Displaying items by tag: Michael Patrick Thornton

Obliteration, LLC & The Revival Theater announce a limited engagement of Obliteration, written by Andrew Hinderaker, directed by Jonathan Berry, featuring Michael Patrick Thornton and Cyd Blakewell. Obliteration runs April 10-May 4, 2025, at The Revival Theater, 906 S Wabash Ave in Chicago.

Obliteration is a fusion of stand-up comedy and theater that tells the story of two comedians, Neal (Thornton) and Lee (Blakewell), trying to make sense of a world that's falling apart, even as their own lives are hanging on by a thread.

Obliteration played last summer to sold out audiences and rave reviews as part of Steppenwolf's LookOut Festival and produced by The Gift Theatre in a production directed by Andrew Hinderaker. 

"I've loved stand-up comedy my whole life. But I'd never attempted to write it—I'm a playwright, not a comedian. Then a few years ago, I stumbled upon this quote from the brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge: 'You get a lot for free from an audience if you can make them laugh.' Immediately an idea for a play unspooled in my mind: a fusion of stand-up and theater that would tell the story of two comedians, whose lives were hanging on by a thread," comments Andrew Hinderaker. 

Hinderaker continues, "I wrote the piece for two of my fellow ensemble members of Chicago's Gift Theatre: Michael Patrick Thornton, with whom I've collaborated for over a decade; and Cyd Blakewell, with whom I've been desperate to work for years. Our process was simple: I'd write some pages, hoping they would make Cyd and Mike laugh and/or cry. Then they'd read the pages and make me laugh and cry. Over a year, we built the 'play' like this, gradually folding an audience into our process. And once we got people in the room, that's when we realized, holy shit, there's something here."

"I've known all three of these artists for over 20 years and what I can say with certainty is that they are uncompromising in their pursuit of excellence in the art. It's a privilege to return to this production as director and, because we're in a very different moment, I'm sure the play and these actors will be in response to that. What hasn't changed, is our need for laughter, our need for connection, and I am thrilled to create the opportunity for a new audience to experience that," comments Jonathan Berry. 

The Revival Theatre's John Stoops comments, "The Revival is thrilled to host the incomparable Michael Patrick Thornton and Cyd Blakewell in Obliteration. We can't imagine a better way to celebrate our 10th year than to present this groundbreaking production that celebrates comedy and drama in equal measure."

FACTS

Title: Obliteration

Written by: Andrew Hinderaker

Directed by: Jonathan Berry

Cast: Cyd Blakewell and Michael Patrick Thornton 

Production team: Matthew Chapman (sound designer), Sheryl Williams (intimacy director), Jenn Thompson (production coordinator), Sarah Luse, (stage manager)

Location: The Revival Theater, 906 S Wabash Ave in Chicago

Dates: April 10-May 4, 2025

Previews: April 10, 11, 13, and 16, 2025

Opening: April 17, 2025 

Performance schedule: Thursdays-Sundays at 8pm

by: Jonathan Berry

Cast: Cyd Blakewell and Michael Patrick Thornton 

Production team: Matthew Chapman (sound designer), Sheryl Williams (intimacy director), Jenn Thompson (production coordinator), Sarah Luse, (stage manager)

No performances April 12 or 19, 2025

Tickets:https://www.the-revival.com

Previews: $25, $20 students

Regular run: $35, $25 students

About the Artists

Andrew Hinderaker (Playwright) most recently served as an Executive Producer and Showrunner of Black Rabbit, an upcoming Netflix series starring Jason Bateman and Jude Law. He previously created and showran the Showtime series, Let the Right One In, starring Oscar Nominee Demián Bichir, as well as the Netflix series, Away, starring Oscar Winner Hilary Swank. Additional TV writing credits include Penny Dreadful and The Path, but Hinderaker's heart and soul belong to the theater, where he specializes in writing plays that are (nearly) impossible to produce. Recent projects include The Magic Play (Goodman Theatre; Actors' Theatre of Louisville; Portland Center Stage) a five-year collaboration with a sleight-of-hand card artist; and Colossal, an epic theatrical event featuring full-contact football hits, a modern dance company, and a drum line. Colossal received a National New Play Network (NNPN) Rolling World Premiere from 2014- 2016, with its inaugural production at the Olney Theatre Center (DC) receiving numerous Helen Hayes Awards, including Best New Play. Hinderaker's additional plays include Suicide, Incorporated; Dirty; Kingsville; and I Am Going to Change the World, all of which premiered in his hometown of Chicago before enjoying productions in NY and throughout the world. Hinderaker holds an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a proud ensemble member of the Gift Theatre Company in Chicago. Obliteration marks his seventh collaboration with Michael Patrick Thornton, and his first with Cyd Blakewell. They are two of his favorite artists in the world.

