The Sears Tower. Great comedy. Deep dish pizza. The Cubbies. Chicago is known for a lot of things, but for a long time, theater wasn’t one of them. For years, the Second City was second – and dare we say third? – to theater Goliaths New York and London. But due to a stream of smash shows in recent years, Chi-town has proved itself more than capable of playing with the big kids.

August: Osage County, a dark comedy about three dysfunctional Midwestern sisters who move back to Oklahoma to console their mother after their father vanishes, premiered in 2007 at the Steppenwolf Theater in Old Town.

The show was written, directed and developed by Steppenwolf ensemble members. It went on to become a smash success on Broadway, garnering rave reviews –The New York Times called it “the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years” — and won numerous Tony Awards, including Best Play. Director and Northwestern theatre professor Anna Shapiro won the Tony for Best Direction of a Play and playwright Tracy Letts won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for drama.

After its successful run in New York, August: Osage County is set to cross the pond later this month when it premieres at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton Theatre in London.

Shows like August have helped to cement Chicago’s reputation as a theater capital over the past few years. While Chicago has long been known as a national theater center, it is finally starting to earn the respect – and international attention – it deserves. From the amount of new talent that floods the city each year to the edgy, controversial work that goes up, Chi-town audiences have the opportunity to see work that receives international recognition, but in a more small-community setting and for relatively low prices.

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company, one of Chicago’s largest and most well-known theaters, is one of the many companies that helped put Chicago on the map. Throughout its 34-year history the Steppenwolf has proved to be a launch pad for plays, both new and old, before they move on to other theater capitals like New York and London.

“Chicago, pound for pound, is certainly on par with the two cities, in terms of both the quality of work and variety of work,” says Ed Sobel, the Steppenwolf’s director of new play development and a Northwestern alum.

“We have, over time, built an audience that not only tolerates [riskiness] but expects that,” Sobel says. “August is particularly unique. The fact that it’s on Broadway at all is kind of astonishing – there were a lot of forces going against it, including that it’s a 3 ½ hour play, but producers came to Chicago, and they were convinced that work of such a high level deserves to be seen outside of Chicago.”

Goodman Theatre associate producer Steve Scott echoes this sentiment. “I think what’s unique about Chicago is that the work that we do here is not necessarily intended to be commercially successful,” he says. “[In New York] shows are produced to make money. The creators of the shows feel strongly about the artistic quality, but there’s always an eye toward commercial success.”

The Steppenwolf is by no means the only theater in Chicago that is producing groundbreaking work. The Goodman Theatre, Chicago’s oldest and largest nonprofit ensemble, performed shows such as Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which both later went on to enjoy Tony Award-winning New York runs. “In terms of the national theater, the Goodman has become, especially in the last 10 or 15 years, very well known for the quality of work, even internationally,” Scott says.

More recently, the Goodman was the site for the Chicago premiere of Radio Golf, the story of a man who tries to launch a real estate venture in the hopes of becoming the city’s first black mayor. The show premiered at the Goodman in early 2007 and was the final play in Pulitzer Prize-winning writer August Wilson’s ten-play cycle chronicling the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The Goodman was the first theater to put on all ten shows. In April 2007 Radio Golf, too, went on to Broadway, where it enjoyed a brief but well received two-month run.

“We’re all here to support the work on staff, so I think the Goodman is seen as a place to do shows. Word gets around if a theater is or isn’t a good place to work,” Scott says.

Actor Brian Dennehy is a frequent collaborator at the Goodman (he was part of the aforementioned Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey into Night). Dennehy’s next venture with the Goodman begins in January 2009, when he stars in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms opposite Entourage actress Carla Gugino.

A-listers aren’t the only ones getting prime space on the theater marquees across Chicago’s theater district. Unlike New York and London, where audiences often shell out hundreds of dollars to see a show, whose producers rely heavily on big-names in leading roles to sell their shows, “we really try to find the best artists available. If the work is of high-quality, then you solve a number of problems,” Scott says.

Part of the reason for this influx of new talent is due to the fact that Chicago is a more affordable city than New York or London, making it an ideal place for artists on the lower end of the pay scale, Sobel says.

