Serving as Artistic Director of A Red Orchid Theatre is a full-time job for Lake Bluff and Lake Forest native Kirsten Fitzgerald, but she still finds time to take on acting and directing projects.
Her latest is directing the Chicago premiere of “Birds of North America” by Anna Ouyang Moench, which runs from Jan. 15 to Feb. 22. After that, she will flex her acting muscles in A Red Orchid Theatre’s world premiere of “The Targeted” by Hanna Kime, May 7-June 14 on the Chopin Theatre mainstage.
“Birds of North America” tracks a decade in the life and relationship between a father and daughter who are both avid birders.
A Red Orchid Theatre’s Artistic Director Kirsten Fitzgerald will direct the Chicago premiere of “Birds of North America” by Anna Ouyang Moench, featuring ensemble member John Judd (pictured) and Cassidy Slaughter-Mason as father-and-daughter birders, Jan. 15-Feb.22. (Jeff Kurysz)
“The thing that attracted me to that show had to do with the relationship between this father and daughter, and the very personal, very intense both joy and damage that they either carry or do to each other over the course of these 10 years that the play takes place,” Fitzgerald said. “I’m also really attracted to plays that are intensely personal and simultaneously either addressing directly or raising awareness about ethic and global issues, like the environment, which is a big part of this play.”
The play also deals with the difficulty of a relationship between family members whose political beliefs are very different, the Artistic Director noted.
“Where family is concerned, the relationships are rarely a straight line,” Fitzgerald concluded.
Fitzgerald’s family moved from Chicago to Lake Bluff when she was in first grade. They relocated to Lake Forest when she was in junior high school. Fitzgerald graduated from Lake Forest High School.
She was always involved in different aspects of theater.
“I was involved in a program called Group 4 at Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest,” Fitzgerald said. Her family was living in Lake Bluff at the time.
“I remember being very excited to be in a grown-up production once I was in high school,” she recalled. The show was “Sweet Charity.”
The summer program was run by Phyllis Mount, who was also the drama teacher at Lake Forest Country Day School when Fitzgerald attended that school for a couple of years.
“When I was finishing up high school, I knew that I wanted to do some sort of performance in school,” Fitzgerald said. “I did a lot of auditioning for different conservatory programs — more geared toward musical theater.”
Her goal was to attend NYU (New York University), but that was financially impossible for her.
“I ended up going to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, with all intentions of transferring after a year,” she said. “You couldn’t have paid me to leave once I was there. It was a spectacular small theater department in the middle of this giant university. We were working all the time.”
She is still working all the time and has performed or directed at the most acclaimed Chicago theaters, including Goodman, Steppenwolf, and Victory Gardens. She also has numerous television credits, including “Chicago Med,” “Chicago Fire,” and “Chicago Justice.”
Fitzgerald has directed a number of productions for A Red Orchid Theatre, where she has been an ensemble member since 2000. She won a Best Director of a Play–Midsize Jeff Award for “The Moors” at her home company.
She has been the Artistic Director of A Red Orchid Theatre since 2008.
“I had no intentions of being an artistic director. That was not on my radar at all,” Fitzgerald admitted. “When our Founding Artistic Director (Guy Van Swearingen) was feeling it was time for him to take a break, I said I’d give it a try.”
What swayed her toward accepting the position was the “wonderfully intense and close artistic ensemble,” she said.
The Artistic Director is proud of the framework she has developed for the theater company. “When I stepped in, our staff was a volunteer artistic director and a part-time hourly general manager,” Fitzgerald reported. They now have four full-time staff and a couple of part-time employees.
When Fitzgerald is acting in or directing a show at A Red Orchid Theatre, a part-time associate artistic director takes over some of her artistic director chores.
One of the things Fitzgerald said she is proudest of is “how much new work we do and how committed we are in treating each play and playwright individually. There is no one formula that works for every play,” Fitzgerald said.
Performances of “Birds of North America” are 7 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturdays, and 3 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 29-Feb. 22, at 1531 N. Wells St. in Chicago. Previews are 7 p.m. Jan. 15-17, 3 p.m. Jan. 18, 7 p.m. Jan. 22 and 23, and 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Jan. 24. Opening is 6 p.m. Jan. 25. Tickets are $33-$44 for previews; $55 for regular run.
For reservations, call 312-943-8722 or visit aredorchidtheatre.org.
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
