who barely escapes the Nazi occupation of his native land and comes to America. The last part of the trilogy will take place during the end of the Revolutionary War.

Other projects include teaming up with playwrights Lisa Dillman, Stephanie Newsom and director Ilesa Lisa Duncan on a dramatic musical based on Amy Elizabeth Biehl, the Fulbright scholar who was killed by a mob of Black South Africans in 1993. Earlier this season, Barr completed a commissioned play on the Underground Railroad, Freedom Train to Canaan Land, for the United States Forest Service.

Why did you choose playwriting over other genres?

Theatre, in my opinion, is much more effective for exploring issues…when you’re sitting in a theatre and there’s an effective piece of drama on stage, you can’t hit the pause button or walk out to the concession stand when somebody on screen says something you don’t agree with. I’ve always believed that the stage forces you to confront real people in realistic scenarios in the non-fictionalized dynamic that is closest to what the writer originally envisions when a piece of literature is conceptualized.

Where are you at in your career right now?

I am probably in a better place artistically than I have been in years. After years of constantly pumping out commissioned works and plays that were rushed into production because producers had time-sensitive grants to initiate, I am finally in a position where I am writing what I want to write in the time frame I’d like to write them in. I think every writer should step back now and then to reevaluate where their art is going.

Carson Grace Becker

Becker, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, received a Jeff Award for her poetic drama, A Mislaid Heaven (which premiered at Famous Door). Her latest work, Book of Mercy, is receiving its world premiere at Chicago Dramatists through Nov. 3. She describes it as "a tightly focused realistic play, which takes place in one day and deals intimately with family–rather Chekhovian by device." By the Music of the Spheres–co-written with David Barr III–will debut at the Goodman in February and features deaf actors and a multiracial cast. This piece will expand into a trilogy, to include The Upper Room and the tentatively titled Mrs. Candor and the Art of Washington. Becker is starting to work on musicals as well as "a sexy international spy play in the hopper that is utterly contemporary and deals with drug and gun running, performance art, the CIA and Coleridge’s 'Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.’"

Why did you choose playwriting over other genres?

When I applied to graduate schools for my MFA in writing, I vied for both playwright and fiction programs. I blitzed the market knowing it was saturated, and so very competitive. I was accepted at some really good schools in both, and so I had to make a decision–which scared me, because I knew it would set the course for the rest of my life. I realized that playwriting scared me more–which meant the stakes were obviously higher there. So I chose the University of Iowa and have never regretted it.

How did you go about embarking on your career?

[I was involved with] crucial development programs like Chicago Dramatists, the Playwrights’ Center (Minneapolis), and the O’Neill. Playwrights can’t survive without these. And then in-house development at specific theatres. I cannot stress that without development programs there can be no new American plays. Money needs to be spent on this.

John Green

Green, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, received a 2001-02 After Dark Award for his touching domestic drama, The Liquid Moon, which also was nominated for a Jeff. It premiered at Chicago Dramatists. Green says he never intended to become a playwright. He’s been a singer-songwriter and an actor since he was a teenager. While he was living in New York, he wrote a play, Mentor, about an extraordinary encounter with his college mentor. An actor-friend, Steve Fletcher, suggested that he write something original for an actors’ showcase. So he penned a scene that later became his second full-length play, The Hamburger Twins. Producer Michael Leavitt saw Green and Fletcher performing the play in a New York workshop. He chose to produce it in Chicago at the Briar Street Theatre. Green and his wife moved back here, and he got involved with Chicago Dramatists.

Green’s latest work, Twilight Serenade is being produced in March by Red Hen Productions. Red Hen is also planning on producing his autobiographical musical, Going Up. Several theatres around the country have expressed interest in producing The Liquid Moon. Other projects include: The Brass Ring, a farcical comedy about an "acting class from hell," and The W(h)ole Thing, a political farce "exploring the grotesque and violent nature of today’s geopolitical landscape."

Why did you choose playwriting over other genres?

What I love about this genre is that I am able to wed all of my talents and passions into one. When I am writing, the actor in me gets to play each of the characters; the musician gets to express rhythm and emotion; the lyricist joins the actor in creating dialogue. I have performed in front of live audiences for years, but nothing matches the magic of creating an entire world and then sitting anonymously in the dark with the audience watching it come to life.

Where are you at in your career right now?

The Liquid Moon was a breakthrough for me on many levels. I stopped two thirds of the way through the first draft because it unnerved me. I asked Russ Tutterow to read it. I was outside of my comfort zone and didn’t know if it was worth pursuing. He and Ann Filmer kept pushing me to be truthful and not worry about anyone else’s opinions. Its success has made me more courageous in expressing my own authentic voice.

McKinley Johnson

Johnson, a Chicago Dramatists resident playwright, started out as an actor and dancer but got frustrated with the material for African-Americans. About eight years ago, the pastor of his church [Rev. Maceo L. Woods of Chicago’s Christian Tabernacle Baptist Church] asked him to write a show about the history of gospel music–mainly Thomas Dorsey’s struggle with getting his music into the Black church. That music-based show grew into Georgia Tom: Thomas Andrew Dorsey, the Father of Gospel Music.

But, while he was doing research for Georgia Tom, he came across a picture of regal Blacks from the 19th century and was inspired to write Train Is Comin’, a play with music, which went on to win several awards and was one of the longest-running shows in Chicago Theatre Company’s history.

Johnson holds a BFA in Acting/Musical Theatre from Howard University; and an MA in Communication and Theatre from the University of Illinois-Chicago. He also studies dance at the Joel Hall Dance Center and is a costume designer. Originally from Smithfield, Virginia, he came to Chicago in 1984 and has worked as an actor at various theatres around town–Pegasus Players, Touchstone, Black Ensemble Theater, Goodman, Remains, and was in the national tour of Barnum.

After Train Is Comin’, Johnson co-wrote with Stephanie Newsom the musical, Being Beautiful, which opened in 2000 at CTC. It centers on the little-known African-American drag queen community in the 1930s and ’40s, told through the eyes of a resilient character named Aston. It moved to Bailiwick, where Johnson played Aston and won an After Dark Award. Georgia Tom is being produced at Bailiwick in January. Being Beautiful is playing through the end of October at Karamu Playhouse in Cleveland. Johnson is working on a new 'dansical,’ Four Hours Down Time, about the Pullman porters.

Why did you choose writing musicals over other genres?

I gravitated to musicals [as a composer, lyricist, book writer] rather than plays because I believe musicals make us happy. I have a background in music as a singer. I took voice and piano lessons. The musical form comes from my background with gospel and the church. Music goes back to our ancestral roots. It’s part of life. Music has a way of speaking to the heart like nothing else. The music can take you on a journey.

Jenny Laird

Laird, 33, was encouraged by her college fiction-writing professor to try playwriting because, she thinks, "even though I couldn’t begin to describe a couch, my characters somehow could." She took his advice and found that, when asked to move a story forward through character, dialogue and action, she was suddenly able to find her own voice. She also loved the theatre and discovered that writing for a live audience is addictive because the goal is to ask them to be part of the equation. Laird is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, where her drama, Ballad Hunter, received its world premiere and a Jeff nomination for Best New Play. Her plays have been developed and produced at The Women’s Project, Horizon Theatre Company, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, The Utah Shakespeare Festival, The Asylum, and more.

Her latest play, Sky Girls (published in its entirety in this issue), directed by BJ Jones at Northlight, opens in February. Set during WWII, the story centers around the struggles of a group of women pilots called the WASPs. Only the Sound, directed by Russ Tutterow, opens in March at Chicago Dramatists. She’s also working on the stage version of the "Love Boat" reunion.

How did you go about embarking on your career?