The variety of theater work available to recent graduates is another factor that sets Chicago apart and helps to attract new talent. In New York, aspiring thespians either work under the showcase code, or on Broadway or off-Broadway, and there are very few steps in between, Sobel says. “In Chicago you have everything from non-equity*, non-union to small theaters that are union affiliated, to mid-size theaters. So there’s a real possibility you can start working lower end of the spectrum and move through the steps along the way.” (*Non-unionized actors)

Arts Alliance secretary and Communication junior Kara Weisenstein agrees. “If New York or L.A. is too big of a change, Chicago is a great place for younger people. There’s a lot of non-equity work, but there’s tons of professional theater, like at Steppenwolf and Goodman,” she says. “Many students that aren’t ready to go to New York stay in Chicago. Northwestern is such a great theater school; it really ups the ante,” she says.

Much of Chicago’s new talent originates at Northwestern or at other local schools, Weisenstein says. “The fact that Northwestern is in Chicago really influences the Chicago theater scene because of our proximity,” she says. “There are so many people who work professionally outside of school.”

Northwestern’s influence on the theater community in Chicago and the rest of the country is nothing new. The Lookingglass Theatre Company, for example, got its start on Northwestern’s campus in the late 1980s thanks to a group of theater students, including current Lookingglass artistic director David Catlin and actor David Schwimmer. It is now a major theater company that boasts a budget close to $4 million.

“We couldn’t afford to commission a playwright or necessarily pay royalties, but coming out of Northwestern we have this great tradition of adapting work. We thought we could adapt works of literature that were ancient or lapsed into the public domain, and also on the idealistic side, we do love the story,” Catlin says about how the Lookingglass eventually came to be.

As for theatergoers, the relative low cost of going to the theater in Chicago, as opposed to many productions in New York, allows audiences greater access to different kinds of work and become a more sophisticated and educated audience over time.

Some of Chicago’s theaters have nonprofit statuses or are subsidized by local government as opposed to commercial producers in New York who need to make a profit and, as a result, often shy away from tackling more controversial issues. Chicago is becoming more and more well-known for groundbreaking work outside the confines of traditional theater.

“A lot of physical theater companies are coming here that’s helping redefine theater in Chicago,” says Catlin. “There are new kinds of theater styles being seen here – adaptation of literature, live rock ‘n roll music, and incorporation of hip-hop.”

Kafka on the Shore is based on the perplexing novel by Haruki Murakami, the international bestselling Japanese writer. The Steppenwolf’s production delivers a mesmerizing barrage of elusive, impressionistic, dream-like stage pictures stitched together by adapter and director Frank Galati.

Galati, a Tony-award winning emeritus NU Performance Studies professor, has done adaptations of Murakami before. His stage production of After the Quake earned national praise and it was during the rehearsals of this show that Galati read Kafka on the Shore for the first time. He discussed the difficulties that the epic qualities of the story would pose for a stage adaptation with several of the actors from his first Murakami project.

“Nevertheless I kept returning to it,” he explains in an interview with Steppenwolf Artistic Director Martha Lavey. “And thinking how viable it might be on stage. It’s so rich in dialogue scenes that it seemed a very appetizing candidate for dramatization.”

The dialogue, like the characters, is plentiful and plenty quirky. Each character and each scene seems to exist in its own dreamscape. As the show moves on, those who don’t set aside their desire for understanding everything will probably wind up disappointed. Kafka on the Shore moves with an absurdity similar to that found in The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland.

Some will inevitably complain because it deviates from the book in the form of omissions, tone and dialogue, but an adaptation is fundamentally a little bit different. For example, James Schuette’s slick, blue stage set. You could feasibly say that this is what subconscious looks like — glossy, deep blue, familiar, but a little strange. It’s beautifully simple, yet puzzling, and it slides around with enough surprises to make you wonder if you aren’t watching a nightmare that’s taking place inside a Rubik’s Cube. In other words: Don’t even try to think of this show as one cohesive whole. Trust the wildly improbable circumstances and just go with it.

In the Steppenwolf’s downstairs theater, the work of the page gets done by bodies, material things and lights. It certainly appears easy enough to be understood, but an elevator in the middle of the stage makes vignettes suddenly appear. Bizarre elements drop from the roof. The solid-looking back wall slides in and out while the backlit cyc (that piece of white fabric along the back wall) shifts your mood with constantly changing colors.

Galati has animated Kafka on the Shore by breaking the lengthy, lyrical prose of the novel into scenes where simple stage presence or subtle movement take the place of adjectives and punctuation. There is a fairly rigorous and explicit logic at work in his adaptation and careful readers will be rewarded, amused, and most importantly, enriched by Galati’s version. Those who haven’t read should be just as well rewarded. If nothing else, viewers will agree the show is visually compelling and, all told, it’s also an impressively faithful compression of a 500-page novel into a a live show that runs slightly over 2 hours.