Jonathan Berry (Director), a Chicago director, producer and teacher, is the Artistic Director of Penobscot Theatre in Bangor, Maine. He spent five years as an Artistic Producer at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and he remains a proud ensemble member of both Steep Theatre and Griffin Theatre. Steppenwolf directing credits include: Lindiwe (Co-directed with Eric Simonson and featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo), The Children, You Got Older, Constellations, and the SYA productions of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, The Crucible, and A Separate Peace. Steep Theatre productions include: Paris, Red Rex, Earthquakes in London, Posh, The Life and Sort of Death of Eric Argyle, If There Is I Haven't Found it Yet, The Knowledge, Festen, Moment, The Hollow Lands and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. At Griffin, productions include: The North American premiers of Simon Stephens Punk Rock (Jeff Award Director, Lead Actor, and Ensemble) Port, and On the Shore of the Wide World, as well as The Harvest, Winterset, Pocatello, Balm in Gilead, Golden Boy, The Burnt Part Boys, Spring Awakening Company, Picnic, Time and the Conways, Dead End, The Hostage and Journey's End. He directed the NY premiere of Andrew Hinderaker's Suicide, Incorporated for The Roundabout. His work has been honored with numerous Joseph Jefferson Award nominations, as well as frequent representation on the end of year Top Ten lists of the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun Times and TimeOut Chicago. He won the Joseph Jefferson Award for directing for his work on Simon Stephen's Punk Rock.  

Berry served as Assistant Director for Anna D Shapiro's Broadway productions of Of Mice and Men and This is Our Youth. At the Gift Theatre, he directed the world premieres of Andrew Hinderaker's Dirty and Suicide, Incorporated. At the Goodman Theatre, he directed the New Stages productions of Martin Zimmerman's The Solid Sand Below and Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's The World of Extreme Happiness. Other work includes: American Theatre Company: Kill Floor, American Blues: Little Shop of Horrors and Sideman; Redtwist: Look Back in Anger and Reverb, Chicago Dramatists: I am Going to Change the World, Jackalope Theatre: The Casuals, Strawdog: Conversations on a Homecoming, Remy Bumppo: The Marriage of Figaro, Theatre Mir: The Sea and Caucasian Chalk Circle, Lifeline Theater: The Piano Tuner (Afterdark Award – Best Production) He pursued his MFA in directing from Northwestern University under the tutelage of Anna D. Shapiro. He has taught acting, directing, and viewpoints at University of Michigan, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois – Chicago, Vagabond School, Act One Studios, and Columbia College Chicago. For 17 years he played an integral role in the esteemed ensemble training program The School at Steppenwolf, serving as director of the program from 2015-2019. 

Michael Patrick Thornton (Neal) has appeared on stages throughout the world, most recently on Broadway with Jessica Chastain in the acclaimed and Tony-nominated production of A Doll's House, directed by Jamie Lloyd and adapted by Amy Herzog, for which Michael's performance as "Dr. Rank" won the 2023 Actors' Equity Foundation Joe A. Callaway Award for the best performance by an actor in a classical play in the New York metropolitan area. 

Thornton made his Broadway debut in Sam Gold's production of Macbeth with Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga. Other highlights: The Gift Theatre's Doubt at Steppenwolf's 1700, Will Eno's Title and Deed (Lookingglass—Time Out Magazine Best Actor Award) as well as Eno's Middletown (Steppenwolf) the premiere of Andrew Hinderaker's Colossal (Olney Theatre, Kennedy Center) Othello (The Gift, "Iago") Our Town (Actors Theatre of Louisville) and the world premieres of Hinderaker's Dirty and Suicide, Incorporated (The Git) for which Thornton was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award. During his 2016 performance in the title role of Richard III (The Gift, at Steppenwolf) Thornton became the first actor to ever act onstage while wearing a robotic exoskeleton, pairing not only an actor with a disability with a character with a disability, but furthermore using cutting-edge technology to theatrically complicate the character of Richard and its discussion around disability, ableism, and representation. This production continues to be the subject of podcasts, published essays, anthologies, and academic papers.

