Dinner & A Show: ArtsPass Exclusive takes students behind the scenes at Goodman Theatre
story & photos by Jess Hutchinson
Students board the bus outside the Logan Center for the Arts on their way downtown.
“What brings a molecular engineering student to the theater?” We’re on a yellow school bus heading north from the Logan Center on the University of Chicago’s Hyde Park campus toward the sparkly downtown lights. It turns out that Livia, the first-year student who’s studying how molecules affect each other is interested in how humans do that, too. She loves theater and says she thinks it’s good to “hear other people’s experiences and their opinions, because nothing is truly isolated, even molecular engineering.” Besides, her friend Onofrio invited her.
“It’s good to hear other people’s experiences and their opinions, because nothing is truly isolated, even molecular engineering.”
Onofrio, a first-year philosophy student, heard about the ArtsPass program during O-Week and signed up for emails about the arts offerings on and off campus. All the opportunities to engage in Chicago’s vibrant arts and culture scene were part of what brought him to UChicago in the first place. His hometown is small, so having all of these things to experience beyond campus played into the decision. He’s already used his UCID ArtsPass to visit the Art Institute, the Field Museum, and the National Museum of Mexican Art. And now he’s going to see the world premiere production of Swing State by Rebecca Gilman at the Goodman Theatre, partly because he loves theater, but also because the tickets were just $10, so, as he said: “Why not?”
The UChicago ArtsPass turns a UCID into an opportunity for free and discounted admission to more than 70 arts and culture organizations across Chicago. Partner organizations include museums, cinemas, dance companies, and theaters large and small, as well as divisions of the City of Chicago like the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). In addition to these benefits, each quarter students can take part in ArtsPass Exclusives, special events that offer a behind-the-scenes experience and often include discussions with artists, a meal, and transportation.
Hence the yellow bus. Prey, a third-year studying business, econ, and media arts & design is the University Arts Engagement intern this year and helped organize this trip. She wants to work with artists and event production after she finishes school, so this internship is aligned with her goals. Even though she’s already had two years at the University, she says she hasn’t had a chance to consume the kind of culture that is so widely available across the city. She’s glad she has a chance to do that now, and to help other students experience this aspect of their community, too.
Our sweet ride arrives at the Goodman in Chicago’s famous Loop.
“It’s hard for UChicago students to pivot away from academics, so I think that’s why programs such as ArtsPass are really important,” Prey says. She wants fellow students to realize they can make Chicago’s rich arts and culture scene part of their educational experience. Her solution was to make art & design a focus of her studies, but she notes that not everyone has to take that route; you can also more actively take advantage of the access programs like the one she’s helping steward provides: “Take a look at all the ArtsPass partners,” she says. “Be like, ‘this is something I want to do with my friends’ and get out there.”
“Though ArtsPass exposes our UChicago students to arts partners city-wide and on-campus, this event was also crafted to build community among students and foster student interaction and conversations around the arts.”
The bus parks outside the Goodman, Chicago’s longest-running regional theater. The company was founded in 1922 with a gift from the parents of Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, a playwright who had a vision for an “ideal theater” before he died in 1918 during the influenza pandemic. Goodman was originally part of the Art Institute of Chicago and for years included a school of drama – what would eventually become The Theatre School at DePaul University. The theater won the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre in 1992, moved to its current location in 2000, and recently had a major leadership change: Susan V. Booth became Artistic Director earlier this fall, succeeding former AD Robert Falls, who led the company for 35 years.
We’re welcomed into the Goodman’s lobby by Matti Allison, the head of Audience Development on the theater’s staff. She gives us a tour of the visual art exhibit focused on previously incarcerated folks displayed prominently around the space, and leads us to the Alice: a gathering, teaching, and learning space used primarily by the Goodman’s powerhouse Education and Engagement Team. (This writer is biased as a former Goodman Education staffer, but the impact of Willa J. Taylor and her team’s work can’t be overstated. Don’t believe me? Just watch.) On this night, Matti’s laid out sandwiches and other snacks for the student audience members and arranged for a pre-show talk with Neena Ardnt, the Goodman’s resident dramaturg and a close collaborator of the playwright and director for the show we’re about to see.