Kafka on the Shore runs through November 16th at the Steppenwolf Theatre. Call the box office at (312) 335-1650 for information about tickets or visit the Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s website.

First up: theater majors Tim McGovern (junior), Nate Trinrud (sophomore) and Britta Rowings (junior), who comprise the cast of The Compleat Works of Shakespeare. A Wildcat Welcome Week staple, the student-cut and directed show compiles all of Shakespeare’s plays into less time than it takes to Sparknote Hamlet. Compleat Works opens 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 19 at Cahn Auditorium with a reprise at 11 p.m. on Sunday, September 21 at Ryan Auditorium.

McGovern, Rowings and Trinrud made a trailer for The Compleat Works of Shakespeare.

What is The Compleat Works of Shakespeare?
Rowings and Trinrud: A play.
McGovern: It is the abridged version of all the Bard’s works.

What do you do in it?
McGovern: I perform various characters throughout the show. Most of them are women. What does this mean?
Rowings: Act. This sometimes involves talking, moving and an occasional make-out sesh with the other cast members.

If someone offered you $50,000, would you quit?
McGovern: I would do a number of things for $50,000. Speak pig latin for five years. Live in a leper colony.
Rowings: Are you kidding? Of course! I’d quit for a lot less.

Which set piece are you most excited about breaking?
Trinrud: Britta Rowings.
McGovern: Since we don’t have a very complicated set, I’ll go with my table. In this hypothetical, I’m not excited about doing it, though. It’s probably chestnut.

If you could be one character from Compleat Works, who would you be?
McGovern: Richard III. He’s a BAMF version of Quasimoto.

What do you really think of the library?
McGovern: It looks like a set from Oz.
Trinrud: I stopped going to the library once I heard about the anonymous sex.
Rowings: Around 5 a.m. during finals week, Core makes me feel like I’m in a space station and it’s awesome.

If you had to take someone in a fight, who would it be and why?
McGovern: Nate Trinrud. My chances of winning would go up by seven percent. That’s right. From 1000 percent to 1007 percent. He has a weak knee.
Trinrud: Tim, because I can do more push ups than him.

What do you eat late at night?
Rowings: My roommate’s food.
McGovern: Scooters. They’re the store brand of Honey Nut Cheerios. Some people have brandy. I have Scooters.

What do you think of models who say they used to be ugly?
McGovern: I don’t know. Let me ask my harem of formerly ugly models I keep locked in my dungeon.
Trinrud: How rude of them to assume they’re not ugly now.

What’s a sex tip everyone should know?
Rowings: I hope everyone can find someone as perfect as Chris Voss.
Trinrud: I’m in a play about Shakespeare. Do you really think I’m getting any?

What’s your worst addiction?
McGovern: Probably watching National Treasure movies.
Rowings: Watching Wee Sing Big Rock Candy Mountain online.
Trinrud: Cocaine.

How often do you go out?
McGovern: All the time. No, I didn’t knit those ornate and tasteful quilts that are in my room.

What do you hate about Northwestern?
Rowings: The puddle under the arch after it rains.
McGovern: The skunks. They should all be reigned in, blindfolded and shot. The blindfolds are for their dignity. Although I hate my striped foe, I respect him.

What’s the weirdest thing about your body?
Trinrud: I was born without toes.
McGovern: I have abnormally ripped abs. So awkward!

Favorite pick up line?
Trinrud: Britta, make out. Now.
McGovern: You must be a Kenyan, because you’re certainly running away from me fast.
Rowings: If you were a hamburger at McDonalds, you would be called McBeautiful.

Do you work out?
Trinrud: Absolutely not.

Would you ever live in Jones?
McGovern: Something even I wouldn’t do for $50,000.

Which MTV reality show would you be on?
McGovern: Rock of Love. I would only do it to kill Brett Michaels though.
Trinrud: America’s Best Dance Crew. I’m a b-boy by trade.

How do you feel about nudity?
McGovern: I love it. You should see my bookmarked pages.
Trinrud: Is this questionnaire hitting on me?

In a haiku, why should people go see Compleat Works?

Take some advice from Cabaret: “Put down the knitting, the book and the broom, it’s time for a holiday.” Arts Alliance’s fully student produced spring show opens this Thursday, and it’s just what you need to escape the stress of wrapping up the quarter.

