these shining lives

Location: Ottawa High School Auditorium
(203 East Main Street, Ottawa, IL)

 

Performances: Regular performances at 7:30pm on December 3 and 4, and 2:30pm on December 5. Two additional performances with local history lessons are planned for students.

 

Tickets: Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door; $5 with student ID.

 

Call (815) 434-2737 or visit www.experienceottawa.com today for tickets!

 

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CAST

Kathy Logelin as Catherine Donohue
Rivendell Theatre Ensemble; Member of Actors’ Equity Association

 

Kathy Logelin joined Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in the spring of 2010 after appearing in the Rivendell’s 2009 remount of These Shining Lives. Recent Rivendell credits include the world premiere of Precious Little, as well as the These Shining Lives remount in Ottawa, IL. Kathy has been an actor in Chicago since 1998. Other Chicago credits include Betrayal with Oak Park Festival Theatre; The Last Days of Judas Iscariot with The Gift Theatre and Victory Gardens; Cadillac with Chicago Dramatists; and Widowers’ Houses with Timeline Theatre Co. Regionally Kathy has done five seasons with the Illinois Shakespeare Festival including The Three Musketeers, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and All’s Well That Ends Well, as well as Mauritius at TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Macbeth at the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. Kathy is also a dialect coach and recently worked with Remy Bumppo, Mary-Arrchie, Strawdog and Idle Muse Theatre Co. Kathy holds a B.S. in Acting from Illinois State University.

 

Guy Massey as Tom Donohue
Guy Massey holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Southern California. He has been acting in Chicago for twenty years, performing in plays with The Steppenwolf Theater, Rivendell Theater, The Curious Theatre Branch, Theater Oobleck, Eclipse Theater, Greasy Joan & Co., A Red Orchid Theatre, Prop Thtr, Teatro Vista, Next Theater, and Wisdom Bridge, among others. Time Out Chicago called Mr. Massey “one of the instantly recognizable and dependably engaging personalities” on Chicago’s fringe theater landscape. Most recently he has worked with the Goodman Theater and Steppenwolf Theater, and played George W. Bush in Theater Oobleck’s The Strangerer, both Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theater in Manhattan and in Chicago at the Chopin Theater. His earliest film credits include the ’80s cult classic Three O’Clock High. The latest are The Promotion, Stranger Than Fiction, Contagion, and Fred Claus. Television credits include the pilot episodes of The Beast, The Line, and The Chicago Code. In the Spring of 2011, Mr. Massey will be performing in Death of a Salesman at the Milwaukee Rep.

 

Ashley Neal as Charlotte
Rivendell Theatre Ensemble

 

Ashley has been a member of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble for 7 years. During that time she has appeared in Be Aggressive, Expecting Isabel, The Walls, These Shining Lives, and most recently 26 Miles. As a graduate of Columbia College Chicago and having worked with numerous theatre companies throughout Chicago, Ashley is proud to call Chicago her home — and Rivendell her family!

Hilary Williams as Pearl

Hilary is so thankful for this opportunity with Rivendell. She was last seen with Rivendell understudying in The Walls at the Steppenwolf Garage. Hilary is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Acting, and a participant in the University of East London exchange program. Other Chicago credits include Hideous Progeny with LiveWire Theatre, Arcadia with New Leaf Theatre’s Tree House Series, and A Room With a View with Lifeline Theatre.

Marika Engelhardt as Frances

Marika is originally from Portland, Oregon. She came to Chicago to pursue her MFA in acting from DePaul University. Since graduating she has had the great fortune to work with many venerable artists and theatres including About Face, The Goodman Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, and Mary Arrchie. She has worked on several independent feature films, including Jamie and Jesse are Not Together with award-winning director Wendy Jo Carlton, and House of Purgatory, recently shot in Wisconsin. She is proudly represented by Gray Talent.

 

Mark Ulrich as Mr. Reed & Others

Rivendell Theatre Ensemble; Member of Actors’ Equity Association

 

Mark Ulrich has been a Rivendell Theatre Ensemble member since 2008. RTE acting credits include Silence; the Ottawa, Illinois, production of These Shining Lives, the Jeff-nominated The Walls, Falling: A Wake, and American Wee Pie. Mark worked as assistant director on Rivendell’s Psalms Of A Questionable Nature, and he directed their Jeff Award- and After Dark Award-winning Mary’s Wedding. Mark has appeared locally at The Goodman, Northlight, Writer’s Theatre, and Chicago Dramatists, among others. This year Mark directed A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia, at Millwaukee’s Next Act Theatre. There, he also appeared in their production of Vigil. Mark appeared in Abigail’s Party at A Red Orchid Theatre, Mariela in the Desert, and The Sins of Sor Juana at The Goodman, The Book Thief and How Long Will I Cry at Steppenwolf, and A View From the Bridge at Teatro Vista.