You hear that graduate schools won’t take you seriously until you’ve lived a little and have something to write about. So after I graduated from college, I backpacked around the South Pacific, read as many plays as I could get my hands on and, in deference to Tennessee Williams, took on as many odd jobs as I could find. I was even a flight attendant–for a grand total of two months. I couldn’t bear passing out the muffins to 142 passengers four times a day. There are only so many times a girl can say, 'Muffin? Muffin? Muffin?’ in that ultra-polite tone before she loses all sense of the English language and how magnificently beautiful it can be. I hopped the next train to graduate school at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, where Julie Jensen–one of my all-time favorite playwrights–could be found, and I never looked back.

I moved to Chicago just after I graduated from UNLV [with an MFA in playwriting], began skulking around the hallways of Chicago Dramatists, teaching for their outreach program, got an internship at the Goodman Theatre, worked the box office at Next Theatre and probably saw four plays a week. I just couldn’t get enough of Chicago theatre, and I wanted to really get to know the theatres I might someday be fortunate enough to collaborate with. In terms of strategizing ways to get my work read, I was never good at that. I’m one of those people who’s shy about asking for extra napkins at McDonald’s, let alone asking someone to read my play. I figured if I just kept showing up, saying I was a playwright, eventually someone would want to question me on the validity of such a statement and ask for proof. It eventually worked–but I’m not recommending it as a tactic if you don’t have a few years to slay.

Mia McCullough

McCullough, 32, began "compulsively writing plays and screenplays in high school." She started finishing them at Northwestern University, where she majored in theatre. While there, she took only one playwriting class–actually a two-year program where students learned to write for the stage, film and television. After she graduated, she participated in the Women’s Theatre Alliance New Plays Workshop and was eventually invited to join The Playwrights Collective, an informal group of playwrights who get together twice a month to read each other’s work. That group has become a vital part of her development process. McCullough joined Chicago Dramatists as a Network Playwright [and is a resident playwright there] and got matched up with Stage Left’s Kevin Heckman two years ago to direct her reading of Chagrin Falls, which was produced at Stage Left and won a Jeff.

This season, Steppenwolf is producing McCullough’s Taking Care–a two-person play about mental illness and co-dependence–in the Garage space. Stage Left is producing two of her plays: a one-act called Suicide and Cyber Serenade, which the playwright has been trying to get produced locally ever since she wrote it five years ago: "It’s a comic modern fairy tale about the evils of technology, but I have to keep rewriting it to keep up with the advances in technology." In addition, McCullough is working on two commissions: The one for Stage Left, Echoes of Another Man, explores where the soul resides–in our brains or in our bodies. The Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival play is currently called A New and Conquered Land and deals with the relationship between a Sudanese refugee, who has been resettled in Chicago, and the North Shore socialite who volunteers to help him acclimate to his surroundings.

Why did you choose playwriting over other genres?

I think in dialogue. Characters just start talking in my head, and I can see them–either up on stage or through a camera lens. I just write down what I see in my head; what I hear. I almost never think in narrative. Or when I do, I can’t sustain it. I stopped writing screenplays several years ago because it felt utterly futile. Now I’m adapting Chagrin Falls into a screenplay because people are interested. And I’m enjoying it, but I’m not holding my breath.

Where are you at in your career right now?

I have no idea where I am in my career right now. I’ve been writing for 10 years already, and I had my first production in 1993, but this feels like the beginning. Everything is new and terrifying.

G. Riley Mills

Mills, 33, began studying playwriting at the age of 14 with playwright Steven Dietz in a church basement. He had his first play, Ascending a Staircase to Nowhere, professionally produced when he was 17 at the Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis. Mills is also an actor who has worked at Steppenwolf, Prop, Eclipse, Midnight Circus, and on film and television. He came to Chicago in 1987 and received his degree in Acting at The Theatre School, DePaul University. Mills teaches a "Playwriting For Actors" class at The Actor’s Center of Chicago and co-founded www.scriptseeker.com, an Internet resource for playwrights.

