A Bright Room Called Day, with Blank Theatre Company

Distant Era is proud to present photographs for Blank Theatre Company’s Jeff Recommended production of A Bright Room Called Day, written by Tony Kushner and directed by Danny Kapinos, running at The Greenhouse Theatre in Lincoln Park, Chicago, from December 6, 2024, to January 5, 2025. We photographed the show during a technical run on December 5, capturing the action as it unfolded through the narrative.

Over the last several years, Blank Theatre has developed a reputation for producing strong, engaging productions that engage and revitalize Chicago’s storefront theatre scene, and their work has garnered a streak of Joseph Jefferson nominations. Thus, it was an honor to photograph Blank Theatre’s beautiful new production of A Bright Room Called Day.

Here’s a synopsis of the play from the Blank Theatre Company website:

Set against the backdrop of 1930’s Germany, this gripping drama follows a group of artists and activists as they navigate the rise of fascism and the erosion of democracy. As their personal lives intertwine with the political upheaval of the time, they must confront the unfortunate parallels to our contemporary world. Kushner’s always-poignant exploration of power, resistance, and the human spirit resonates more than ever in today’s turbulent times, offering both a haunting reflection on history and a powerful call to action.

Selected Photos from A Bright Room Called Day

The following photographs were Blank Theatre’s selections from the three thousand-plus images we captured during the tech run, as well as a few I wanted to show.

I’m grateful to Blank Theatre for inviting me to photograph their wonderful, relevant, and very timely show, which is on its way to collecting a round of rave reviews as of this writing. If you’re in Chicago this season, check out their work!

The cast and production team of Blank Theatre’s A Bright Room Called Day includes…

Cast

Agnes Eggling: Katherine Schwartz

Gregor Bazwald: Grant Carriker

Paulinka Erdnuss: Brandy Miller

Vealtninc Husz: Raúl Alonso

Annabella Gotchling: Shannon Bachelder

Zillah: Lilah Weisman

Roland: Grayson Kennedy

Die Alte: Ann James

Rosa Malek: Hadar Zusman

Traum: Alex Levy

Gottfried Swetts: Ben Veatch

Understudies: Alex Albrecht, Brice Baron, Peyton Hooks, Sonya Shea Robinson, Jeffrey David Thomas, and Natalie Younger

Production Team

Director: Danny Kapinos

Assistant Director: Sophie Murk

Stage Manager: Kyle Aschbrenner

Costume Design: Cindy Moon

Lighting Design: Ellie Humphrys

Scenic Design: Marcus Klein

Composer: James Allen

Projection Design: Alex J. Gendal

Props Designer: Reiley Duffy

Technical Director: Line Bower

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Steven Townshend is a fine art/portrait photographer and writer with a background in theatre, written narrative, and award-winning game design. As a young artist, Steven toured the US and Canada performing in Shakespeare companies while journaling their moments on paper and film. In his transition from stage to page, Steven continued to work as a theatre photographer, capturing dramatic scenes while incorporating elements of costume, makeup, and theatrical lighting in his work. Drawn to stories set in other times and places, Steven creates works through which fellow dreamers and time travelers might examine their own humanity or find familiar comfort in the reflections of the people and places of a distant era.

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I’m Steven Townshend—your guide, scribe, editor, and humble narrator. The All Worlds Traveller is my personal publication, an exploratory conversation about stories and how we interact with them, from photographs to narratives to games—a kind of variety show in print. It is a conversation with other artists who explore the past, the future, and the fantastical in their work. Not one world—but all worlds. Where Distant Era shows stories in images, The All Worlds Traveller is all about the words.

Distant Era creates fine art and portrait photographs of people and places from imagined pasts, possible futures, and magical realities. In collaboration with other artists, we evoke these distant eras with theatrical costume and makeup, evocative scenery, and deliberate lighting, and we enhance them with contemporary tools to cast these captured moments in the light of long ago or far away. We long to walk the lion-decorated streets of Babylon, to visit alien worlds aboard an interstellar vessel, and to observe the native dances of elves. Our images are windows to speculative realities and postcards from the past. They are consolation for fellow time travelers who long to look beyond the familiar scenery of the present and gaze upon the people and places of a distant era.