THEATRICAL WILLIAM PETERSEN RETURNS

Chicago Tribune, by Chris Jones, July 24, 1998

Now based in Los Angeles, former Chicago actor William Petersen returned home this summer to perform in Jeffrey Sweet's 'Flyovers' at the Victory Gardens Theatre and teach an acting class. At 4 p.m. Sunday, he joins Studs Terkel at the Chicago Historical Society as a guest on 'Sunday with Park' with Studs, a conversation before a live audience. Tickets are $15 ($12 for Historical Society members).

Q. What will you and Studs be talking about?

A. Who knows? You have to be light on your feet with Studs. He has told me he wants to revisit 'In the Belly of the Beast' the play we did at Wisdon Bridge in 1984, about the killer and convict Jack Henry Abbott. Studs wants to read some of the script with me on the air. That show blew everyone's mind in this town.

Q. Why?

A. We staged it so that we grabbed the audience by its collective throat and then squeezed it for, like, half an hour. "In the Belly of the Beast" is the sole reason I have any kind of career at all. A lot of people started following me after that show.

Q. What's the current state of Chicago theater compared with your era here?

A. We were able to ride an incredible cycle from 1975-85. Most of my friends from that time now have international careers. I can't turn on the TV or watch a movie without seeing some guy or other that I got drunk with. We built a whole audience for Off-Loop work, people who would follow us wherever we went. Audiences were ravenous for theater.

Q. And now?

A. A lot of people have tried to capitalize on what we did. The commercial theaters said they would support the Off-Loop hits, but.. now they bring in whatever show from New York they think will sell tickets. It's become harder and harder for the small theaters to participate. But, hey, even the Bulls are going to have to rebuild sometime.

Q. So what's your prescription for rebirth?

A. We have to build a younger audience base even the crowd at Victory Gardens has become much older. We lower ticket prices so we can compete with the movies. This is a working-class town. People live and die with the Cubs and Michael Jordan. It may not be the Chicago that they want to promote, but it's the Chicago that is. The kind of theater I've always espoused is theater that's accessible to the guy at the ballpark. The people that sat in the second balcony at the old Chicago Stadium are the people I want in my theater.

Q. Life must be different now?

A. Nobody bothers me in L.A. I don't do anything to promote stuff. I lie in a hammock, get some rest, become a hermit. In Chicago, I exhaust myself doing press and meeting people after a show. Here it all means something to me.