I came to Chicago in the Fall of 1980 after doing the summer season at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Bloomington/Normal. I re-connected with actor Frank Farrell (who I had met when we both were members of the Merrimack Theater Company in Manchester, NH the year before). Frank was doing workshops a theater space controlled by Paul Sills (the space would later become the home of the Practical Theater Company, and then convert to Second City, etc). These workshops were based on Frank’s time at the RSC in London where he learned from John Russell Brown, a foremost expert on the performance of Shakespeare.

In “Free Shakespeare,” Russell Brown taught that Shakespeare’s plays must be performed in a robust and physical manner – taking into account the production and performance conditions of that the Bard worked under. SO – we started to do full length Shakespeare plays without a director or rehearsal! The Free Shakespeare Company was started in 1981 – Chicago’s first year-found Shakespeare theater!

We soon incorporated as a nonprofit and I became the Managing Director and learned about boards of directors, accounting, marketing, grant writing, and record keeping! I started a school education program, a full length touring program, and produced the first full length Shakespeare in Lincoln Park. We then produced “The Comedy of Errors” at at Oz Park where it was so successful it spawned the Oz park Festival.

Watch a short video clip from the local news from around 1982 or 1983. The Free Shakespeare Company held a benefit at Second City to raise money for the rennovation of the theater next door that Second City gifted to us and The Huron Theater.

I started acting in graduate school, at Cornell, in 1974. Here I am as Osric from “Hamlet” at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival in 1976, where I was an intern.