Chicago Children's Theatre

Dandelion Wine Design

September 22, 2006

Waukegan Illinois (Greentown, Illinois)

The Library of the Waukegan Historical Society

The day was as perfect as a late September day could be in northern Illinois in late September. A light breeze with the remnants of summer gently pushed through the park. Past the trees, the freshly mown lawn that smelt of oil, gas and grass, a revitalizing green blowing itself about in the sun. The breeze swept passed the empty picnic tables and the mother in a knit sweater pushing her daughter on the swing. Her daughter taken by the motion of the ground moving away from her and then just as it was about to disappear behind her, the earth would shift and pull forward to fill the sky with dirt and grass and the last dandelion of the season. The girl's mother, unaware of the earth at all continued to gently push the girl and chat softly on her phone. The air passed us walking up the steep hill to the Library. A good rolling hill, perhaps not long enough to sled down but worth a tumbling race to the bottom. The John L. Raymond Research Library is housed in an old white, country home, simple but stately atop the hill. The Lilac Cottage. Walking inside, the house has a ball room with a floor that looks like glass was poured on over it. Across the hall was a blue room with a huge black, shinny grand piano, with glass poured on that as well. This was the music room. No one was to be found on the first floor so we ventured up the steps. The upstairs is made up of two large rooms and a bunch of small nooks that served as offices and storage and hiding places. All are filled with cabinets, boxes, and shelves with papers and books poking out from everywhere. This is the library. This is where the history of Waukegan is kept. The history is in the form of photographs and hand written notes and newspaper clippings from all over the country and it is kept in memory. Beverly Millard popped her head out from one of the many small rooms scattered about. "Oh hello. I am glad you finally made it." "You are?" I asked. I have only spoken with Ms. Millard once before on the phone many months ago. Her hair was thick with silver curls wrapped about her head and her glasses were places delicately on top like a tiara, the gold chain falling to the back of her neck. She had an inquisitive glare that was friendly but protective of what I assume is the wealth of knowledge that she and the library share. The woman seamed to know all about our project and quickly went to help us out by fetching the thick file folders with Ray Bradbury's clipping and notes and photo lists. Our work had begun. Jamie and Jacqui and myself dug deep into Bradbury's past, his recollections of his childhood home, scrawled on letter head from Persian hotels and old maps and program books. We found descriptions of the Waukegan that Bradbury once knew and the Waukegan that is still there that people in sixty years will reminisce about on the porch after a July rain. The photo copier's moving light kept the room lit in a green glow as we passed snippets of paper to the machine. After a couple of hours, we thanked Ms. Millard and head to town armed with paper to find out more about this Waukegan that is Dandelion Wine's Green town.

Lilac Cottage


Ray Bradbury's Map of Waukegan

Posted:
August 29th, 2006

Dandelion Wine:

"A final Memory.
Fire balloons.
You rarely see them these days, though in some countries, I hear, they are still made and files with warm breath from a small straw fire hung beneath.
But in 1925 Illinois, we still had them, and one of the last memories I have of my grandfather is the last hour of a Fourth of July night forty-eight years ago when Grandpa and I walked out on the lawn and lit a small fire and filled the pear-shaped red-white-and-blue-striped paper balloon with hot air, and held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the starts, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself.
I see my grandfather there looking up at that strange drifting light, thinking his own still thoughts. I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done, I knew there would never be another night like this.
No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathe out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said. Someone finally had to say, though, didn't they? And that one was me.
The wine still waits in the cellars below.
My beloved family still sits on the porch in the dark.
The fire balloon still drifts and burns in the night sky of an as yet unburied summer.
Why and How?
Because I say it is so."

Ray Bradbury
Summer, 1974


So here we are, our first blog, our first season, our first summer. Chicago Children's Theatre. Summer 2006.
We are preparing for our first show, dandelion wine set in the summer of 1928 in a town called Greentown, Illinois. We know that Ray Bradbury who wrote Dandelion Wine grew up in a town called Waukegan, north of Chicago by about 40 miles. We can assume that this is the town that Greentown is based off of. So what is it like to grow up in a small, Midwest town and what did it look like in 1928? This is the question that our design team is starting out with and we have been working on this now for a few months.

And this is who we are:
Eric Rosen: Director
Chris Binder: Light design
Andre Pluess: Sound design
Lee Potter-Murray: Production manager
Janice Pytel: Costume design
Jacqui Russell: Artistic director
Me, Geoff Curley: Set design

More people will be added to this as we get closer to the show, people like the master electrician, design assistants, technical director, dramaturge...


Waukegan in 1928. We have pictures from that time and we can guess looks like these other Illinois towns and I found at the library of congress pictures of the land around Waukegan in 1928.







Waukegan Dune 1928


Waukegan Swamp 1928

The next design meeting is shortly approching.