Painting the town red: Wirtz Student Performance Projects will present ‘Red’ this weekend
Esther Lim/The Daily Northwestern
Andy Johnston and Ben Weiss take the stage as Mark Rothko and his assistant Ken in Tony Award-winning play “Red.”
October 13, 2022
The mammoth 8-by-7 foot and 2-inch Rothko replica displayed hues of maroon and cranberry, a rectangle within a rectangle propped up on the edge of a red-lit set. Was it a door? A window?
“What does it mean to you?” Communication senior Andy Johnston said, “That’s the only way to speak about a Rothko.”
This weekend, Wirtz Student Performance Projects will present “Red,” a 2009 play written by Northwestern alum John Logan (Communication ’83).
“Red” follows abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko’s process creating the Seagram Murals, a set of paintings commissioned by the Four Seasons upscale restaurant. The Rothko replica the actors created mimicked one of the original thirty he painted.
Set in the late 1950s, the show is a 90-minute immersion into Rothko’s studio where he and his assistant, Ken, grapple with the project’s purpose — to cater to bourgeois diners. “Red” also explores the meaning of art and being an artist, along with the lifespan of art trends.
“(Rothko is) so adamant about his love for the arts,” Johnston said. “The way that he demands that you look at the art with the utmost seriousness has really impacted me in how I’ve been looking at art, and it’s really inspired me to make my own art.”
The project started two years ago when Johnston approached Communication senior Ben Weiss, who plays Ken, about bringing “Red” to NU. The play won six Tony Awards, including Best Play, in 2010.
Johnston, Weiss and Communication senior and Director Madeline Oberle became friends during their two-year acting sequence. The team’s close nature reflects the play’s intimate setting. “Red” uses a traverse stage arrangement, where the audience sits parallel to the set, which invites the audience into the studio.
Johnston said he is a Rothko aficionado. After getting the rights to “Red” in the spring, he spent the summer memorizing lines, reading four biographies on Rothko and learning how to recreate Rothko’s unique art.
“The paintings had to lead (the show) because it’s so necessary to the script; it’s so necessary to what the audience is going to see and take away from the show,” Oberle said.
Johnston and Weiss made a replica of a Rothko mural for the show, which was inspired by an untitled Seagram piece. According to Weiss, the painting process mirrored Ken and Rothko’s dynamic onstage — Weiss worked on the base layers and Johnston painted.
“As someone who has never painted … that just taught us a lot and gave us a lot of character development to see how to approach a painting of this size,” Weiss said. “And let me tell you, it is exhausting, but it is super rewarding.”
Painting the model took around eight days, Johnston said. The piece rests on one end of the stage during the show, and a 6-by-6 feet canvas is painted live on the other end.
Packed with emotive dialogue, “Red” highlights Ken’s growth into himself, Rothko’s artistic battles and the evolution of their student-teacher relationship. The characters struggle with the future of art and relevancy while creating pieces for the bourgeoisie they despise.
“I’m looking for people to come in, and then an hour and a half or hour-20 later walk out and be like, ‘I just entered and exited a world. And that just told me a great story,’” Weiss said.
Students can watch “Red” unfold in The Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center, Room 101 on Oct. 14 at 7 p.m. and Oct. 15 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
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Twitter: @lexipgoldstein
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