Cabaret tells the dark story of Sally Bowles (Communication senior Meg Steedle), a dancer at the Kit Kat Klub in 1930s Berlin, and her missed chance to start a new life with Clifford Bradshaw (Weinberg junior Seth Dhonau) as Germany marches towards Nazism. “It’s all about Sally,” said Director Katie Spelman, a Communication junior, “She’s a representation of how we repeat our own mistakes, and how we are weak, and we’re not all phenomenally brave and strong and that’s sad, but it’s okay.”

If Spelman thinks this show is all about Sally, she did a good job casting the role. Meg Steedle gave one of the best performances I’ve ever seen at Northwestern at a preview showing on Tuesday. Her dynamic and genuinely sympathetic portrayal will keep the audience riveted whether she is at the center of a kick line or delivering solo numbers like the poignant “Maybe This Time.” Her adorable smile, big voice and fancy Fosse moves are reason enough to sell anyone a ticket.

Communication junior Lily Howard also delivered a solid performance in the role of Fraulein Schneider. She gave excellent performances in last year’s Cymbeline, directed by Mary Zimmerman, and Arts Alliance’s Company, and now in Cabaret Howard proves herself as a consistently strong and enjoyable actress.

The men playing opposite these ladies paled a bit in comparison. While certainly pleasant singers and actors, Dhonau as Clifford Bradshaw and Music junior Will Selnick as Herr Schultz lacked the compelling spark presented by Steedle and Howard. Happily, though, Communication junior Jay Reynolds, Jr., saved the day for the boys with his devilishly creepy presentation as the Emcee, the puppet master behind all the show’s workings.

The set designer deserves praise, too. Audience seating on three levels of high risers wrapped around three sides of the stage creates an intimate, voyeuristic atmosphere, and unlike most shows in the Louis Room, every seat has a clear view of the stage.

As far as actual sets and props, Spelman opted for a minimalist effect for both practical and artistic reasons. While the starkness of the stage and dark color scheme could be uninteresting at times, the use of ensemble members to create set pieces like doors and trains illustrated the thinness of the veneer of Sally’s life. Spelman took a literal interpretation of one of the show’s famous lines, “Life is a cabaret.” “My directorial vision for this show is that Sally’s life is more of a performance than any performance she actually gives in the cabaret,” Spelman said.

The show is easily worth the price of the $5 student ticket, but here are a few warnings. If you really hate wigs, don’t go. Steedle in the leading role wears a wig throughout the show, and while it’s more convincing than most, the Louis Room is not big enough for anyone to really fall for it. If you really hate accents, don’t go. Everyone with the exception of Dhonau, who portrays an American, sings and speaks in some sort of accent (mostly German) the whole time. I found that the cast of Cabaret pulled this off pretty well, and there were only a few moments when it distracted from the show, but be advised. Finally, if you don’t like heights, get there early. The narrow top row of seating is at least six feet off the ground and seemed a little precarious.

As a special perk: On Friday, May 30 Northwestern alumnus Gregg Edelman, who starred in the 1987 Broadway revival of Cabaret, will attend the show and give a Q&A session after the performance. Denis O’Hare, another alumnus who appeared in the 1998 Broadway revival, will do the same at the Thursday, May 5 show.

Cabaret would make a sexy date, a fun way to spend a night with friends or a good low-key evening gearing up for Dillo Day. “More than a traditional musical, we’ve created an experience,” said Business Producer Zack Baer, a School of Communication Sophomore, “When you step into the Louis Room, you’ll be stepping into the Kit Kat Klub.”

Cabaret will show at 8 p.m. on May 29-30 and June 5-7 in the Louis Room at Norris. Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for others, and can be purchased at the door or by calling 847-491-2305.

[See post to watch Flash video]

When you’re walking by the Rock this weekend, don’t be alarmed if you overhear language usually confined to your Shakespeare class. Try to fight off that aversion to iambic pentameter you developed in high school English, or least don’t be a fool and disrupt the actors in your drunken Dillo Day-weekend state.

This year’s Lovers & Madmen “Shakespeare at the Rock” show is Pericles, directed by Andrew Jorczak. Jorczak, a Communications junior, had seen a production of Pericles at the Globe Theatre in London, which, he said, made choosing it for this year’s show easy. “I had seen more or less an outdoor production. That helped me know how to put it outside,” Jorczak said.

He describes Pericles as “the story of one man’s growth and how he cannot but obey the powers above him.” This is entertainment, though, not English class, and Jorczak promises the show won’t be too preachy.

The extensive cast requires many of the 12 actors to play two or three parts. “After knowing briefly who they were, I had a sense of where else I could put them,” Jorczak said. “A lot of it was what their original role was and it also had to be viable to the audience that they could play one character and then another.” To indicate these character switches, the actors add different costume pieces to a base of white or khaki clothes.

