Company Overview
Remy Bumppo is an Equity theatre company founded in 1996 as Remy Bumppo Productions by Chicago-born Artistic Director James Bohnen and two producers from Colorado, Carol Loewenstern and John Stoddard. The absurdly named theatrical venture was named for Lowenstern’s cat (named after Remy Martin cognac) and Bohnen’s black Labrador (named for Natty Bumppo, the protagonist of James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales). The founders’ goal was to find a city that would support their vision of a classical repertory theater producing plays that thrill the mind and utilizing the talents of top-notch professional actors and designers. After a national search they decided to test the waters in Chicago. They chose to lease space in the acclaimed Victory Gardens Theater building on the north side of Chicago and produced Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day in the intimate upstairs mainstage theatre. The response from audiences, critics and artists immediately inspired a second production—Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull.
After reaching new heights of financial and critical success, in 2001 Remy Bumppo Theatre Company incorporated as a not-for-profit, inaugurated its Board of Directors and added Artistic Associates Annabel Armour, David Darlow, Shawn Douglass, Linda Gillum, & Nick Sandys, later including Joe Van Slyke and Gregory Anderson. Copley News Service soon identified Remy Bumppo as “the kind of intelligent—adult, in the best sense of the word—and stimulating language-driven theatre that has made the Remy Bumppo company such an essential member of the area theatre scene.”