@dramatistsguild @Cheryl_Coons

Russ Tutterow has helmed Chicago Dramatists for 30 years, helping to develop more than 1500 new plays and serving several hundred playwrights as mentor, director, and friend. This February Russ moved into a new role as Artistic Director Emeritus. He continues to consult with the company, and maintains close relationships with its 36 Resident Playwrights. Meghan Beals, who served Chicago Dramatists as Associate Artistic director from 2010 to 2012, is the company’s Interim Artistic Director.

“For more than three decades, Chicago Dramatists has been a place I call home and it will continue to be as I move into an emeritus role,” said Tutterow. “As I pass the torch to Meghan, I’m excited about the direction our organization is taking in blending the traditions that made us successful with a pioneer approach that will take our work into the future.”

During his tenure as Artistic Director, Russ directed dozens of world premieres at Chicago Dramatists, including A Steady Rain, which won Chicago’s Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Production in 2008, and was produced on Broadway in 2009. He also created the company’s Saturday Series, which presents a staged reading of a new play nearly every Saturday afternoon. “If you’re a playwright living in Chicago, there is a good chance that he has been an important part of your life,” says Chicago Dramatists Resident Playwright Will Dunne. “If Chicago playwriting has a father, his name is Russ Tutterow.”

Other playwrights echo this warm, familial feeling for Russ. Aline Lathrop writes “He has built a safe home where we have had the freedom to grow, and fail, and thrive without fear of losing that home, or Russ’s support. When something good happens in my career, Russ is the person I want to tell. And when I send out a new draft at 4:00 a.m., Russ is the person who writes back right away.”

Playwright Reginald Edmund says “There are a lot of leaders in American Theatre but Russ is someone that leads with love and that makes him a rarity. He’s filled with so much light, and I think it’s safe to say he is proof that one man can indeed change the world.”

Not only playwrights have benefitted from Russ’s care. Mia McCullough says, “For me, the thing that is most impressive about Russ’ legacy is that he has almost single-handedly made Chicago the nurturing environment that it is for new work. Chicago Dramatists is not just a place for playwrights to develop their work, but a training center for actors and directors to learn how to talk to playwrights about their work in a supportive, collaborative, and insightful way.”

Resident Playwright Andrew Hinderaker offers this vivid snapshot of Russ: “I’m sitting at the rehearsal table, staring at a script that bears a title I’d scribbled in my journal, three years earlier, while attending a Saturday Series reading: I Am Going to Change the World. And for the first time, I’m about to hear this magnificent cast read this play. And it’s happening in the building where I dreamt it up. It’s happening in my home. I look at Russ Tutterow, rocking the double-pocketed maroon collared shirt like no other man can. Russ, with his gruff voice and tender heart. Russ, who once said to me, ‘But, Andrew, nothing’s harder than writing a play.’ And even as my mind flipped through the catalogue of sarcastic and serious replies (brain surgery, electrical engineering, deciphering an actual image in those 3-D posters) I was quietly grateful that he believed such a belief, and with such ferocity.”

I’m personally grateful to Russ for inviting me to be a Resident Playwright, and creating a space for musical theatre development at Chicago Dramatists.

Susan Lieberman, whose 30 years as a Resident Playwright with Chicago Dramatists has coincided with Russ’s tenure as Artistic Director, says it this way: “Russ Tutterow is, literally, my ‘Sweet Home Chicago.’

ccoons@dramatistsguild.com