Tough Act to Follow
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Founded in 1979 by Meade Palidofsky and other aspiring playwrights, Chicago Dramatists Workshop had survived by being all things to all people. Part social club, part writing school, part non-Equity company, it offered writing courses, guest lecturers, play contests, staged readings, workshop productions, and showcase productions of one-acts. By the mid-90s it was beginning to buckle under the weight of its own schedule, and Stanton, a director involved in the readings and workshop productions, began attending the organization’s board meetings. “I just didn’t think it was that big of a challenge,” says Stanton of Chicago Dramatists’ woes. “My thought was that it was an organizational issue and a cash flow issue.” She remembers Russ Tutterow, the company’s artistic director, asking her, “Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?”
Despite her administrative responsibilities, Stanton continued to direct. The Glory of Living, a noirish portrait of two serial killers, premiered in November 1996 at the Circle Theatre in Forest Park and made a rising star of Rebecca Gilman, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists. The juggling act worked for a few years, but last year Stanton bit off more than she could chew, directing Jenny Laird’s Ballad Hunter at Chicago Dramatists and Lisa Dillman’s Detail of a Larger Work at Steppenwolf, followed by a residency at Valparaiso University and an assignment at Saint Thomas’s Pistarckle Theater in the Virgin Islands. “The time came when it was clear I should leave,” says Stanton, and on September 13 she gave notice at Chicago Dramatists.