 

 

PLAYWRIGHT

 

Melanie Marnich is originally from Duluth, Minnesota, where she developed a keen appreciation for the dramatic extremes of the characters and climate around her. Her love of such a careening environment has informed her work ever since. Her plays are driven by people who are compelled, by personality and by place, to seek answers to life’s most human and confusing questions. Her voice is idiosyncratically comic, exuberantly theatrical, and emotionally real. Melanie has received two McKnight Advancement Grants and two Jerome Fellowships (The Playwrights’ Center), two Samuel Goldwyn Awards and the Francesca Primus Prize. Her work has been seen at The Guthrie Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Steppenwolf Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Dallas Theater Center, London’s Royal Court Theatre and the O’Neill Theatre Center. Commissions include The Guthrie Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, and the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis. She is a core member of The Playwrights’ Center.

 

 

PRODUCTION
Director — Rachel Walshe

Rachel Walshe became an ensemble member in 2007. She is Artistic Director of Fresh Produce and Director of New Play Development. For Rivendell, Rachel directed These Shining Lives; assistant directed Quiara Alegria Hudes’ Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue (director: Lisa Portes); and directed the staged reading of Carson Kreitzer’s Flesh and the Desert. Rachel holds her MFA from DePaul University’s Theatre School where she directed Machinal by Sophie Treadwell; Eighteen by Allison Moore; Breath, Boom by Kia Corthron; Living Out by Lisa Loomer and Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl. Other Chicago directing credits include readings of Annie Levine’s Disaster City and Lisa Rosenthal’s The Good Harvest, both at Chicago Dramatists. Rachel hails from Providence, RI, where she has worked extensively as a dramaturge and director. Rachel has dramaturged Tom Stoppard’s Travesties and David Mamet’s Oleanna, both for the Gamm Theatre. She served as literary associate for Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul, Henry IV and Henry V, all for Trinity Rep. RI directing credits include Marie Jones’ A Night in November for the Firehouse Theatre in Newport and Kayla Hazzard’s The Dinosaur Play for Perishable Theatre’s Manton Avenue Project. She is currently directing the remount of These Shining Lives. She gave birth to baby Alice in the spring of 2009.

 

Stage Manager — Stephanie Hurovitz
Stephanie Hurovitz has been stage managing in Chicago since 2003 and she is very happy to have a home with Rivendell Theatre Ensemble. She stage managed the extension of Rivendell’s Eat Your Heart Out (2014); as well as the full productions of American Wee Pie (2013); Wrens (2012); Crooked (2012); Falling: A Wake (2012); Precious Little (2011); Mary’s Wedding (2010); The Walls (2009); These Shining Lives (all four incarnations, 2008-2010); and assistant stage managed Rivendell’s co-production of Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue (2006) with Teatro Vista at the Steppenwolf Garage. She most recently stage managed the Jeff Award Winning production of A View From the Bridge with Teatro Vista (2014), and is preparing to begin rehearsals with TV once again, for Between You, Me, and The Lampshade. Other recent credits outside of Rivendell include: Remy Bumppo’s An Inspector Calls (2013-14), The Runaway Circus’ Overcome (2013); 3 Squares Production’s Lipstick Goes on Last (2013); Teatro Vista’s world premier of i put the fear of mexico in ‘em (2012). She has also worked with: SuzBo Productions (a staged reading of One Is One; Two Is Math at Steppenwolf); Route 66 Theatre Company (A Twist of Water); Pegasus Players; Lifeline Theatre (Lyle, Lyle Crocodile; The True Story of the Three Little Pigs!; Gaudy Night; Giggle, Giggle Quack; A Long Way From Chicago; and Deep In The Jungle); Bailiwick Reparatory (Sunday on the Rocks) and ASM (Naked Boys Singing); Theatre Building Chicago, where she worked with Hancock Productions (The Brother and ‘Night Mother); Walk-About Theatre Company, in conjunction with Lookingglass (The Coast of Chicago); Collaboraction Theatre Company (Casanova); the (since re-named) International Theatre of Chicago (Safe); Brown Couch Theatre Company (Tempting Fate and Defying Gravity); Reverie Theatre Company (All’s Well That Ends Well); and (since-dissolved) Pywackett Theatre Company (Misery).