Arlington Heights native stretches himself with 'Born'

Director and Arlington Heights native Brad Akin had racked up a list of impressive credits over the past decade, but he still was not satisfied.

He wanted to improve his craft, to move beyond his comfort zone. He just didn't know how.

“It's tough to grow as a director because in a show you are the only director in the room,” Akin admits.

“There is no one else around to say, for example, this thing you are doing I know you can do it better another way. I would look at a new play and say to myself, ‘I don't know how to do that.'”

So a few years ago, he put his career on hold and returned to school to Northwestern University's program for theater directors. The three-year program, under the direction of Tony Award-winning Director Anna D. Shapiro, accepts three directing students a year. That means in any given year, there are nine graduate students in the program.

“It was wonderful having the other directors in the room,” Akin says. “Half of what I have learned is from my colleagues.”

Akin has almost completed the program and is emerging back into the real theater world. His final project is one of three plays, directed by members of the Northwestern University program he is part of, but being given a professional production at the Steppenwolf Garage Theatre. The series is called “Next Up.”

Akin is directing “Where We're Born,” a semi-autobiographical play by New York-based playwright Lucy Thurber. The play concerns a young working-class woman who has gotten a chance to go to college and who returns home to western Massachusetts on break to find her perspective has changed.

“It is funny, when I first read the play I was, 'Huh?',” Akin admits. “But there was something about it. I found I kept coming back to it. I just couldn't shake it.”

So when it came time to propose a work for his final project, Akin picked the play that shook him out of his comfort zone. “I pitched it to Anna D. Shapiro and Jessica Thebus, who are heads of the department,” Akin continues, “and they were supportive of it.”

Akin is glad he did. “It turned out to be a good match,” Akin says, adding, “I spoke with Thurber. She is a lovely person and super thrilled to have her play produced. And her play was very much a story I wanted to tell.

“Thurber is interested in that divide between rural America and urban America, between working class and middle class,” Akin continues. “It's a very complicated relationship. And it is not dealt with in a lot of plays, not in a way that feels real and true.”