Scream! Bleed! Take Off Your Clothes!
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- ISBN 9780226851884
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 23 Oct 2026
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A captivating firsthand account of Chicago’s groundbreaking, tumultuous Organic Theater Company.
When the founder of the Organic Theater Company died in 2020, the Chicago Tribune asked, “Did one person invent Chicago theater? If so, it was Stuart Gordon.” And yet, this iconic theater group is arguably the most influential Chicago company whose story has never been fully told.
In its heyday, from 1969 through 1985, the Organic’s high-spirited, gutsy, and close-knit company created more than thirty idiosyncratic works. A springboard for playwright David Mamet and for the television series ER, it also was formative in the careers of many well-known actors, including Joe Mantegna, André De Shields, Meshach Taylor, and Dennis Franz. Scream! Bleed! Take Off Your Clothes! is the story of a young theater company that always pushed boundaries with an anarchic exuberance. Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, this insiders’ account, assembled by three Organic members and an artistic associate, details those exciting productions and the company’s complicated internal dynamics, while also positioning the group within Chicago’s vibrant theater scene and the larger culture of the time.
Mary Griswold enjoyed a fifty-year career as a scenic artist and designer with five Organic Theater Company credits. She lives in Evanston, Illinois. Cordis Heard is an actor and teacher based in Chicago and New York who performed with the Organic Theater Company from 1971 to 1977. She has also been seen both on and off Broadway, as well as in television, film, and commercials. Jim Rinnert (1944–2025) was posthumously inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in recognition of his work as a writer, visual artist, philanthropist, and AIDS activist. Mike Saad, a veteran of over forty film and television projects, worked on ten productions at the Organic Theater from 1973 to 1980, culminating in a 1980 Chicago Emmy Award for the WTTW-PBS production of Bleacher Bums.
