Tara Mallen (from left to right), her husband Keith Kupferer and daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer attend a monthly screening of “Ghostlight” in Los Angeles.
CFI Films
In Chicago, world theatre is a close-knit community. We have the impression that everyone knows each other.
So when Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson, the co-directors of the new film “Ghostlight,” were thinking about who they would include in their new project, they started close to home: with veteran Chicago stage actor Keith Kupferer.
O’Sullivan, who also wrote the film, is a former high-level actress in Chicago. He starred with Kupferer in 2014’s “The Humans,” a critically acclaimed play through the American Theatre Company that won a Tony for its New York run afterward. “He played my father,” O’Sullivan said. Knowing that his script called for a fatherly, hard-working man in the central role, “I like, ‘Keith is that plausible. ‘
“Ghostlight” will open in Chicago on Friday at Lake View’s Music Box Theatre before its national premiere next week. The actors of the Chicago theater make up almost the entire cast of “Ghostlight,” but the film is more than just an ode to scenery. A family circle drama centered on a traumatic event, the film tackles complex debates about intellectual fitness, presents theatre as a healing and cathartic tool and a way to build community.
In real life, Kupferer isn’t sure theater has this power, but he admits that other people who have seen the film have approached him with stories of family trauma similar to what his character is experiencing on screen. He also says that artists can work on “real-life baggage” if it’s connected to the story they’re telling, which is precisely what his character does in the film.
Keith Kupferer plays a grieving structure that discovers a new network in “Ghostlight. “
CFI Films
O’Sullivan, who grew up as a theater girl in Arkansas before becoming a level pro at Chicapass, sees theater as an area for healing experiences. “It’s a position where you can go through and let out all the weirdest parts of yourself,” he said. “And there it is celebrated. For me it has been a position of freedom.
The film is a family affair for O’Sullivan and its stars. The co-directors are life partners and new parents: O’Sullivan gave birth to the couple’s first child, Milo, right after filming.
And the circle of relatives at the center of the drama is also played through an authentic circle of Chicago relatives. Kupferer’s daughter, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, has directed on screen and on stages in Chicago, and his wife, Tara Mallen, is the founder. and artistic director of the Rivendell Theater. ” It was great,” Ballen said. [The film] is a great love letter to the Chicago theater community. “
Teenager Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) is at odds with her in “Ghostlight. “
CFI Films
O’Sullivan’s story follows Dan (Kupferer) and his grieving family as they try to move on after a tragic event. The audience finds the fictitious family in a situation of isolation. Although they live in the same space and dine at the same table, the false emotional impression is palpable. While Daisy, the daughter, seeks solace in therapy, her father eventually discovers a way out in an unlikely position for a middle-aged structures worker: a networked movie theater.
O’Sullivan, a millennial, created the character of Dan with parents like his own in mind: a generation known for opposing the classic bureaucracy of treatment. “I think there are a lot of men in this generation, who I know and have witnessed, who have told me that treatment is for other weak people and that expressing sadness is weak,” he said.
In the film, Dan struggles with anger and outbursts at paintings until, when he is at his lowest point, he is dragged into a theater and forced to play a role in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet. “
This is where the film discovers its rhythm. Genuine theater, other people filling the cast create a network of hosts that welcomes Dan, and eventually his wife and daughter, into their world. And surprisingly, the film discovers a way to make Shakespeare, one of the greatest unavailable writers in the theater, available in a new way.
Mallen believes that theatre has a profound effect on audiences. “I believe that stories have the strength to heal and give other people the opportunity to express their wonderful emotions, pain and pain,” she said. “That’s why culturally we tell stories. ” And that’s why we have theater.
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