Season Salon

Our annual kickoff event, the Season Salon is a chance to meet and greet the artists behind Remy Bumppo as well as learn more about the upcoming season. Enjoy a lively, sometimes irreverent panel discussion and Q & A on the season theme of Secret Lives, Public Lies. Continue the conversation over coffee and desserts in the lobby. Admission is free and open to all.

When and Where

The 2010/11 Season Salon was held Monday, August 30, 2010 at the Greenhouse Theater Center at 2257 N Lincoln Ave.

Salon Panelists

Steve Edwards - Salon Moderator

Mr. Edwards is Content Development Director for Chicago Public Media and the original host of the award-winning radio news magazine Eight-Forty-Eight on WBEZ 91.5 FM. Edwards’ reports and interviews have been honored by Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), The Chicago Headline Club, The Illinois Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), The Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI), and the Chicago Bar Association. He is the recipient of a Grand Prize Award from the National Headliner Club and a 2007/08 Knight-Wallace Fellowship for mid-career journalists at the University of Michigan.

Storer H. Rowley

Mr. Rowley is a veteran war correspondent who currently serves as the Executive Director of Government and Community Relations for Elmhurst College. He was a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune from 1982-1998, in which time he was based in Washington D.C., Dallas, Mexico City, Toronto, and Jeruslem. He also served as the National Editor for the Tribune from 2002-2009. In 1997 was a finalist for Pulitzer Prize, and is the winner of the 1996 Overseas Press Club's Madeline Dane Ross Award for best foreign reporting showing a concern for the human condition. He will discuss the season's first play, Tom Stoppard's Night & Day.

Bunky Cushing

Mr. Cushing, aka "The Squire of Society," is a fundraiser, party-giver and man-about-town. He was dubbed "Chicago's Social Tugboat" by Vogue Magazine. His annual Valentine's Tea, now in its 16th year, has been called one of Chicago's most sought after invitations by Harper's Bazaar. He will share his perspective on the season's second show, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

Jeffrey Carlson

Mr. Carlson is a Broadway, film, and TV actor and singer. His recent roles include Marilyn in the off-Broadway musical Taboo (for which he was received a Drama Desk Award nomination), the transgender British rock star named Zarf/Zoe on All My Children (the first transgender character on daytime television), and Prince Hal in the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre's 5-1/2 hour production of Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2, directed by Barbara Gaines. Mr Carlson also originated the role of Billy in Edward Albee's The Goat or Who is Sylvia? on Broadway with Bill Pullman and Mercedes Ruehl.

James Bohnen

James is the Artistic Director of Remy Bumppo, a position he has held since co-founding the company 14 years ago. James has also directed for many seasons at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin. He came late to the theatre, after spending his twenties teaching history and English in a program for high school dropouts. He will be directing Night and Day and The Goat this season.

Watch highlights from the 2009/10 panel discussion

Listen to a podcast of the 2009 Salon by visiting Chicago Amplified, Chicago Public Radio's web-based audio archive of public programs held throughout the Chicago region