Twenty-five years ago and three years after I graduated from Boston University College of Fine Arts, I went to Chicago because I wanted to be where David Mamet was writing. In those days, in Boston, it was almost impossible to get an Equity card. Indeed, it seemed almost impossible to get a card anywhere.
My second job in Chicago, in David Hare's Teeth 'N' Smiles, at St. Nicholas Theatre, made me an Equity candidate. I think the candidate program was new then. While in Teeth 'N' Smiles, I read for the Chicago production of Martin Sherman's play, Bent, directed by Robert Falls, at his [now closed] theatre, the Wisdom Bridge on Howard Street. When I had read the play, I felt there was no one else in the world that could play Max, the lead, but me. I've never had that feeling since. Bob, ever the risk taker, cast me, an unknown. He later told me that he had checked me out with Jeff Perry and Joan Allen, who were in the O'Hare play. That's how I got my card.
