Born and raised in Mississippi, out writer/director/ actor/designer Jerre Dye has gone on to live and work in many cities including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Memphis—where he was the artistic director of the Tennesseebased Voices of the South Theatre Company for eight years.
But ultimately Dye feels it is his artistic destiny to end up in Chicago. "Chicago is the most electric theater community there is," said Dye, offering up reasons why he and partner Scott Duff, an actor and founding artistic associate of About Face Theatre, relocated back to the Windy City. "I've been a bit of a vagabond my whole life, and I have to say nowhere is theater more kind of wildly diverse in style and content as Chicago." Since Dye has been back, he's already shown off some of his multitalented abilities by designing sets for About Face Theatre's remount of We Three Lizas this past December. Soon Dye's skills as a playwright will be on display with the regional premiere of his drama Cicada, a 2011 winner of the Bryan Family Foundation Award for Dramatic Literature from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
After Cicada received a warm reception last fall as part of a reading series presented by Route 66 Theatre Company, the organization fast-tracked the play to appear as part of its first official subscription season. Route 66 Theatre Company stages Dye's Cicada at the Greenhouse Theater Center April 9 through May 25,
with support from Hear/Tell Productions, a new company committed to exploring new voices in the theater by lending production support to immersive performance experiences that celebrate a desire for human connection ( sponsors of Hear/Tell include Chez Moi, d.luke design, Speedpro Imaging and Windy City Media Group, which publishes Windy City Times ). "I was really drawn to, when I first heard [Cicada] aloud, not just the poetry of it, but the world that it created felt so inviting and the characters felt so real and profound," said Route 66 Associate Artistic Director Erica Weiss, who not only directed the Cicada reading, but is also in charge of its fully realized staging. "It was a story and a play that I had not ever seen before in Chicago, certainly, and I think that it really brings the spirit of the South to the stage, but not in a way that makes those of us who are not from that world feel alienated from it. It's a very welcoming and inviting play."
Dye describes Cicada as a "family story, essentially about letting go of what's no longer necessary." The play largely focuses on the lives of an artistically sensitive 17-year-old boy named Ace and his mother, Lily, who both try to dig their way out of the past in rural Mississippi.
"[The family home] is kind of being reclaimed by the world around it, so to speak," Dye said, adding that there is also a "chorus of family ghosts who live in and inhabit the house—not ghosts in the classical 'woo-woo' sense, but ghosts as almost like real, fleshy, present people in their lives."
Dye also says the play's insect title is something of a symbolic metaphor for Cicada, though he stresses that "if you're from the South … that sound during the summer months is just ever-present."
Dye has worked with director Weiss on wholly reworking the script for this production. He's also immensely impressed with the stellar cast that Weiss has assembled, which includes Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Robert Breuler, Aaron Kirby ( Luna Gale ) and particularly out actor Amy Matheny, who plays the mother Lily, which Dye describes as "quite an operatic role—lots of highs and lots of lows."
Matheny, whose credits include Enron with TimeLine Theatre and Float with About Face Theatre, is a longtime friend of Dye. Matheny caught Cicada at its Memphis world premiere and worked closely with Dye and Here/Tell Productions to help bring it to Chicago. This is the first professional production of CICADA after workshop productions in Memphis. ( Matheny is also host of Windy City Queercast and a senior account manager for Windy City Media Group ).
"The play itself has a lot of meat in terms of actors really being able to kind of grab it with both fists and say something," said Dye, eager to see how Chicago actors and audiences respond to his brand of heightened Southern poetry and drama. "It's big and beautiful and elegant at the same time."
Route 66 Theatre Company's Chicago premiere of Jerre Dye's Cicada from April 9 through May 25 at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Preview performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, April 9-11, with an official 8 p.m. press opening April 12. Regular run performances are 8 p.m. Thursdays through Fridays, 4 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays.
Tickets are $30 for previews and $35 during the regular run. Student tickets are $20,
with discounts available for groups of 10 or more. Call 773-404-7336, or visit www. greenhousetheater.org, Link Here . org or Link Here
