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BY JENN GODDU
Geoffrey M. Curley likes to build things. A ubiquitous fixture in Chicago’s theatre community, this 30-year-old scenic designer was once interested in architecture. It didn’t take long for him to realize that getting involved in theatre meant that he could construct any number of buildings in a single year rather than taking many years to build just one.
"I like making pretty things, and I like doing it in a quick time period," he says. Curley ended up graduating with a B.F.A. from Ithaca College in New York where he majored in costume and scenic design.
Now, after working in Chicago for the past seven years, Curley is ready to start constructing something new, and he’s ready for it to be a long-term project. As the newly appointed artistic director at Roadworks Productions, Curley aims to build a "clubhouse feeling" at the company, "where everyone will be welcome, and we will always do great work.
"I’ve been inside of Roadworks for quite a while now and I know the ins and outs. I know the characters involved," he said. In this, the company’s 10th anniversary year, he wants to concentrate on bringing together the old and new ensemble members. He aims to "sort of corral the generations," he says. "We can really pull together and allow them to blossom."
Roadworks managing director Jenny Avery shares the company’s administrative offices at Fulton Market with Curley. She has already seen him generating "an enormous amount of new excitement" among the ensemble members. "He is throwing his arms out and Roadworks’ arms out to them to ask them to participate in a more active way," she adds.
Curley replaces Shade Murray, Roadwork’s artistic director since 1994, who left in August to become associate producer at Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe.
"He has found a way to take the physical needs of the company and present them to the artists in a way that that engages their artistic sensibility," Murray said of his successor.
While it may surprise some to see a scenic designer take up the artistic leadership at Roadworks, those who know Curley say it makes sense.
"Considering our history of doing pieces that have had a strong production concept, Geoff is a very strong voice of the artistic interests of our ensemble members," said Murray, who remains a Roadworks ensemble member. "While most ensembles tend to be actor based, we have a much stronger hold within the production and direction fields."
It also helps that Curley has worked with each of the three directors–Murray, Abby Epstein and Abigail Deser–who have helped shape the company’s reputation for vital, innovative and ensemble-driven shows.
"His presence has been seen throughout the entire inception of Roadworks. I think he represents a sense of artistic continuity between these three directors," Murray said. "As a designer he will be able to support as many different directorial visions while also participating as an artist or an administrator."
Curley has always looked at Roadworks productions from a more global perspective, not restricting himself to thoughts of design elements, Avery said.
"There isn’t anybody who gets what Roadworks does more than Geoff does," she said. "There is nobody else who understands the aesthetic more."
John Culbert, dean of The Theatre School of DePaul University, where Curley has taught, says Curley will bring a wider perspective to the role of artistic director. Culbert, a designer himself, says, "many artistic directors are directors themselves which means they work with one collaborative process, which is theirs." A designer, such as Curley, who has experienced many different collaborative processes, gains the perspective of knowing what all the options are.
But it also helps if an artistic director has some business sense as well. When Curley decided to put his name in for the Roadworks job, he knew this would have to be a factor in his pitch.
"As a designer I have a good business sense. I’ve been running my own business for the past seven years," he said. When lobbying for the job, he also talked up his many connections in the theatre community and suggested that his experience with different companies has given him a sense of what to do and what not to do to continue Roadworks’ success.
"At the same time Geoff is a great listener and I think people feel very comfortable approaching Geoff," Murray said. As an artistic director he needs to listen to the needs and wants of artists, directors, audience members, critics and the board. Curley will be good at this, Murray said. "He’s a great diplomat."
Perhaps it is that diplomacy that is evidenced when Curley answers a question about the impact his design sensibilities ight have on the artistic direction of Roadworks.
"Roadworks is and always will be a solid acting company," Curley said. "We should never go forward and look at it as a design company…I hesitate to say there will be an emphasis on design. There will be an illumination on design."
The way that Roadworks integrates design into its productions is one of the things that drew Curley to the company in the first place. "As a designer you’re usually drawn more to the visual, and Roadworks really seemed to capture that."
Curley’s first show in Chicago was with Avery and Joel Moritz, one of Roadworks’ founding members. It was Moritz who encouraged Curley to see a production of The Lights directed by Epstein.