Jorczak was initially frustrated when Lovers & Madmen gave him the slot to direct the Rock show. After performing in a show in Crowe Plaza, he knew the disadvantages to outdoor theatre. “I knew how frustrating it can be to do a show outside,” Jorczak said. “People walk right through your rehearsal space and are oblivious.” Like most outdoor shows, Pericles will have no set or sound system, so the actors will have to talk louder than they would on a stage. And enunciation is especially important when you’re performing Shakespearian text.

“It’s really difficult,” cast member and Communications sophomore Fred Geyer said. “I can’t really ever judge if I’m being loud enough or if the audience will be able to understand what I’m saying. And when I’m ‘offstage,’ I’m so far away from the actors that it’s hard to know when to come back on.”

Pericles will be performed for free at the Rock this Thursday, Friday and Sunday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.

Need a change of scenery after the grind of midterms? If you’re a broke college student and you can’t afford a plane ticket, check out this year’s Waa-Mu show, Skylines, which opens Friday at Cahn Auditorium.

Skylines, like every year’s Waa-Mu show, is a student-written musical revue, and this time fancifully imagines the lives of new Northwestern graduates as they strike out in the big cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Aspiring composers and lyricists started last May with just a premise, and one year later we’re looking at about two-and-a-half quality hours of polished, cast and choreographed music for a full-pit orchestra and a big stage of voices.

“I don’t think there’s anything else like it in America,” says Dominic Missimi, who has been directing the Waa-Mu show for the past 15 years. Encouraging excellence in young artists is almost enough of a reason to go in itself.

However, if you’re not convinced yet, here’s another reason: It’s a great show. A preview Tuesday night revealed strong musical numbers, matched with engaging voices, tight dancing and an almost distractingly attractive set that make watching this show genuine fun.

Here’s the disclaimer, though: If you don’t really like theater, you may want to reconsider. Waa-Mu can be a bit of a tribute to musical theater at its most musically theatrical, and those not intimately acquainted with the scores of Funny Girl and Jesus Christ Superstar will miss some jokes. Also, the revue format means that it’s essentially one long medley with no plot. While this is easier for a large team of student writers to tackle, those who need a story and distinct characters will find it off-putting.

If you can get over those two things, though, there’s not much else to dislike about Skylines. Even in dress rehearsal, the cast’s energy and obvious love for what they do were remarkable and well-channeled. Once these kids get a full audience, they’re going to be electric.

Of particular note were the excellent compositions by Dan Green, a Music senior who contributed for his fourth and last time this year. His piece “The Architect” gave a lyrical break from the flashy dance numbers, and the catchy, upbeat “Purple Coast” was a blast, particularly if its suggestion that to succeed after college all you “gotta do is say [you're] from NU” turns out to be accurate.

Also watch for Will Buck, a Music sophomore whose Waa-Mu contributions last year and this year have stood out with a distinctive style that never sounds like generic musical theater. My favorite piece of his in this show was “Falling Up,” a collaboration with Communication freshman lyricist Andi Alhadeff, and showcased by an impressive solo from Communication senior Lauren Rankin.

If you’re a senior and have never seen a Waa-Mu show, you should consider it your Northwestern duty to attend. Sappy as it can sometimes be, Skylines is all about moving off into life and leaving your collegiate friends and home behind, and this feel-good show’s sincere about this bittersweet process.

Transitions take place behind the scenes, too: Missimi said that while the outgoing seniors make this a special group, the incoming freshmen also form an important part of what the Waa-Mu tradition means. “The continuum just keeps going on and on,” he said.

Skylines will show in Cahn Auditorium at 8 p.m. May 2 to 4 and 7 to 11, with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Student tickets cost $11 and can be purchased online, at the door or by calling the box office at (847) 491-7282.

So a guy walks into Café Ambrosia at 8 and 10 p.m. this Friday and Saturday — and hears much better set-ups than this one.

That’s because he’ll be able to watch students, sponsored by theater group Sit & Spin, put on their second annual stand-up comedy show. This year, it’s accurately called Sit & Spin Stand-Up 2, marketed as the greatest sequel since The Return of Jafar.

Cast member Isabelle Esposito, a Communication junior, said she noticed a lack of stand-up opportunities on campus before Sit & Spin’s first stand-up show last year, and sees the show as an essential campus resource. “[Stand-up is] a very important part of comedy,” she said. “You go to the movies and a lot of these really famous guys like Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin got their roots in stand-up comedy.”

