Lawyers pay up for ‘Broadway fantasy camp’

What do you get the lawyer who has everything? How about a part in a musical?

A group of Chicago lawyers does that every year, participating in the “casting auction” held by the Bailiwick Chicago theater company.

“As I wrote in my bio the first show I did: I finally got to be on stage because I paid my way on,” Maria A. Harrigan said with a laugh.

Harrigan, an assistant state appellate defender, is one of seven lawyers who will appear this week in “Wonderful Town,” Bailiwick Chicago’s 2015 casting auction show.

Non-professional performers attend an auction that determines the cast of a show. Chorus roles run $250 to $750, while leads can be $3,000 to $5,000.

People bid for themselves or for others, ensuring that the best roles go to the best performers.

The actors are then led by theater professionals — a director, music director, choreographer, set designer, costume designer, hair and makeup designer and a band.

The shows raise between $65,000 and $100,000, enough to bankroll about 65 percent of Bailiwick’s professional season.

“Obviously, for a small theater company, this is a huge get for us,” said Kate Garassino, Bailiwick’s executive director. “It keeps our operations afloat. It’s everything for us.”

For the performers, too.

“It’s kind of a love for music and dance and just the musical theater genre,” said Leatrice Berman Sandler, an attorney at the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“It’s stuff we loved doing as young kids but decided they weren’t careers for us, so they are really truly hobbies.”

Or, as Paula Cozzi Goedert calls it: “Broadway fantasy camp.”

Goedert, a partner at Barnes & Thornburg LLP, had no theater experience before taking part in a casting auction. Harrigan did costumes and crew in high school shows but never took the stage.

Berman Sandler, on the other hand, performed in musical theater from childhood to college.

“There’s a great variation in our talents,” she said, “but a great respect for everyone’s contributions.”

There’s also a great respect for the challenges of musical theater.

“I can sing and I can dance, but I don’t think I can sing and dance at the same time,” Larry D. Blust, a partner at Hughes, Socol, Piers, Resnick, Dym Ltd., recalls telling Goedert when the two performed in “Annie Get Your Gun.”

He found another problem when he learned more about his responsibility in the chorus.

“I can sing and dance at the same time now,” he told Goedert. “But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sing and dance and move my hat at the same time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Goedert told him. “If you just stand behind the star, no one will notice you anyway.”

“Which was very good advice,” Blust said later.

This is the fourth year of Bailiwick’s casting auction. Before the 2012 season, the auction had been part of Victory Gardens Theater for more than 30 years.

When that theater changed management and decided to relinquish the auction, a group of performers brought it to Bailiwick, a nonprofit with 35 volunteers.

The theater does three professional shows per year. To some, the performances by amateurs are just as fun.

“Well, you aren’t seeing Broadway,” Frederick M. Snow’s friends have told him, “but it’s pretty entertaining.”

Snow, general counsel at First American Bank, was part of the Victory Gardens group. He had no previous musical theater experience when he signed up.

He did, however, have comedy improv experience. In the early 1980s, a friend encouraged Snow to join him in an improv workshop at The Second City.

“I was unusually stiff,” Snow said.

The class instructor approached him.

“You’re a really smart lawyer,” Snow recalls the instructor telling him. “I want you to quit thinking.”

The impact, Snow said, was losing his fear.

“If I can get on stage with these various people and do this foolishness, when I go into a courtroom I’m not going to be put off by my opponents saying things to me or a judge getting short with me,” Snow said. “It changes your whole attitude.”

His work in musical theater is a continuation of that internal rewiring. It’s been the same for others. For Blust, the experience of improvising his way out of a forgotten line of dialogue has proved valuable in his practice.

“In client meetings and in court, things never go like they are on a script,” Blust said. “One of the benefits of being involved in these things is that you can cope when things go off script.”

He also learned about presentation, finding new meaning in Shakespeare’s “As You Like it” line, “All the world’s a stage.”

“In a real way, that’s what lawyers do,” Blust said. “We’re always selling something for our clients or selling something to a court. You need to not only be sincere but appear sincere.”

It’s an experience he would have enjoyed earlier in his career.

“I was pretty far down the line in practice when I started this,” he said, “but it would be even more important for a young lawyer.”

Based on a play and with music from Leonard Bernstein, “Wonderful Town” is the story of two Ohio sisters who come to New York in 1935.

The show premiered on Broadway in 1953 and won five Tony Awards, including best musical and best leading actress for star Rosalind Russell.

As for the Bailiwick cast, Blust and Snow will both play multiple small roles along with their duties in the chorus. Goedert plays a newspaper editor. Harrigan plays a villager, her first speaking role in three years. Berman Sandler plays Eileen Sherwood, the second lead.

Several lawyer-performers lauded the show for introducing them to lifelong friends. Snow even met his wife there.

“You meet a lot of nice people who are not lawyers or your clients or business people,” Blust said. “It gives you a chance to broaden your friends.”

The show runs Wednesday to Saturday at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets are available at castingauction.com.

“At a certain age in your life, most of the surprises that life hands you are not good ones,” Goedert said.

“Parents age. Friends get sick. And so on. This is a surprise in my life that I never expected.”