Michael won the 2006 Jeff Award for Solo Performance for The Good Thief (The Gift).

On camera, Thornton has acted opposite Oscar Winners Jessica Chastain, J.K. Simmons, Hilary Swank, Alicia Vikander as well as Oscar nominees Jude Law and Demián Bichir. For two seasons, he played the love interest of six-time Tony Award winning legend Audra McDonald on Private Practice. 

In addition, Thornton's acclaimed improv show—You & Me—premiered at Steppenwolf and has since played for over a decade throughout Chicago, the country, as well as Dublin, Ireland. You & Me most recently had the honor of making its New York debut at Lincoln Center with Michael's comedy partner for life Susan Messing. The Chicago Reader has called the show and Thornton's improvisation "masterful."

Select Film/TV: Ponderosa, The Last Day, The Savant, Black Rabbit, NCIS, The Good Doctor, Let The Right One In, Chicago Party Aunt, 61st Street, A Million Little Things, Away, All Rise, Madam Secretary, The Red Line, Counterpart, Elementary, and The View From Tall. 

Select Awards: Actors' Equity Foundation Joe A. Callaway Award; Irish Books and Music Festival (iBAM!) Award Recipient; Best Actor: 2017 Midwest International Film Festival (The View From Tall); Tree of Life Award: Shirley Ryan Ability Lab; 3Arts Artist Award; Northlight Theatre's Jack Springer Award for Outstanding Performance; The Tim Meier and Helen Coburn Meier Foundation Achievement Award; The Second City Foundation's Jim Zulevic Chicago Arts Award; The Joseph Jefferson Award for Solo Performance, and induction into The University of Iowa and St. Patrick High School Halls of Fame.

Cyd Blakewell (Lee) is living her best life working on this incredible project with this fantastically dreamy team. She is a proud ensemble member of The Gift Theatre, where she is also the Casting Director. Gift Shows: The Locusts, The Pillowman, Doubt, A Life Extra Ordinary, Good For Otto, Body + Blood, Broadsword, Mine and multiple episodes of TEN. Chicago theatre credits: The Brightest Thing in the World (About Face); Birthday Candles (Northlight); The Snare (Jackalope); Balm In Gilead and Port (Griffin); Buddy Cop 2, breaks & bikes and MilkMilkLemonade (Pavement Group); Sweet Confinement and Ivanov (SiNNERMAN Ensemble); Orange Flower Water (Interrobang); Lies & Liars and Mimesophobia (Theatre Seven)d; Rewind (The Side Project). She recently wrapped a short film called Fairground and can also be seen in Jeri's Grille. Cyd got her BFA from Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX, is a graduate from the School at Steppenwolf and is represented by Promote Talent Agency. She is married to Keith Neagle and mother to Wesley, who give her an endless amount of love and support.

As soon as I saw the warm, rich lighting of a luxurious futuristic bedroom on the Space Ship Destiny lit and decorated by designers Heather Gilbert and Christopher Kriz and the set design by Arnel Sancianco, where the entire action of the play takes place, I thought this is going to be an interesting show. To the right of the set was a spaceship departure board with the names and photos of the passengers, along with their assigned room number, as they were headed to a planet three months away from Earth. The other ships had names like Fortune, Kismet, Prospect and Horizon suggesting that the people leaving earth are doing so willingly and must have enough money to do so. Smooch Medina’s spaceship flight calendar and wall projection also counts down the number of days the passengers have spent locked on this room together, which is a great tension builder as well. 

There are just three characters in the play. One a soldier who is suffering from PTSD from a previous mission in which he witnessed the killing of civilians that haunts him still in a variety of deep emotional ways. He has requested a private room because he cannot sleep well while struggling with his inner demons but somehow an attractive young woman passenger has been placed in the room with him, much to his disapproval. Ed Flynn portrays this sensitive, journal-writing soldier (previously referred to as “Grant”) who is also prone to violent mood changes and outbursts with great feeling and a sweaty intensity that is frightening at times. 

