Scream! Bleed! Take Off Your Clothes!
Stuart Gordon and Chicago’s Organic Theater Company
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Pub Date Oct 23 2026 | Archive Date Oct 26 2026
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Description
A captivating firsthand account of Chicago’s groundbreaking, tumultuous Organic Theater Company.
When the founder of the Organic Theater Company died in 2020, the Chicago Tribune asked, “Did one person invent Chicago theater? If so, it was Stuart Gordon.” And yet, this iconic theater group is arguably the most influential Chicago company whose story has never been fully told.
In its heyday, from 1969 through 1985, the Organic’s high-spirited, gutsy, and close-knit company created more than thirty idiosyncratic works. A springboard for playwright David Mamet and for the television series ER, it also was formative in the careers of many well-known actors, including Joe Mantegna, André De Shields, Meshach Taylor, and Dennis Franz. Scream! Bleed! Take Off Your Clothes! is the story of a young theater company that always pushed boundaries with an anarchic exuberance. Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, this insiders’ account, assembled by three Organic members and an artistic associate, details those exciting productions and the company’s complicated internal dynamics, while also positioning the group within Chicago’s vibrant theater scene and the larger culture of the time.
Advance Praise
“A vivid, clear-eyed portrait of the quintessential Chicago theater company under the direction of the brilliant Stuart Gordon―restless, inventive, and driven by risk. This book captures the work as it was actually made: collaborative, combustible, and impossible to ignore.”― Robert Falls, theater director and former artistic director of the Goodman Theatre
“A perfect snapshot of Chicago's Organic Theater―certainly the most exciting time I've had over a lifetime in show business.”― Joe Mantegna, actor
“This candid, insightful insiders’ chronicle of the innovative practice and turbulent behind-the-scenes drama of the first great ensemble troupe of Chicago’s ‘Off-Loop’ theater explosion of the 1970s and ’80s is an essential addition to the American theater history bookshelf.”― Albert Williams, theater critic for the Chicago Reader
“To understand contemporary American theater, you have to know about theater in Chicago. To understand theater in Chicago―this is no exaggeration―you have to know about the catalyst: the epic, epoch-making, often apocalyptic, and only semi-apocryphal Organic Theater Company. Here, at last, is the story of how it achieved greatness, repeatedly, on a dare and a dollar-ninety-eight budget.”― Stuart Klawans, author of Crooked, but Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780226851884 |
| PRICE | $30.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 264 |