His newest play, Raising Blue, will open in February at Prop Thtr. It’s a Prop Thtr production in association with the Actor’s Center of Chicago’s Production Company. Raising Blue is a drama, set during the Civil War, about a group of Confederate soldiers who secretly develop the first submarine ever successfully used in battle. In April, the Midnight Circus will remount The Flower Thieves, a rock 'n’ roll circus fable, which he co-wrote with musician Ralph Covert, at the new Beverly Arts Center for a limited run. It originally opened at the Northshore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie and played last year at Metropolis. Mills just started work on a small character-driven play, The Last Carnival, about an immigrant family of Italians living in Minnesota in the 1920s and the events that suddenly turn their world upside down over the course of one week.

How did you go about embarking on your career?

Getting a play read or produced is a tricky and exhausting process with no hard and fast rules for success. In my experience it’s all about relationships that I’ve established and being able to approach producers and theatres who are familiar with my work. I’ve been lucky to have had my plays [including the two Jeff Citation-winning Sawdust and Spangles and Streeterville, co- written with Ralph Covert ] developed and produced by a wide range of companies (Lookingglass, TimeLine, CollaborAction, Prop, Midnight Circus, etc.). Chicago is a great place for playwrights, but unless you’re a member of a theatre company that is a consistent champion of your work, it can be a lonely road trying to get a script read. New plays are like big, homeless orphans wandering the earth, searching for a kind soul to take them in. A lot of non-Equity companies in Chicago just don’t have the resources or interest in the type of investment it takes to refine a new play, to develop it and take it through the process of readings and workshops. This is where a good play can become a great play. It’s much easier and safer for them to do something by Shepard or Miller. That’s why Chicago is so lucky to have places like Chicago Dramatists and Prop Thtr, with its New Play Festival. They love new work and are willing to make the investment–to take us in out of the wilderness.

Brett Neveu

Neveu, 32, says he began by writing a lot of different things–from sketches to short plays–in college. After he graduated from the University of Iowa, he moved to Minneapolis, where he worked with The Playwrights’ Center. While there, Neveu was involved with the first hatchings of a member group called The Playwrights’ Roundtable, where he had some readings of near full-length work. A few years later, he and his wife moved to Chicago where Neveu started having scripts performed at the back of Sheffields, he notes, "before the pool table took over," and wrote and performed with a puppet group he founded called The Pup at Theatre. He then became a member of Chicago Dramatists and had a number of developmental readings through them. Six years after moving to Chicago, Neveu had his first production in Las Vegas. After that "initial Sin City show," it’s been a fairly steady roll of productions (The Last Barbecue; Eagle Hills, Eagle Ridge, Eagle Landing) here in Chicago and elsewhere, which has allowed him to become a full-time playwright.

Stage Left is currently producing Neveu’s Sept. 11-themed play, Empty. Also in October are The Ghosty Plays at The Hideout with fellow Chicago playwrights Lisa Dillman, Mark Guarino and Rebecca Gilman. Then in November, A Red Orchid Theatre is producing his drama, Eric LaRue. In the spring, Terrapin Theatre Company will be producing the go. Neveu recently received another commission from Steppenwolf’s New Play Initiative, and he is working with Steppenwolf’s Crosstown program for teens. He has a reading with Chicago Dramastists of a new play, twentyone, and he wrote the script for this year’s Haunted 'L,’ produced by The Hypocrites.

Why did you choose playwriting over other genres?

I’d been writing for a long time, but didn’t get interested in playwriting as a career until college. I had begun college at the University of Iowa with an acting emphasis but, as my time there went on, I became more interested in their Playwrights Workshop and writing and performing for the local open mike, No Shame Theatre. Playwriting was sort of a natural progression. It combined my heavy interest in acting with my continued development as a writer. I was able to get the best of both worlds through playwriting and found that I enjoyed working on the show from the seats rather than getting up on the stage and trying to remember my lines.