"I really got involved with the idea of becoming part of Roadworks, and I really pursued it. I was calling them up every couple of weeks saying wouldn’t it be great if you brought in some outside designer?" he said. "Eventually it worked."
In 1995, he made his Roadworks debut as scenic designer for SubUrbia. His Jeff nominated design influenced by cubists and destruction art of the 1970s, depicted three different apartments within an apartment complex along with the hallway and exterior corridors–all on the Live Bait mainstage.
He went on to work on the company’s Serenading Louie, Some Explicit Polaroids, SantaLand Diaries, This is Our Youth, Stupid Kids, ecstasy and [sic] (for which he won a 1999-2000 Jeff Award). Joining the Roadworks ensemble gave Curley the best of both worlds: "Not only did you have really great aesthetics and really great shows but you also had a wonderful group of people who really loved what they do," he said.
For his part, Curley has brought focus to the design side expression of the Roadworks vision, Murray said. "He has single-handedly defined Roadworks’ visual aesthetic," he said. "He brings a very modern popular vocabulary to the designs."
Curley’s designs make references to popular culture and modern trends in architecture, modern arts, film, visual arts and more. "It’s not just theatrical," Murray said. "Geoff has always challenged how our plays inhabit the space."
Simultaneously Curley has also been, as Court Theatre artistic director Charlie Newell puts it, "one of the most conspicuous and omnipresent" designers in the city. Even now that he’s taken the artistic director job at Roadworks he hasn’t slowed down much. This November he will provide scenic design for Court’s The Chairs. The set for The Front Page playing this September at the Milwaukee Rep, was a Curley design. His design work is also on display through December at Writers’ in A Phoenix Too Frequently.
Curley isn’t a designer that you can pigeonhole, perhaps describing him as a great realist or metaphorical designer, said Laura Eason, artistic director of Lookingglass Theatre Company. "He doesn’t have just one thing that he does well. He really taps into the heart of the show…He’s able to really run the whole gamut."
For Lookingglass he designed Metamorphosis at the Ruth Page Center with its facade of decaying plaster and a flexible Plexiglas box which could move around the stage. For Steppenwolf’s The Ordinary Yearning of Miriam Buddwig he offered an attentively detailed realistic set. At About Face, where he is an artistic associate, he has worked on shows including Terrible Girls and Home at the End of the World. He has also collaborated with Blue Star, Wisdom Bridge, Shakespeare Rep., The Next, American Theatre Co., Pegasus Players, Oak Park Festival Theatre, Lifeline and AppleTree Theatre.
"If you name a theatre, I’ve most likely done a show there," he says.
Everyone may have a different experience when they are working with Curley, but he says that all can expect a final product that is high quality and true to the script and true to the overall vision.
This is a skill he has been honing since coming to Chicago straight out of college. He thought about working in a café and designing on the side or taking a temp job but decided instead to take his chances as a freelance designer. "I chose to just jump in and do it. So I started working freelance with little else, taking shows for $500, no budget and working 24 hours, seven days a week."
After seven years of the grueling schedule of an itinerant freelancer, Curley was looking for some stability. "I wanted to settle down and get a solid job where I can actually create art that I fully believe in," he said. "As a designer you tend to do jobs that are offered to you or jobs that someone else fully believes in."
Curley does concede that his creative vision will influence choices that the company makes, but says he doesn’t plan to create a new Roadworks.
"I love Roadworks," he said. "I didn’t come in here to make a new company. I came in here to continue Roadworks."
Roadworks will continue developing plays that most other people shy away from, plays that deal with issues that are tangible and frightening, he said. "They’re definitely questioning where we are and who we are."
Taking this approach has helped Roadworks find its niche– a niche the company is now ready, as it enters its second decade, to cultivate on a grander scale.
"Being someone who has been able to work extensively on all different kinds of production models, he is going to bring a stronger sense of what we need to do to increase our production values to move into larger venues," Murray said.
The company is poised to gain even more attention and acclaim in the theatre community, and Curley has the skills to make it happen, Murray said.
Says Curley, "It’s not that I want to change Roadworks. I want to make it as good as it can be, and that’s really good."