Her Story Theater’s “The Official Biography,” with Gary Houston and Shelby Marie Edwards/Photo: Her Story Theater

Kurt McGinnis Brown—author of “The Official Biography,” a play that charts the confrontation between two dramatically different sorts of writers, and which makes its debut April 1 at The Den Theatre—says his playwriting career owes its existence to a word of advice he received some years ago.

“I’m in my sixties now, and I started writing in my twenties, focusing on fiction,” he tells me. “I had some success and got some stories published. Then I spent four years working on a novel, which never did get published. A friend of mine, a fellow writer, advised me, ‘Write plays, they’re easier.’ That night I started writing plays.”

One wonders whether Brown would vouch for the accuracy of that advice now, considering the long and meandering path “Official Biography” has taken from first-draft script to fully staged, professionally mounted production. Every world-premiere play has a story behind it, but this one might be more complex than most, with a history going back at least a decade from the writing phase through multiple readings (both in-the-flesh and virtual) and revisions.

Although Brown hails from Madison, Wisconsin—where he worked until his retirement in a communications capacity for the University of Wisconsin—this is really a Chicago story. It involves an informal but tightly knit network of individuals and institutions that together constitute a kind of creative family, which is motivated by the simple urge to do engaging and meaningful theater, and is equipped with the sort of persistence, resourcefulness and optimism necessary to see projects like this one through.

The focal point of that network is Gary Houston, the actor/director/writer who plays the part of the blocked, aging, reclusive writer Henry Percival in “Official Biography.” Houston’s career goes back to the salad days of what was then known as “Off-Loop” theater—i.e., locally conceived shows staged in intimate storefront settings situated in the neighborhoods, well away from the downtown playhouses specializing in Broadway imports. Houston was in the original cast of Jim Jacobs’ and Warren Casey’s “Grease,” staged in the original Kingston Mines space on Lincoln in 1971. Later that decade, he acted and directed in a wide range of edgy, literate, audience-challenging plays staged by various companies and written by such now-neglected writers as Edward Bond, Heathcote Williams, Fernando Arrabal, Peter Handke and Boris Vian. At the same time, he served under Herman Kogan (father of the Tribune’s Rick Kogan) at the Book Week and Showcase sections of the Sun-Times, taking advantage of the opportunity to write his own book reviews and arts pieces.

Since then, Houston has kept one foot in both the performance and literary worlds. Among many other roles, he recently appeared at the Goodman, playing the role of Rutherford Selig in two August Wilson works, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” and “Gem of the Ocean.” Ten years ago, at Chicago Dramatists, he played Captain Falcon in “Rutherford’s Travels,” based on the National Book Award-winning novel by Charles Johnson, and in the 1990s portrayed poet William Blake in a one-man show at Writers Theatre. He’s also appeared in the 2023 movie, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” and numerous other films and TV series, including “Fargo,” “Proof,” “The Untouchables” and Robert Altman’s “A Wedding.” And for years, he’s been one of the driving forces behind Chicago Quarterly Review, a well-regarded literary journal.

It’s no wonder that Houston, who first portrayed Henry Percival at a reading at Chicago Dramatists directed by Andrea Dymond way back in 2017, was drawn to the role. “Maybe it’s laziness on my part because I’m a bit of a writer myself, but I like the idea of playing a writer,” says Houston. “That’s the attraction.”

Having attended a reading of the play in 2025 (in which the part of Xan was played by Shariba Rivers), this critic knows that Henry, as written, is not so much a lovable curmudgeon as, well, a curmudgeon. “There’s a balance between liking and not liking Henry,” says Houston. “He’s a recluse, and the gossip around him suggests he’s concealing something—there’s a hint of mystery around him. I’m pursuing the idea that, as someone pushing eighty, he’s getting senile.”

According to playwright Brown, “Gary deserves all the credit for getting this to Chicago. Thanks to his ambassadorship, Mary Bonnett, who’s the producing artistic director of Her Story Theater, contacted me out of the blue. Gary’s the one who actualized this, and my greatest hope is he gets great satisfaction out of this character—and maybe some accolades, too.”

Producer Bonnett and director Richard Shavzin also have a strong connection to Houston. In Bonnett’s case, the relationship goes back about fifteen years, to a play called “Smoke,” about the tobacco industry. “We’ve been part of the same family for a long time,” says Bonnett. “Gary’s always been supportive of Her Story, and is on our advisory committee.”

