Ina Marlowe

Ina Marlowe has been resurrected, both professionally and perhaps more importantly artistically.  The intrepid former Artistic Director of the Organic and Touchstone Theaters has a new venue to call home and a refined goal that has less to do with commercial success and all its messy red tape and everything to do with creating art.  A year and a half ago, exhausted from numerous moves and tired of raising money (including her own) to keep the struggling company afloat, Ina began looking for someone to take over the Organic.  She placed an ad in an industrial trade magazine, and a Northern Illinois University professor with ties to the Moscow Arts Theater stepped forward.  It was a fortuitous exchange: the well known Chicago company would continue under strong new leadership with the backing of a major academic institution, and Marlowe would be free to pursue her own work.  But where?

Enter Larry Lenza, Assistant Director at Feltre, a tiny language and literature-oriented Continuing Ed School located in a delightfully cozy and charmingly intimate library space on the City’s bustling River North side.  The 10-year-old Feltre had a commitment to teaching courses in the humanities, but realized that the classic works they espoused were entirely different to read and to hear and see performed.  Thus, The Library Theatre was born. 

Marlowe did three staged readings at Feltre: “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles, “Ghosts” by Ibsen, and “Desire Under the Elms” by O’Neill.  And she brought in several of Chicago’s most respected Equity actors, including Tony Mockus, Bill Norris, Cynthia Judge, and Maureen Gallagher.  She just completed her first fully staged play, a one-weekend Evening of Tennessee Williams One-Acts.  And she and Lenza, who shares the producing responsibilities Ina is relieved to defer, have been busy planning next season.  So what can one expect to see at The Library Theatre?  “We want it to be a stimulating, complete experience that can’t be duplicated,” Marlowe says.  The plays will be “rich in language, literature, character and understanding of humanity.” 

The character of the space is another important motivator.  Shelves and shelves of books surround the audience, which reinforces the literary aspects of the experience.  For the Williams one-acts, Marlowe enlisted a professional artist to sketch the actors during rehearsals and display the results during the run of the play.  A live pianist was incorporated for incidental music and dramatic mood.  Post-show discussions are held for all shows, as well.  The performances are virtually guaranteed to sell out, since the runs will be limited to one or two weekends and the space only seats about 50 or 60.  And Ina couldn’t be happier about that.  “I love it.  I know it’s small, but I don’t care.  I’ve already proven myself as a director; got my rave review in the New York Times (for a co-production she did with the 78th Street Lab of a Sebastian Barry play), which I feel was my very best work.  I can just let art happen here.”

That artistic freedom is something she could rarely enjoy while focusing on all the mundane and burdening responsibilities of being a theatre administrator.  She founded Touchstone Theater 20 years ago and when it merged with the Organic in 1996, she suddenly found herself with two spaces, one at 3319 North Clark (the old Organic building), and another at 2851 North Halsted, which had formerly housed the young Steppenwolf Theatre Company.  “It’s all about real estate here, not art,” she concedes.  The building on Clark was falling into disrepair and the theatre could not support two buildings.  It had also gone from non-Equity to Cat 5 status with its production of “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and while it was an “artistically fertile and exciting” time, the merged company was feeling the financial heat. 

Ina tried unsuccessfully to create a consort of small companies, including Lookingglass, Roadworks, Famous Door and Red Hen to share the space, but none had the money to do it.  Creatively and spiritually, Organic needed to be in the Halsted space, which was a part of its identity.  “We couldn’t afford the space,” she admits, and when Organic was forced to relocate, it took a bit of her heart with it.  “I knew we needed some place cheap, so we moved to Evanston (the McGaw YMCA Child Care Center) knowing we had a substantial audience base there.  However, needless to say, that audience base really wanted to go to the city.  In Evanston, we were still doing the same kind of season we did in Chicago, but the people didn’t necessarily like that season.” 

