Theatre Spotlight: Equity Library Theatre
This article originally appeared in Equity News Spring, 2018.
Equity News Staff
Equity Library Theatre (ELT) in Chicago has been putting actors first for over sixty years. Founded in 1952, the work produced focuses attention squarely on its actors, all of whom are Equity members.
“In the early years, it was more of a showcase-type situation,” said Carrie Lee Patterson, who is currently the president of Equity Library’s board of directors, all nine of whom are Equity members. “It was a way to get noticed, and get work, with casting directors and agents in the audience. That’s not the way things are done anymore.”
As times changed, so did the practices of the theatre. For a while, performers did full productions of material as their schedules allowed, but never with any consistency. In 2015, five years after Patterson joined the theatre, she was able to get an individual artist’s grant from the city of Chicago and approached the board about the creation of a reading series.
This became the All Access Reading Series, which solicits scripts from around the world. Patterson serves as de facto literary manager during the month-long selection process. “I work very hard to get as diverse a set of readers as I can, and that includes different generations,” Patterson said.
That diversity extends to the content of the submissions as well. Each submission has a protagonist who identifies as being a person of color, a woman, having a disability or being LGBTQ+, in order to provide additional perspectives on underrepresented groups in storytelling. One script is selected, and produced as a free staged reading with an experienced director and an all- Equity cast.
“The plays featured in the series are carefully chosen through a well-regulated vetting process and give voice to characters that are often ‘othered’ in society,” said Central Region member Julie Proudfoot, who appeared in a reading of Sheila Crowley’s Flying during the August 2015 All Access Series. “It is so important to continue this excellent work of celebrating plays that are driven by characters that are underrepresented in theatre -- more so now than ever. Equity Library Theatre is doing very important work to increase diversity in Chicago theatre.”
The playwrights whose work is chosen, blindly, by the committee receive $300 for these productions. Most of them travel to attend the series as well, which never feel less than professional. “Every single one has said that the most exciting thing about this for them is to have a reading with an all-Equity cast,” Patterson said. “People are always amazed at how they feel like they’ve seen a performance even though people have scripts on stands.”
Equity Library Theatre encourages playwrights from all over to submit their work for the series, and according to Patterson, they do receive submissions from all corners of the globe. But according to Beth Kander-Dauphin, whose playHazardous Materials was selected as a winning script for the 2017 All Access Series, one of the benefits of the series is the sense of community it breeds for participants.
“It’s been inspiring to be connected to the talented artists who collaborated on ELT’s presentation of Hazardous Materials, none of whom I had worked with prior to this collaboration and all of whom were so excited to work on this project,” she said. “One of the coolest aspects of the experience was how global-and-local the experience wound up being, which in some ways mirrored my play itself. On the ‘global’ side, the director ELT brought in to work on my show was the phenomenal Jill Harper of Toronto, marking ELT’s first international-directorial collaboration. On the ‘local’ side, in the blind submission process, I was the first Chicago playwright ever selected!”
These staged readings do not require stage managers, but Patterson also uses the All Access Series to create backstage experience as well, using them as mentoring opportunities for younger stage managers. “Every cast gets one, which is great for a staged reading,” Patterson said.
Kander-Dauphin was effusive about Equity Library Theatre’s mission. “From putting out the call for Equity actors to audition, seeing the cast deliver such powerful, thoughtful performances and continuing the conversations post-show, ELT clearly excites and attracts artists committed to ‘doing the work’ in a meaningful way,” she said.
And why not? Patterson assures that all the work involved is a labor of love. “We’re a small group, but oh, how we love this,” she said.
Kevin Kaddi, Caren Blackmore, Stephenie Park and Saren Nofs-Snyder. Photo by James Holbrook