When you consider that he is locked into this “hotel room" for three full months due to a quarantine placed on certain sick members aboard the ship with a petite young female to whom he objects, it’s not difficult to imagine the strain that gradually surmounts. Janelle Villas does a wonderful job of showing the audience her fresh-faced bubbly enthusiasm while hiding a dark past that includes at least one rape, which has also left her in a state of PTSD. 

Co-directed by artistic director Michael Patrick Thornton and guest artist Jessica Thebus, the “Pilgrims” moves along quickly yet with subtle changes in the characters that seem very satisfying and real with a lot of emotional suspense and tension. We the audience wonder if these two characters will ever bond, or even reach their destination safely. We also ponder what will become of their edgy, ever-changing relationship once they are finally released from this artificial and close-quartered isolation into the general population of the new planet.  

The third character is a robot named Jasmine played with a great sense of humor and also an eerie, smiling menace by Brittany Burch. Jasmine has been programmed not only to answer all their questions and provide all their meals and cleaning services. She is also one of the older forms of “human-like robots” known for their ability to satisfy without any compunction - either member, male or female, with oral sex or intercourse if the human need arises.

The universality of two people meeting for the first time, learning about each other's baggage and foibles and being forced to overcome them in order to at least be friends if not lovers cannot be denied. This is a love story set in outer space plain and simple, even though it is suggested in the play that couples may have been placed together purposely to repopulate the new planet. 

I highly recommend this production for its unique retelling of a tale as old as time, when Fate meets Destiny and two very "human" human beings struggle to please each other while being true to their own individual dreams of the future but must in the end reveal the dark, undesirable places of their souls in order to overcome them and move into a deeper union free of mistakes or tragedies of the past.

Excellent performances and an imaginative script make Pilgrims a compelling and often humorous sci-fi love story that resonates. Pilgrims is being performed at Gift Theatre through July 30th. For more show information or to purchase tickets visit www.thegifttheatre.org.

I was expecting a great work of art from David Rabe, the American Tony Award-winning playwright, screenwriter and author, famous for his Vietnam trilogy (“Sticks and Bones”, “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel”, “Streamers”), as well as other notable plays, like “Hurlyburly” and “In the Boom Boom Room”. I was not disappointed.

In “Good for Otto”, Artistic Director Michael Patrick Thornton does a fantastic job directing this three hour long presentation, which literally squeezed actors into every nook and cranny of his tiny but acclaimed stage at The Gift Theatre in Jefferson Park. 

David Rabe's writing is so enchanting, so spacious, and much like prose poetry at times that it lulls the audience into a type of trance which makes it possible to watch your own demons and thoughts even as the play is unfolding before you. 

Rabe tackles just about every aspect of mental health care including the maddening difficulty of getting treatment at all from insurance companies in this country!

Good for Otto is set in a small town based on the Northwest Center for Family Services and Mental Health in Torrington, Connecticut, where the psychotherapist Richard O'Connor worked and whose work, "Undoing Depression," is the main inspiration for the characters in this play.

Whether your problem is growing old and depressed in your 70's or cutting yourself at the age of 12, or even reliving your own mother's suicide when you were nine (which the psychologist/ narrator struggles with), Rabe shows that life can't just "go on as usual" unless you actually receive and accept professional help. 

Yes, the play is still in a type of workshop phase partly because Rabe's writing is all so lush, so poetic I can see where he is having trouble cutting any of it, yet it needs cuts because some of the minor characters just end up floating around, unfulfilled and confusing in what should be a cannonball of a play on the lifelong importance of treating mental illness - instead of a shotgun which scatters these powerful messages like buckshot. 

The entire fifteen member ensemble cast did a great job with a couple standouts. 

The beautifully sensitive and expressive twelve-year-old named Frannie and played by Caroline Heffernan was a very heartfelt yet real performance from someone so young. 

The other character who both made the audience laugh the most yet at the same time made all of us young, or old and in between, feel the genuine pit and hopelessness of geriatric depression came from Rob Riley.

The scene where the psychologist argues with an ice cold double talking insurance rep who flatly denies his multiple urgent requests for one on one treatment for a suicidal child is so common and written in way so true to life it actually sickened me. 