Another big problem was the McGaw space.  “The critics hated the space with a passion.  I think Hedy Weiss (of the Chicago Sun Times) called it a slave ship of a space, and it was very, very hard.”  Marlowe agrees that the cramped pre-school auditorium created the wrong feel; while her production standards maintained a high quality one was always aware of watching a show in a romper room cloister.  The Organic once again made a move to Loyola University, causing further confusion as audiences were forced to follow the itinerant company from one locale to another.  “The problem at Loyola was we could only produce during the summer, when most of our audience and board weren’t even in town.”

The theatre hopping was growing as frustrating for Ina as it was for the theatre’s board and following.  “I was getting more and more sick of the whole thing and feeling I had used every friend I had, family connection and especially myself to get money to support the theatre.  I couldn’t make it go.  There was never enough time to let it grow, we had to do things too fast in order to survive.”  But Ina wanted the Organic to continue, and was pleased to pass it on to someone with a solid foundation that could keep it alive. 

Her experience at Feltre has been a healing one, she says.  “For a time, I could barely deal with doing theatre.”  When she walked in the door for the first time, she admits she felt instantly at home, something she hadn’t felt since leaving the Halsted theatre.  Ironically, a farewell party for the old space, which is being replaced by condos, was held the day before Ina went into rehearsal for her most recent production at the Library Theatre.  It gave her a sense of closure, she says, and the realization that she could pursue the passion she still has without the demands and financial strings attached.

Throughout her career, Ina has maintained a strong relationship with several playwrights whose work she has directed, including Edward Albee, Sebastian Barry, Donald Margulies, Billy Roach, and the late Wendy Wasserstein, among others.  She directed the Chicago premiere of Wasserstein’s “An American Daughter” at the Organic in 1998 and found the author to be “a generous and wonderful collaborator.  She flew in three separate times to work with us.  She put back one section for (the late) Nathan Rankin’s character I liked, and she added and made things more current.  Unfortunately, the time was when every day Bill Clinton was doing something else with Monica Lewinsky, and we couldn’t go far enough for the news that was happening, it was really outrageous.  (Wasserstein) and I went to a Cubs game together and she talked even then about having a baby, which was very important to her life and which she put in the play as well.”

A talented artist as well as director, Ina proudly shows off several of her paintings that are displayed at Feltre.  The cultivation of art is very important to her.  “I want to get the distillation of emotion from my plays in my painting.  Theatre doesn’t last; it is ephemeral.  What I like about art is I am able to make something that lasts.  I have spent 30 years working with the ephemeral and even if you videotape it it’s not the same.  I like the idea that my vision of something will last.”  Painting also gives her the power to change how she interprets something.  “I can make people thinner, fatter, how I would like to see them, as well as show the poignancy and sadness I see.”

Her taste in plays runs a very wide gamut from classics to contemporary.  More than just variety, she looks for plays that have an emotional connection, rich language and compassion.  “I look for a humanism, an understanding even if it is desperate in the end.  I like for us to come out knowing something more.  I don’t like directing plays without a shred of hope, plays with gratuitous violence, or display for display purposes.”  She mentions Albee, Shakespeare and the Greek classics as works and writers she is interested in staging.  And she plans an equally diverse season at the Library Theatre, ranging from Eugene Ionesco’s “Exit the King” in late October, 2006 to Noel Coward’s “Fallen Angels” and an adaptation of “Phedre”. 

“So much of what I do is text driven,” she claims.  “I don’t try to impose anything on the text, it just doesn’t seem right for me.”  Ina does not believe in perfection, but continues to strive towards excellence.  She hopes that her work will become a larger part of her audience’s life than a conventional theatre experience.  “We’re looking for people who care, who want to commit to the plays and be a part of an intellectual environment.  I don’t want (the space) to be any bigger; I want it to be very hard to get into.”  At the same time, she promises “a very warm, welcoming experience.  Being at Feltre, you’re a part of it, it’s a space for everyone.”  For further information on Feltre and The Library Theatre, call (312) 255-1133.

 
Joe Stead
Theatre In Chicago News Contributor Joe Stead has spent over 20 years as a critic, director, designer and performer. His reviews currently appear online at www.steadstylechicago.com.