Actors find quirky roles in 'Eat the Runt'

It is not unusual for an actor to play many roles in his life. Or even many roles in a single play. But it is usual for an actor not to know which role he or she will play until a few minutes before the curtain goes up.

That's exactly the idea behind "Eat the Runt," a lively comedy opening Sunday at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts.

"This is not improv," the show's producer/director Weil Richmond said. "All of the lines are scripted. The show is just written in such a way that every role in the script could be played by anyone in the ensemble."

And, over the run of the play, that's just how it works out.

"People kept coming back, when we did this play in New York to see how the play changed," he said. "One night a character is a man, the next a woman."

Richmond admits he is fascinated by the concept of switching identities and everything it implies about the roles we play in life. This may be because Richmond, himself, has played many roles in his life.

Today he is a suburban dad and the part owner of a struggling film company, Seven Over Seven Entertainment. Growing up in suburban Flossmoor, he drifted and "got in trouble a lot" during high school.

It wasn't until he was a sophomore in college that he got "into theater," and only then on a dare.

"A friend bet me $20 I couldn't memorize some lines in a play and audition for a role," Richmond said.

Richmond won the twenty and, to his surprise, he landed a role in the college production.

"I told the teacher 'You made a mistake. I am studying to be a journalist. I have never done any theater,' " Richmond said.

The teacher explained that she liked his "raw talent" and encouraged him to stay in the production. He did, and his college career turned on that point.

"I fell in love with the process, the acting, the finding a character, putting that character in the play," Richmond said. "I changed my major to theater and made my father very angry. But he got over it."

He discovered how much he loved the process in the late '90s when he co-founded an off-off-Broadway theater, the Mefisto Theatre Company, in New York. It was at that theater that he and his literary manager stumbled across this odd play on the Internet, "Eat the Runt."

"The play is about a bizarre series of job interviews," Richmond said. "The story has a number of surprise twists and ends with a 'Sixth Sense' like twist that will change your whole idea of what has happened."

In directing the play, Richmond added the additional twist that every role in the play could be played by every actor in the ensemble. And that the actors didn't know who they would play until a few minutes before the show started.

"Eat the Runt" turned out to be an off-Broadway hit. It was just settling into a long extension when the 9/11 attacks hit. In the aftermath "tourism in New York just died," Richmond said.

Richmond and his company ended up closing the show and moving their company to Chicago, where they branched into film making.

It has taken Richmond six years to get back to "Eat the Runt," but he's glad to be doing the play again.

"This show is not for every actor because you have to learn all of the script," Richmond said. "But actors who get into it, really get into it."

How much do they get into it? Richmond pauses, laughs, and then admits: "I am acting in it. I am producing and directing and acting. I know that sounds crazy, but I love this play so much and I know it so well."

Besides, once you master the idea of playing any role in a play, jumping from directing to acting is child's play.

"Eat the Runt" opens Sunday at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green St., Chicago and runs through Dec. 2. For tickets and information visit www.theaterland.com or phone (312) 733-6000