Blog Entries from Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day

For Keeps and a Single Day

Ensemble member and director of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day John Musial writes about what first attracted him to the works of the great Chicago writer.

"For keeps and a single day" is a life sentence. It is what a judge would say when announcing the decision, driving home the point, "Your fate is sealed, there is no escape." This phrase is something that writer Nelson Algren heard spoken in the court rooms and on the streets of the city he chronicled some four decades ago. The man had a gift for hearing the language spoken around him and spinning it into poetry. He did the same for the lives and stories of the underclass people he saw all around him in his West Side three flat apartment - the struggling, dispossessed people society tried to ignore. Algren didn't ignore them. He knew their humanity and labored to be a voice for them. He believed that a writer had accomplished a pretty great task if, in one lifetime, he could tell the story of the block he lived on. Chicago of the 1940's, 50's and 60's was Algren's block, and it is a story he told more compellingly and with greater compassion and insight that any writer since Carl Sandburg.

Our production Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day examines Algren's relationship with Chicago, from his point of view. His poetry has been edited into a series of 12 monologues. The action plays out in front of a series of film screens upon which are projected a poetic montage of film imagery, created by myself, evoking the cityscapes and scenes Algren describes. The films become a window into Algren's world.

Ultimately, the piece is a search for Nelson Algren himself; an exploration of his contradictory relationship with Chicago, the city he loved passionately yet knew all too well. Several texts from Chicago: City on the Make provide the piece's backbone, laying a broader canvas of the city's history and mythology and observing Chicago's rough melting pot of people, languages and politics. Bringing the audience closer to Algren's heart are several more personal narratives observing the people he most empathized with: the hustlers and the squares... the people for whom everyday existence is a struggle... the forgotten people whose lives are hidden behind the million watt billboards of our national prosperity. It is my hope that Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day will show you the link between Algren's Chicago and the Chicago of today, and make your Chicago a richer place for the connection.

This piece was originally written for the 2001 production of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day

An Actor's Process

Ensemble member Thom Cox writes about how he first got involved in the what eventually became our production of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day.

Two years ago, I was performing in a Lookingglass production called The Great Fire, adapted and directed by John Musial using eyewitness accounts of the Chicago Fire of 1871. During the rehearsals for that show, as an ensemble, we examined and discussed our personal relationships to the city, and the show made an effort to have people become aware of their own. So, this idea of a personal relationship to Chicago was already present when John came to me with a slim book and asked me to read it. "I think we should do this," he said.

It was Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren.

I read the book that night, and was overwhelmed by the imagery and language that Algren used to portray his very personal relationship to this city. The poetic rhythms and beautiful images of a city struggling with itself were at the same time a revelation and very familiar to me. I found myself thinking, "I know this city, we've met."

Over the next several months, John and I looked at a lot of material: collections of short stories, photographs of Algren, essays and articles by and about Algren, letters, biographies, novels. We discussed them and how they related to John's initial vision, using City on the Make as the backbone of the piece to explore Algren's relationship to the city. John began adapting these pieces into a script, while I used the materials to begin piecing together a sketch of a character. Who was Algren? Did we want to create Algren himself as the main character or was our main character someone other than the author? If so, who was he? And how much of this character was actually me, the actor, telling Algren's stories?

Over the course of a year these questions began to be answered in workshops. Clearly, we are using Nelson Algren as a character, because the stories we use in the adaptation are told from his point-of-view, either as a character or as a narrator. But I don't think of the character that I've created as "Nelson Algren" so much as I think of him as the character of his Writer Voice. What this means is that I'm not attempting to do an impersonation of the historical Nelson Algren by attempting to duplicate his vocal or physical idiosyncrasies. Rather I am giving life to the voice that tells his stories. Of course, I am costumed based on photographic images of Algren, and the films do try to maintain the feeling and period of the Chicago that he described in his stories. But my goal is to create a character that tells stories about a city he loves in spite of, even because of, its paradoxes and struggles with itself. In the end, the relationship between city and writer is the dramatic arc of the piece, because we see the evolution of the writer's voice in response to that relationship.

My preparations for performance takes into account all of the different aspects of the show: I watch videos of the films that John has put together to evoke the settings, characters and atmospheres of the stories. Because the music in the show is so integral to its performance, I listen to music by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and others. I look at photographs of Algren and the people he loved and wrote about; the downtrodden people of the neighborhoods. I have images in my mind for all the characters Algren gives us: Ethel, Margo, Max, John the Greek, the "sandlot sprouts", the hustlers and the squares. I tell the stories to myself as I walk around the city, finding elements of the stories in what I see and hear. Finally, I go back in my mind to the living, breathing city of Chicago, its el trains, its neighborhoods, its streets and alleys, its history and its heart. I let myself see, hear, and feel the city that's around me every day. I soak up Chicago with its beautiful skyline that I am still entranced by; the grit of Lower Wacker and the ghosts who used to sleep there; the screech of the el train at Damen and Milwaukee; the hysterical spectacle of the city's politics. Ultimately, even though I am telling stories about Algren's relationship to Chicago, the piece is as much about my relationship, and yours, to this maddening and beautiful city.

This piece was originally written for the 2001 production of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day

Art Shay Exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Nelson Algren at the Printers Row Book Fair

Art Shay book signing this Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 6:30 PM at the MCA

This Saturday, June 14, 2008, you have the chance to meet famed Chicago photographer Art Shay at the Museum of Contemporary Art. He'll be signing his books, including Chicago's Nelson Algren, Art Shay: Chicago Accent, and Nelson Algren's Chicago. Art was good friends with Nelson Algren, and hand-picked the photographs for the exhibit.

Chicago's Nelson Algren was published in 2007, and has been a very popular book, especially approaching the centennial of Algren' birth.

Art Shay: Chicago Accent is the companion book to the recent exhibit at the Stephen Daiter Gallery. Many of those same photographs are part of the current exhibition.

Nelson Algren's Chicago was first published in 1988, shortly after Nelson Algren passed away.

Show up at 6:30 PM before the line gets too long, and check out the 19 photographs on display. The exhibit is featured in association with our production of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and A Single Day. Tickets for the 7:30 PM show will be on sale, as will the books that Art will sign.

Post-show discussions about Nelson Algren

Be sure to catch a special post-show discussion after select performances of Nelson Algren: For Keeps and A Single Day.  Lookingglass Artistic Director of New Work, Heidi Stillman, will lead the discussions along with Northwestern University Algren Scholar Bill Savage. Thomas J. Cox will contribute his insight into representing Algren onstage, and director/adaptor John Musial may stop by to participate.

These discussions provide the audience the opportunity to learn more about Nelson Algren, the process of adapting his words for the stage, and the challenges of mounting a full-scale multi-media experience based on his work. The audience is also invited to participate in a question-and-answer session.

Post-show discussions are scheduled to take place after the following performances:

Sunday, June 22, following the 3 pm matinee
Sunday, June 29, following the 3 pm matinee

A limited number of tickets are still avaialble for these performances. Call 312.337.0665 to take advantage of this opportunity! 

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