Many cast members plan on a career in theater, and said that stand-up is a learning experience they just can’t get from a standard show.

“It’s important [in acting] that you’re able to stand up on stage and be comfortable just being yourself,” Communication senior Kat Palardy said. “It’s a good skill.”

Cast members who also perform in traditional Northwestern theater notice the differences with a stand-up production. “There’s something very spare about it,” Communication sophomore Rebecca Loeser said. “There’s no set. There are no lights. It’s different. Its simplicity makes it really interesting.”

Though cast members strive to seem effortless on stage, they said trying to be funny in front of a crowd is a personal, vulnerable and sometimes painful thing, as performers test material they’ve rehearsed for several weeks.

“If you’re doing a play and people aren’t laughing, it’s like, ‘Oh, well, it’s not a good show,’” said the show’s director, Communication junior Joel Sinensky. “If you’re doing stand-up and people aren’t laughing, it’s like ‘Wow, they hate me.’”

But when things go well, “if you’re getting a lot of laughs, it’s the best feeling [you've] ever felt,” Palardy said. Sinensky, comparing the delight of a good stand-up performance to “an out-of-body experience.”

Stand-up requires not just the skills that actors practice in plays and musicals, but also good writing. “It works you as a performer. It works you as a writer. It works your sense of comic timing,” Sinensky said. “That’s why it’s so hard.”

Palardy said she isn’t worried, and is confident of the show’s quality. “People are going to be laughing in our show because there’s good material and great comedians,” she said.

Sit & Spin Stand-Up 2 will be performed this Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. at Café Ambrosia, located at 1620 Orrington Ave. Tickets are $3 and can be purchased at the door or reserved online at www.sitandspin.info.

McGovern will be doing a dorm tour and will possibly perform at McCormick Tribune or Harris Hall in the coming weeks.

J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is a story of brotherhood, one of men traveling and fighting together to save Middle Earth. Peter Jackson’s films are famous, not only for their epic nature and New Zealand landscapes, but also for the camaraderie between both the actors and the characters they created during the long shoot in which all three films were shot back-to-back in just a few years.

So why, then, given the blatantly obvious theme of a “fellowship,” would Tim McGovern, a sophomore theater major, take it upon himself to play all of the characters in a one man Lord of the Rings show? He’s taking on hobbits, elves, men and dwarves, and the truth is his versatility and spot-on impressions actually work.

“Throughout all of high school I would watch way too much Lord of the Rings,” McGovern said. “Then after a while I would get really good at doing the impressions…I had like encyclopedic knowledge of just the movies.”

McGovern, who is also involved with NSTV and Titanic Players, said he got the idea to undertake creating a one-man show that would cover the trilogy after seeing a one-man Star Wars show on Broadway. “I thought to myself, this would be the perfect thing to do, the perfect way to justify all these hours lost of my high school life,” he said.

Tim McGovern is a man of many men.
Photo by the author.

After approaching Vertigo, which produces student-written shows on campus, with the idea, McGovern began working on the actual adaptation by picking out everything he thought should be included in the performance. Everything he liked, it turned out, ended up being far too much. His solution? “I actually stole one of the [blue] test booklets and I just used that as the limit. I had to fill up an entire test booklet, but no more, no less,” McGovern said. “It’s really tough to do because you fall in love with everything and then you have to cut it down to its bare essentials.” The final show should clock in at just about one hour, a stunning cut from the nine-plus hours of the original theatrical films.

Abridging the script to just central quotes and events, McGovern said another struggle was working to distinguish each character on stage. Transitioning between Frodo’s soft voice to Gandalf’s booming speeches, he relies on hand motions and near impeccable impressions to keep audiences conscious of just who is speaking.

McGovern, who says his favorite character to portray is Gandalf, hopes that the show will attract both Tolkien fans and those who are not as familiar with the story. He did note, however, that the show was written to be accessible to people who had seen the films at least once. McGovern’s schizophrenic performance will impress audiences with his ability to transform in a manner of seconds, while maintaining comedic aspects as well.

He hopes that people’s inner geeks will draw people to the performance. “The fact is that, although people profess not to be nerds, everybody’s a nerd in some way, shape or form and I feel like Lord of the Rings definitely is one of the most acceptable forms of being a nerd,” he said.

And what does McGovern think about the people who may challenge his knowledge of Middle Earth with trivia after the show? “Bring ‘em on. Bring ‘em on is what I say,” he said.