A Local Man Re-Lives His Fight with the City in Over My Dead Body

While some of us only dream of seeing our lives portrayed by actors, Arlington Heights resident Bob Sell got to see himself on stage. Well, not himself exactly, but an actor playing him in the new play, Over My Dead Body currently at the Greenhouse Theater in downtown Chicago.

You may remember Sell as a spokesman in the case against the city of Chicago when then Mayor Richard Daley decided to move a graveyard as part of an expansion project for O'Hare International Airport. The City won the court cases and forced the removal of the human remains of almost 1,500 members of St. John's Church in Bensenville from St. Johannes Cemetery, including five generations of Sell's relatives dating back to 1849.

“Our concerns were based on religious views relating to burial and the sanctity of a consecrated burial site,” Sell explains. “To us, they were not simply bones in the ground, they were family.”

Waltzing Mechanics, the production company that produces Over My Dead Body, approached Sell as they were looking for stories that explore how people ascribe meaning to their lives and legacies.

“When I visited St Johannes, it was about the constant flow of life and death," Sell said. “It was a sacred, protected resting place and it served as a connection to who we all are and where we came from.”

The play is adapted from original interviews of descendants of those buried at St. Johannes and their experiences and emotions as they moved their loved ones.

Over My Dead Body is at the Greenhouse Theater Center at 2257 N Lincoln Ave. You can see the show Thursdays through Sundays until January 6. Tickets are $20-$25 and can be ordered online at greenhousetheater.org.

For more information on Bob Sell, please contact Allyson Jannotta 847-345-7142 or allyson@jannotta.net