Where are you at in your career right now?

I’m just starting out, at least in a 'career’ sense. I worked temp, office and retail jobs for a long time, and now I’m trying the whole 'see-if-you-can-stay-home-and-make-a-living-off-of-this’ thing. I’ve had some opportunities come up recently that are helping with this goal, and I hope that I have enough to keep it chuggin’ along. Otherwise, back into the fray.

Ann Noble

Noble, 31, took playwriting at Northwestern University with Charles Smith and then a few classes at Center Theatre with Beth Henley. After graduating with a theatre degree, the actor-writer formed her own theatre company, Seanachai, to produce her wildly successful Irish-themed play And Neither Have I Wings To Fly. After the company was formed, they created an ensemble and that’s where she does most of her readings/workshops. Noble also has had works read at Naked Eye, Northlight and Victory Gardens. The Boarding House was produced at Next Theatre. Her latest play–a contemporary comedy featuring all women and lots of tangled phone lines–Ariadne’s Thread–is playing at Victory Gardens (through Oct. 27). Noble is also working on three new plays. Her Irish-set The Pagans (which premiered at Seanachai) is going to be produced in New York next season.

What prompted you to pursue a career as a playwright?

I started writing short stories when I was a kid, but I really liked acting out the stories. Speaking the characters’ words was what was fun for me. So I wrote a few small, bad, simple plays when I was a kid. It wasn’t until college [Northwestern University], when I took my first playwriting class, that I fell in love with it. I love movies, too, but I will always prefer playwriting. The dialogue is everything. Writing for the stage is harder. So I guess I like the challenge, creating character and action through dialogue, versus a film where it’s the action–the visual–that’s important.

Where are you at in your career right now?

I’ve got a bunch of plays under my belt–both produced and unproduced. While I will always write plays, I am trying to branch out into the world of film and television. It’s so difficult to make money as a playwright, but that is ultimately what I want to be. But all playwrights supplement their income with either film or television. So I’ve been visiting LA, setting up meetings with different networks and independent film companies to see what it’s all about out there. I would hate to have to leave Chicago, but it might happen.

Douglas Post

Post, 44, is a member of Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble. He believes that "there is no better training for a playwright than actually getting up on stage and inhabiting a great play or a good play or even a mediocre play." In the mid-’80s, he was a part of a playwrights collective, called the Chicago New Plays Festival Company, with Sally Nemeth, Nick Patricca and Scott McPherson. They helped each other to develop scripts and produced some showcases around town. Later, he was invited out to the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference for three summers, where he says he learned a tremendous amount about his craft.

His new musical, God and Country–which is a retelling of the Antigone story with three women performing all of the parts–will have its world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater in November. His play, Personal Effects–which is the tale of "one man’s descent into a familial labyrinth"–will have its world premiere at Circle Theatre in January. And his thriller, Murder in Green Meadows, which has had over 30 productions in the States as well England and Germany, will have its Austrian premiere at Vienna’s English Theater in the spring. Post has been commissioned to write a screenplay of his play, Drowning Sorrows, which was done at Victory Gardens and as a radio play with Harry Hamlin, Martha Lavey and Paul Winfield. He plans to get back to work on his folk musical, Jericho, which concerns the rise and fall of a copper mining community in Central Arizona during World War I.

What prompted you to pursue a career as a playwright?

They say that you don’t choose the profession, it chooses you. I don’t mean to be mysterious about this, but that’s how it happened to me. Sometimes I think that I should be doing something useful, like urban planning, but I suspect it’s too late. I write primarily for the theatre because the work is both solitary and communal and, at the end of the day, I own what I do. Writing a play is like constructing a house that you hope people will want to live in for a time and, when they go away, you look for other tenants.