Dramaturg Neena Ardnt speaks to the ArtsPass group during a pre-show conversation.
Ardnt shares that producing Swing State at this moment is significant for the theater in many ways: not only is this the first play Goodman has produced that grapples with the fact of the COVID pandemic – not as a major plot point, but by a reality that has to be engaged – it’s also the first show that Robert Falls has directed as the former artistic director. This is also an appropriate “welcome home” present for Susan Booth: she was the literary manager who first brought Rebecca Gilman’s work to Falls’s attention. Gilman is the playwright whose new work the Goodman has fostered most, says Arndt. In addition to telling us more about a dramaturg’s role (“sort of like a new play midwife,” she says) Ardnt also shares an inside look at the process, how this script was changing right up to opening night, when the play was finally “locked,” meaning that no more changes to the text or the design can happen.
But this trip isn’t just about meeting one of the artists involved in the show: it’s also a chance for the students to meet one another. While some came in pairs or small groups, most of the group is together for the first time. As we go around the room and introduce ourselves, there are students studying law, public policy, data science, film studies, computer science, poetry and Arabic, and, of course, molecular engineering, philosophy, econ, and design.
“An ArtsPass Exclusive outing of this kind with a behind-the-scenes component brings together students across varying academic disciplines for a collective arts experience and to meet students they might not otherwise encounter on campus or in classes,” shared Juelle Daley, Assistant Director of University Arts Engagement. “This is particularly important as we all continue to thaw out from the social isolation created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Though ArtsPass exposes our UChicago students to arts partners city-wide and on-campus, this Swing State event was also crafted to build community among students and foster student interaction and conversations around the arts.” As the first ArtsPass Exclusive in more than two years, the crowd that gathered for this event shows how hungry students are to get back to experiencing the world beyond campus together.
The performance itself is – excellent. As Ardnt shared during the pre-show conversation, this play is Rebecca Gilman at the height of her powers: characters who are smart, passionate, complicated, but more than anything: human. Gilman is gifted at finding the holy in the mundane, and the actors are more that up to the task of bringing these complex humans to life. Mary Beth Fisher, another frequent collaborator of Gilman’s and Falls’s breaks your heart and then helps you put it back together. Together with Kirsten Fitzgerald, Anne E. Thompson, and Bubba Weiler, the small ensemble shows the depth and tension and love of a small town struggling to come together in a time they’ve been told it’s safest to stay apart.
On the way out the door back to the bus, I ask Mitski what she thought of the show. She’s a second-year data science and econ major who’s taking a Theater & Performance Studies course to fulfil her arts core requirement this quarter. Seeing the show fulfilled a class assignment – but she also told me on the bus that she loves seeing plays and used to go with her family quite a bit. Plus, she said, Chicago has so much theater – she should really see more of it while it’s right here and the ArtsPass makes it so accessible. “I loved it – I thought it was great,” she says. She and the rest of the students are chatting animatedly as they board the bus back to Hyde Park. But Mitski stops to take a picture of the Goodman’s iconic marquee.
Mitski takes a photo of the Goodman's marquee.
“I guess I can’t spend all of my time studying, right?” Onofrio said before the show. In a city as rich, diverse, and full to bursting with art as Chicago, it’s certainly not hard to find a cultural study break that will also enhance your academic pursuits. And with ArtsPass, it’s even easier.
To take advantage of all that ArtsPass has to offer, sign up for email updates about future ArtsPass Exclusive excursions and check out all the arts partners you can visit right now on the ArtsPass website.
UChicago ArtsPass is supported by a generous gift from Michael A. Keable and Anne C. Van Wart. Additional support is provided by the Robert M. Rudolph Arts Endowment, the College, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, and the generosity of alumni, friends, and partnering cultural institutions. This ArtsPass Exclusive took place on Wednesday, November 9, 2022.