Sweet Charity with Blank Theatre Company

Last week, I had the pleasure of photographing Blank Theatre Company’s production of Sweet Charity, which plays at the Greenhouse Theater from May 8 to June 9, 2025.

Blank is doing something special on the small Chicago stage. The dance numbers in Sweet Charity are jaw-droppingly good, a kind of Broadway performance uncommon to the small stage, with an incredible cast and crew of talented artists. This blog post can only offer freeze-frame glimpses of the onstage artistry inherent in the live performance. While capturing those freeze-frame glimpses with a fast shutter and a wide angle are my focus for this post, the dance numbers simply must be seen live!

Photography

For Sweet Charity, we did a photo call for all the big moments of the show. I soon learned just how big the dance numbers of this show are, and I backed up several rows and zoomed out at my widest angle to capture the whole stage, since most of the numbers covered the entire stage with visually interesting elements, from the show’s vibrant costumes to its lights and set pieces. Some of my closer images looked like these.

A Fast Shutter

Shooting under stage lights with more than a dozen dancers leaping and twirling requires a fast lens, a fast shutter speed, lenses capable of wide and close shots, camera stability, a reliable burst mode, and the experience and agility to pivot from moment to moment. Early in the call, as acting scenes changed into dances, I raised my shutter speed from 1/125 to 1/200. When the stage flooded with dancers in fast motion, I jumped to 1/400 (that’s one four hundredth of a second) to freeze motion.

A Wide-Angle

I attached my wide (16–35mm) lens to my digital SLR camera for ultra wide shots, but I photographed most of the session with my zoom (24–105mm) lens attached to my mirrorless camera body. The mirrorless allows for considerably more accuracy, which is important when photographing a big dance number with limited time. I’m no longer throwing out dozens of misfires or blurry images; now, among hundreds (or thousands) of images, it’s a choice of which are the best ones.

A Sweet Reprise

I greatly enjoyed working with Blank Theatre Company on A Bright Room Called Day last December, and I’m so happy to have had the opportunity to come back to work on Sweet Charity.

On photo calls, I don’t get to spend a ton of time with the people that make the shows, but over the last two shows with Blank, I’ve started to get to know the production team and gained an admiration for their skill. Many thanks to costume designer Cindy Moon, who ran the photo call (and created all these incredible costumes for the show)!

I’m especially grateful to Dustin Rothbart, who brought me on for these last two shows and who plays the role of Oscar Lindquist in Sweet Charity.

Grab your tickets and check out the incredible work Blank Theatre Company has done with their production of Sweet Charity!

Cast and Production Team

The following cast and production team credits are presented as they apear on Blank Theatre Company’s website.

The “*” designates a Blank company member.

Cast

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