Suburban native balances head, heart in Goodman drama

Greg Matthew Anderson, currently appearing in The Goodman Theatre's production of "Rock 'n' Roll," didn't think he would become an actor when he went to college.

"I didn't plan on theater at all," Anderson says. "I majored in biological anthropology (at Duke University) but theater was this kind of hobby I did."

It was a hobby he had been pursuing since he was a boy, growing up in Palatine and Hoffman Estates. "I was in the Northbrook Children's Theater," Anderson says. "And I performed with different community theaters like the Second Suburb Players at the Cutting Hall."

As happens with theater, the hobby took over Anderson's life. He appeared in shows in college and went to London for a while to study at a theater program there. When he was on the verge of graduating, he had to confront the question of whether he should continue with theater or not.

"It was hard," Anderson. "There is a similarity between anthropology and theater. You try to plumb the depths of human understanding and really know yourself in both areas."

Ultimately, Anderson went with theater, moving back to Chicago after graduation in 2004 and a short time traveling. Almost immediately he started getting work in small, local productions.

The funny thing is that Anderson never quite shook off his scholarly ways. He kept landing work in shows written by intellectual playwrights, or staged by theaters that balance the emotional with the intellect.

That is certainly true of his work with Remy Bumppo, a smart, sophisticated theater that invited him to become part of their ensemble of artistic associates. And it's true of his current show, Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll," a play about the connection between rock's rebellion and the overthrow of Eastern European dictatorships in the late 1980s.

"I am such a Stoppard nut," Anderson says. "His plays are so exhilarating. You learn so much in his plays. I did 'Arcadia' at Court Theater last year and was amazed by Stoppard's rich storytelling."

Anderson finds the storytelling in "Rock 'n' Roll" equally rich.

"This play is about so many things," Anderson says, "It is about politics in Czechoslovakia (in the 1960s and 1980s), The Prague Spring through the Velvet Revolution. But it is also about the spirit of rock and roll. Pink Floyd. Syd Barrett. I play Syd Barrett just as he is leaving Pink Floyd; he functions as a kind of rock muse for the show."

Anderson is quick to add that for all of Stoppard's heady intellectualism, the show still contains a love story, and a pulse.

"There is this kind of pagan pulse of humanism that surges through it all," Anderson says, "that is the spirit of 'Rock 'n' Roll.' You can be on stage, talking from your head and still feeling from your heart."

And Anderson, trained as both an actor and an anthropologist, feels totally at home in both sides of the play.

"The play swims in all this," Anderson says. "And I just swim along with it."

• Rock and Roll runs through June 7 at the Goodman, 170 N. Dearborn, Chicago. For tickets call the box office (773) 443-3800 or visit Goodman's Web site, goodmantheatre.org.