While Her Story typically stages woman-centered, social change plays penned by Bonnett herself, “Official Biography” is written by an outside male writer, and features a character (Henry) with possible misogynist tendencies, including a habit of killing off women in his novels and—spoiler alert!—just maybe in his real life as well.

Her Story Theater’s “The Official Biography,” with Gary Houston/Photo: Her Story Theater

“This play is sort of a personal thank-you to Gary,” says Bonnett. Echoing playwright Brown’s sentiments, she adds, “I’d like to see Gary get something at this phase of his career. It’s a nice star vehicle for him.”

As for Shavzin—a steady presence in Chicago theater for the last forty-five years, including a five-year stint as artistic director of Strawdog Theatre—his link with Houston goes back even further, to a production of the play “Dealing” at Northlight Theatre in the mid-1980s, where they shared the stage. For Shavzin, there’s pleasure in bringing a new work to the stage in collaboration with his old friend Houston. And then there’s the excitement of discovering new talent—in this case, the actress Shelby Marie Edwards, the youngest member of the “Official Biography” team.

Edwards play Xan, a dogged journalist/essayist/critic who’s been assigned to get a muckraking, possibly career-making interview out of the legendarily media-shy Henry, and ends up becoming his personal gadfly, his sole source of company, his possible means of recapturing the long-lost attention of the public and maybe, just maybe, a much-needed ally. Edwards, who earned a master’s degree recently from the University of Chicago, has known Bonnett since before the pandemic, having understudied in a Her Story project called “Monger.”

“I identify with Xan,” says Edwards. “She’s young, spunky—she has the whole world ahead of her. She’s not going to let an old white novelist get in the way of capturing the truth.”

Bonnett concurs. “The play asks, what the heck is truth, and what isn’t? It’s a dramedy, in which the two characters collide and grapple with that question—but there’s a lightness to it, it’s not a lecture. There’s intrigue and mystery, too—a cat-and-mouse game between two writers, one of whom wants to tell a truthful story versus another who wants to write a better story.”

The play, which took shape during the heat of the Black Lives Matter protests, depicts a wide range of conflicts, according to Shavzin: “The characters of Henry and Xan are at the opposite ends of every spectrum there is. They’re of different races, different ages, different value systems, wholly different cultures. Henry’s a fiction writer, while Xan sticks to nonfiction and wonders whether in the kind of world we’re living in if there’s even room for fiction. The play doesn’t answer questions like this—it asks them. I hope this is what viewers are talking about in the car or at a bar afterward.”

“Official Biography” is a two-person play in which one character, at least at the beginning, is hell-bent on bulldozing the other character into the cultural trash dump of (almost) dead white male writers. As Edwards sums up Xan, “It’s my era, you’re in the way—all old writers are just taking up space.” It’s interesting that three of the project’s five major players (including the playwright) are members of the “taking up space” demographic, and the play’s producer is an older white woman. Intergroup conflict in a culture that turns races, genders and generations into tribes and sets tribes against each other would seem to be another of the very relevant issues that this play explores.

“The play is so current on different levels, political and social,” says Bonnett. “It’s an evening of theater that will get viewers to think and to delve into their own notions of what is truth, and whether one should be truthful every moment.”

Adds Edwards: “It’s a ‘What would I do?’ sort of play. The audience will enjoy its mystery, its uncertainty. If they come away asking themselves questions, it will have achieved its goal.”

In terms of basic structure, “Official Biography” is the story of one writer’s attempt to write a story about a writer of stories. It’s a look at the nature and ethics of writing and the process of creating narratives, as well as what a writer’s life involves in terms of both costs and rewards.

“Clearly, my obsession with writing informs this play,” says Brown. “I ask questions about the sort of games played in writing fiction. There can be damage in that, and Henry is a damaged person.”

Houston, who’s been involved with the part of Henry for almost a decade now, agrees that the aging author is a problem character: “Henry has a lot of regret. He feels he’s wasted his life, hiding in his workroom feeding his addiction to stories.” But his life hasn’t been entirely in vain. Like playwrights and creative artists of every stripe—and unlike journalists and other gatherers of purely factual information—novelists at their best perform a spiritual and philosophical service for humanity. Says Houston, quoting his character Henry: “We assure the rest of you that life has meaning, like a story.”

Her Story Theater’s “The Official Biography” runs through April 19 at The Den Theatre, 1331 North Milwaukee. Tickets are $40, with senior, group and student/industry discounts available. For more information and for the link to purchase tickets, go to herstorytheater.org or thedentheatre.com.