From the 1926 original hit play to two notoriously successful Broadway musicals up through the recent blockbuster, people, it seems, can’t get enough of Chicago. Six Academy Awards. Three Golden Globes. Tony awards and nominations up the wazoo. Casts boasting such legends as Chita Rivera and Joel Grey, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah. Chicago’s been around forever, and it isn’t going anywhere.
So, with all this intimidating history, prestige, and competition, why did we do it?
Well, that answer isn’t easy. At the time when Chicago was chosen for this season’s show, we didn’t know there was going to be a movie, not to mention the fact that the movie was going to be such a big deal. All we knew was that Chicago was a really good showit had an intensely funny and well-wrought script, a fairly well-known name, and two amazing female stars. And then the movie came outa movie that was great, yes, but a movie that was just another testament to the fact that, in the world that thinks that the stage and screen are interchangeable, nothing beats the real thing.
I would like to personally extend eternal thank-yous to the people who’ve helped keep both this show and myself sanenamely my mother and family, Tim Emerson, Isabel Hernandez-Cata, Jennifer Timberlake, our all-star staff, and our splendiferous and incredibly over-talented castthe minute you walked into auditions, I could see you were a cast of distinction…
And last, but definitely not least, I would like to thank you, the audience for sitting here and getting through this director’s note and eventually this display--a display birthed of over 100 youth, nearly 80 years of history, and ten months of planning. The audience is what keeps theatre alive, and you, the audience, are about to witness a story of murder, greed, corruption, violence, and… well, you’ll find out soon enough.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins