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way to Broadway, where it bombed. The group disbanded after that and
Gordon was looking to reestablish himself with a new company.
THE ORGANIC THEATER COMPANY
Stuart had come to see the cast at the Country Club in Mount
Prospect and approached Dennis after one of the performances and asked
if he’d audition for a part in Ray Bradbury’s “The Wonderful Ice Cream
Suit.” The play was about five down-and-out Latinos, and Dennis recalls
that it “was a stretch. I’m playing a Latino, along with Joe Mantegna,
Meshach Taylor, Jose Martinez, and Michael Saad.” Ray Bradbury
attended the opening and became a friend and a fan of the company.
“That was the beginning,” Dennis says, “of the five-year spell I had with
the Organic Theater Company.”
“The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” was followed by “Bloody Bess:
A Tale of Piracy and Revenge,” written by William Jay Norris, one of
the actors in the company. It was a swashbuckler, filled with energetic
and elaborate visuals. The Organic Theater Company performed in the
Beacon Street Theater on the north side of Chicago, a three-quarter
round space with a sunken stage; the audience sat on bleachers and the
actors would swing in on vines or ropes over them. “There was a lot of
sword fighting and a lot of stage action that we had to train for,” Dennis
recalls. “Visually, it was a wonderful thing to watch,” he adds. “Was it a
great piece of art? I don’t think so, but it was fun for the audience.”
The company went to Europe on a small theater circuit and
performed “Bloody Bess” and “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.” They
did “Switch Bitch,” from a short story by Roald Dahl, about husbands
switching wives in the middle of the night. They also did “Beowulf,” in
which Franz, who “had to run bare-assed with a hairy thing and fight,”
played the creature.
Then along came David Mamet, who was part of the Chicago theater
community at that time.
Mamet had an unfinished piece of work he had collaborated with
Terry Curtis Fox on called “Cops.” They had a disagreement, however, and
the script never got finished. David took his name off it. Terry was a friend
of the theater; Gordon got in touch with him and decided they could
collectively finish “Cops,” a story about two off-duty Chicago detectives
having coffee in an all-night joint where a hostage situation breaks out.
“It’s very exciting to see on stage,” Dennis says, “because it lulls you
into this sense of quietness and then suddenly – BAM – all hell breaks
loose.” The piece featured guns with blanks and the set was rigged so that
when someone pulled the trigger it looked like bullets were penetrating
the walls and hitting things and breaking things. “It was pretty exciting,
particularly in that small theater,” Dennis notes.
He and Joe Mantegna were the two detectives and the majority of the
play takes place with the two of them swapping stories and drinking coffee
until the hostage situation breaks out. Both men prepared for their roles as
Profiles
The L.A. production of “Cops” (circa 1979) at the Pan-Andreas Theater on Melrose
Avenue featured Dennis Franz, Nick Faltas (center), and Joe Mantegna
When the film version of “Bleacher Bums” first aired on local TV in the Chicago
area, it was front-page news in the Chicago Tribune’s TV Week (the cast, in no
particular order): Joe Mantegna, Dennis Franz, Roberta Custer, Michael Saad,
Carolyn Gordon, Richard Fire, Keith Szarabajka, and Ian Patrick Williams