Darryl Maximilian Robinson Notes Jeff Award Best Actor Nominee Stephan Turner In "The Dodo Bird"

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Windy City Theatre Lovers and Supporters, one of the great joys and honors your humble servant in The Theatre, Darryl Maximilian Robinson, has had of being the recipient of a 1997 Chicago Joseph Jefferson Citation ( Non-Equity ) Award for Outstanding Actor In A Principal Role In A Play for this thespian's performance as Sam Semela in the great South African playwright Athol Fugard's powerful anti-apartheid drama "Master Harold And The Boys" ( which also brought a 1997 Chicago Joseph Jefferson Citation Award nomination for Outstanding Production of the Year to this artist's multiracial chamber theatre The Excaliber Shakespeare Company of Chicago in a staging at the much-missed Heartland Cafe Studio Theatre of Rogers Park ), was to be invited on two occasions ( for the 1998 25th Annual Chicago Joseph Jefferson Citation Awards Ceremony and for the 2003 30th Annual Chicago Joseph Jefferson Citation Awards Ceremony both held at The Park West Theatre in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood ) to serve as The Presenter of the Outstanding Actor In A Principal Role In A Play category.

For both ceremonies, as preparation to serve as The Presenter, your humble servant in The Theatre, Darryl Maximilian Robinson, researched and studied the then available media of the nominated performers.

And, recently, as A Previous Jeff Award Winner who made a brief video appearance at the 2024 50th Annual Chicago Non-Equity Jeff Awards Ceremony at The Park West Theatre, this artist has made an effort to keep himself apprised of the theatrical efforts of both the past generations and the new generation of Jeff Awards Nominees and Winners.

https://www.jeffawards.org/archives?combine=Darryl+Maximilian+Robinson&field_nomination_category_target_id=94&field_award_year_target_id=58&field_division_target_id=13&field_recipient_value=1

https://www.broadwayworld.com/los-angeles/regional/Jeff-Award-Winner-Darryl-Maximilian-Robinson-Notes-50th-Anniversary-As-An-American-Stage-Performer--3848018

Here, therefore, are some very recent and interesting stage notes by 1998 Chicago Joseph Jefferson Citation Award Nominee for Outstanding Actor In A Principal Role In A Play Stephan Turner, star of Emanuel Fried's play "The Dodo Bird," which was presented in The Windy City in the 1990s by his fine group, Chicago's Stage Actors Ensemble, who discusses reviving the role that won him critical praise and a Chicago Best Actor theatre award nomination in a more recent 2007 production that has been staged in Thailand.

Your humble servant in The Theatre, Darryl Maximilian Robinson, Founder, Artistic Director and Producer of the multiracial chamber theatre The Excaliber Shakespeare Company of Chicago, came to know the diligent and truly committed Jeff Award Best Actor Nominee Mr. Turner just briefly at the beginning of the new century when the ESC's 2000 well-received Oak Park revival production of Edward Albee's "The Zoo Story" ( starring Eric Weiss as Jerry and L. C. Satterfield as Peter ) was presented as part of Mr. Turner's April Interfest 2000 theatre event at his northside of Chicago performance space of The Stage Actors Ensemble. Mr. Turner was gracious and kind to the ESC multiracial cast of Edward Albee's play and the ESC is grateful to Mr. Turner for our inclusion in his event.

https://chicagoreader.com/arts-culture/interfest-2000-5/

A Gary, Indiana native and veteran Chicago theatre Producer, Director, Educator and Actor, Stephan Turner provides intriguing notes of bringing English Language drama overseas.

Enjoy.

Photos Provided By And Comments Provided By Theatre Artist Stephan Turner:

"I’ve been silent here for a number of months but quite busy in the real world having just returned from Mainland China and Hong Kong where I was conducting stage acting workshops for a very enthusiastic and receptive group of adult learners.

Prior to this mission The Gate Theater closed out the season this past December with a solid, well crafted production of “Hangman” which was well attended and highly praised by local drama critics. Due to the success of the production it will be restaged this coming November at the request of Lanna Lawyers, The Legal House and the BABSESCLE Foundation. I’ll be writing more about both the China workshops and the coming season a bit later. This post aims to focus on my bumbling of the number of years we’ve been doing theater in Chiang Mai.

This past season during my curtain speeches, which happen before each performance, I told the audience the number of years we’ve been producing English Language Theater in Chiang Mai was six-teen. I hadn’t been keeping track very well. I recall one of our group members must have written in a post somewhere a few years ago that we were in our 13th year. It seemed about right to me so I guess I started counting from that point and told every audience that this past season marked our 16th year of production.

However, after nearly burning myself up in an embarrassingly foolish accident that I won’t get into in this writing, I suddenly had lots of time to sit and reflect, not only on how lucky I was to still have my eyesight but also time to get back to clearing out my redundant newspaper clippings. In doing so, I came across some clipping which once again reminded me of the sometimes usefulness of my old redundant scraps of paper. This past season was in fact our 17th year of “laboring in relative obscurity” to create English language theater in a foreign land where once there was none.

Our First Production:

The play, “The Dodo Bird” by Emanuel Fried, RIP is a script that I had been carrying with me for over 20 years which had been given to me by Tom Mazur, the technical theater director at Indiana University’s Theatre Northwest during the 70s. I had directed it a couple of times in the US in Gary Indiana but hadn’t acted in it until many years later in a Chicago production. With the critical acclaim heaped upon the play by Chicago drama critics I felt confident that I could find three other performers and recreate that same success.

“The Dodo Bird” became the first production by The Gate Theater Group of Chiang Mai and it was a success. Staged at the American University Association (AUA) Language School Auditorium, a little 75 seat venue with not much of a stage and only track lights for stage lighting. The first three performances were a success and weeks later we staged it again. So began our relationship with AUA which lasted a short time before we upgraded our performance venue to the KAD Suan Kaew Mall Studio Theater, which became our home until 2021 when C-19 hit causing the building to close down. Now after all these years we’re back where we started, at the friendly confines of AUA Language School where we will begin our 18th season this fall.

Special thanks to Emanuel Fried for allowing me to produce his play free of charge because at the time I had no money to speak of to pay the royalties. Thank you to the cast, especially, John Quinn who remains in Chiang Mai running the very successful See Tefl Teacher Training School. And most notably, thanks to my dear friend Tom Mazur for his practical teachings in Scenic Design and Stage Lighting and also for giving me the play that started it all. Without his influence and training, it’s safe to say the chances of English Language Theater coming to Chiang Mai and surviving for 17 years would have been pretty slim or not happened at all, as myself and many others who have come through The Gate Theater Group have been involved in some way with every other attempt to make English Language theater happen in Chiang Mai. If I must say it myself, being way up here in the north of Thailand, that is quite an achievement!

I’m placing these articles here mainly so that so they can live on the www presumably forever. As I have stated previously, these scraps of paper are headed for the bin. No one is obligated to read them. Thanks."