Given the fact that so many mentally ill people are now taking their illness to the street and killing innocent people time and time again in this country just shows that we have got to stop making it so difficult to get therapy. After all, therapy is cheap. It doesn't involve multi-million dollar machinery. It's just two people or a group of people talking it out, encouraging each other to keep on living in this crazy world. 

It was a great honor for David Rabe to choose both Chicago and The Gift Theater for the first staging of this very important and empowering play. I look forward to seeing it in its polished and more laser-like form here in Chicago again or on Broadway in the near future. 

“Good for Otto” is being performed at The Gift Theatre through November 22nd. For tickets and more show information visit www.thegifttheatre.org. 

Title and Deed is a one man show, a 65 minute monologue delivered on a bare stage with a few subtle lighting changes and the gentle rolling of the lead actor’s wheelchair to signal movement throughout the play.  Will Eno’s writing is often compared to Beckett but I found Eno’s work to be much more sensitive, compassionate and outright funny than Beckett’s plays. 

Chicago actor, Michael Patrick Thornton, (one of the founders of The Gift Theatre Co.) is brilliantly cast in the role of the “Traveler” from another world who is traveling feeling estranged from his own homeland, hoping that “the change of locale that comes with international air travel will somehow change him”.

Thornton is confined to a wheelchair - although the play does not call for the use of a wheelchair, and once seeing the play with him at the helm, one cannot imagine the play succeeding as well in its message without the lead character being disabled. Thornton has a remarkable sense of humor and a sad voice, rough with heartfelt regret, which lobs Eno’s long poetic sentences at the audience with a casual yet thoughtful pinpoint accuracy that evoked laughter and sometimes tears in a way that a lesser actor could not achieve. I was totally surprised to find out that the play was not written to be played by an actor in a wheelchair because much of the understanding we feel towards the Traveler comes naturally from seeing a young-ish man confined to a wheelchair - not from seeing a poor wanderer describing his mother’s death and his alienation from the world now that he has no real connection to his home and it’s joyful traditions.

 We all know instantly when we see the young man rolling up the small hill to the stage that because he is in a wheelchair he has suffered permanent and irreversible losses regarding his own lifestyle.  It almost doesn’t make sense to me to see this play cast with an actor without the wheelchair because so much of the truth about the character is implied and is true about the alienation from daily life, the shrinking of your whole world and fortune, which occurs when you are permanently disabled.

I absolutely adored Eno’s sparing, yet lyrical use of words.  What rolls off Thornton’s tongue like ear candy, comes off as true poetry, prose poetry, and paints vibrant, multidimensional scenes in your mind without the use of any set pieces, a painted backdrop or even additional characters.

Eno describes life as basically a “series of funerals” and perfectly describes the universality of how human life begins, “We all come from blood and saltwater and a screaming mother begging us to leave." I actually nodded in agreement and sensed a strong group nod from the entire audience - or as the traveler called us “a clump” of humans gathered to hear him speak - when he said we all know that feeling that life begins triumphantly, but as we lose more and more of the people who constitute our memories of what “home” is, we experience"the human cannonball feeling at the beginning; the sickening thump at the end."

Before the play, I had recently flown to attend the funeral of a very close immediate family member and was not in the mood for something that addressed the issue of death in any way - but I was won over and in the end transformed by the self denigrating humor, common sense and hopeful poetic beauty of this piece.

There was a tremendously universal line in the script, just a heartbreaking and truthful line when the traveler describes the last moment of his mother’s life in the hospital room, “her voice made this sound, this horrible raspy sound and … she just wasn’t my mother anymore.”

I literally walked in to this production feeling shaken with grief, trembling inside, feeling all alone while trying to make sense of my sudden and recent loss but  left feeling that everyone in the mostly middle aged or older audience and indeed everyone in the world must be suffering from many of the same deeply depressing feelings and thoughts.

I highly recommend seeing this extraordinarily written and performed production especially when you are feeling that “life is a series of funerals until the last funeral which is your own” because Eno has created a powerful and profoundly funny monologue about self acceptance, life and compassion which has a very healing effect.

Title and Deed is being performed at Lookingglass Theatre through May 3^rd. For tickets and/or more show information visit http://lookingglasstheatre.org/.