Behind the ‘Line

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A tangled web

I couldn’t be more excited to have J.T. Rogers’ Blood and Gifts on our stage right now to conclude TimeLine Theatre’s 16th season. The road to bring this dynamic play to TimeLine started more than five years ago—before J.T. had even begun work on the script. Having read his play The Overwhelming, which is about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, TimeLine’s Company Members were blown away by the intelligence, depth and scope of his writing. ...
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“Trust no one in this play”

During rehearsals for Blood and Gifts, TimeLine Artistic Director PJ Powers (PJP) talked with playwright J.T. Rogers (JTR) about his genesis as a playwright, the extensive research that informed the writing of Blood and Gifts, and the lamentable lack of plays with a global perspective ...
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A little sex in our theatre

I like a little sex in my theatre. During our Sunday Scholars Series for TimeLine’s production of Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West by Naomi Iizuka, Artistic Director PJ Powers joked that “sex never gets old.” Indeed. One of the most interesting moments in ...
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Photos as ownership and nostalgia

One of the joys of seeing live theater is feeling certain ideas reverberate with your own experiences. I have not been to Japan, and yet on seeing Naomi Iizuka’s Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West, I immediately thought of my vintage tinted photos of ...
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Sharing patron perspectives

Visit our website to learn how to submit your own photos! TimeLine’s current production of Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West explores the role of photography in our experience of life, especially in relation to other cultures and through time. So we invited our ...
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Truth at our fingertips?

Think back. Way back to a time that now seems almost incomprehensible— nearly the last millennium. Can you recall when you didn’t have a camera at your fingertips, seemingly at all times, handily embedded in your cell phone? Remember when you couldn’t—with just a couple of taps—snap a picture and immediately circulate it to the world for perusal? And do you also remember when you couldn’t—with just a click or two more—alter and manipulate that ...
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Building a hole

Over the past 11 weeks of Wasteland, we’ve watched as audiences step into the theater and are immediately drawn into the world of the play before one word of the script is uttered. The lights and haze, the sound of insects and wildlife, and most strikingly, ...
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Sometimes it takes a play

The best kind of theatre breaks down boundaries. As chance would have it, the year that I started working at TimeLine Theatre was also the year that my grandparents moved to Chicago and into an independent living home. After two strokes and multiple surgeries between ...
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Shedding light underground

A few weeks ago when Wasteland was still in its rehearsal process, TimeLine Artistic Director PJ Powers (PJP) talked with Chicago playwright Susan Felder (SF) about her life as an actor, director and now playwright, the experience of working on her first fully produced play, ...
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Timing can be everything

Sometimes it helps to be just a little bit lucky. This notion obviously isn’t new to me—I am continually aware of my great fortune to have been around the right people at the right time to start TimeLine in 1997, and how that unlikely connection ...
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