Aunt Pam recently sent me two packets of letters, postcards, drawings and photos that I had sent her over the last 40 years. I’m happy to say I was delighted by my youthful musings more often than I was embarrassed. The letters cover my childhood in Donovan, my time at IMSA and Connecticut College, and the excitement of my move to Chicago in the late 90s.
In the most recent packet was included the March-April 1999 edition of the Chicago Theater Guide produced by Stagebill, where I was then a program editor, with a post-it proclaiming “My first real byline!” I can’t believe I’m on the same TOC as Mike Nussbaum.
It’s so fun to revisit this time at my first job out of college, where I had the opportunity not only to see tons of free theater, but to get paid to write about it! In addition to a few of these Chicago Theater Guide pieces I did previews of upcoming plays ranging from short blurbs to full-length articles. For historical references I did research at the library’s Special Collections Reading Room (mentioned in the sidebar), most of which has now been digitized.
I have included scanned images of some of the ~85-word previews below. Of these, I particularly remember loving Hamlet! The Musical with Alexandra Billings at the Chicago Shakespeare studio. She impressed me so much, and I was delighted to see her years later in the excellent TV adaptation of William Gibson’s The Peripheral.
Thank you for this trip down memory lane, AP! Perhaps I’ll have to do a separate post on my time as a beat reporter for that renowned tabloid, “Rachel’s Scoop.”