Directing Portfolio

Jeff Bouthiette
773.936.7671
jbouthiette@gmail.com

Full cast photo from 'Tis the Seasonal Depression featuring a comedic orgy.

Joy as Resistance. Bodies as Language.

My work starts with the body. The physical is the purest expression of our humanity and our humor, and it raises the questions that matter most: Whose bodies are allowed onstage? Whose joy is celebrated, and whose is brushed aside?

Actors aren’t there to fill a casting checklist; they’re co-creators. What we call a physical limitation is as generative as what we praise. Fosse built an entire language out of his own body. Narrow ideas about who belongs onstage don’t just perpetuate racism, ableism, and fatphobia. They shrink the imagination of everyone in the room. In trying to give audiences what we think they want, we paint only in shades of beige.

Joy is my central ingredient. Joy as rigor, as human thriving, as the electric knife’s edge between humor and despair that invites an audience to imagine harder and participate more fully.

As audiences grow distrustful of film, television, and digital media due to AI, live performance becomes essential. What makes theater irreplaceable is physicality, language, and joy. Every form can carry that charge: farce, kitchen-sink drama, musical, dance-theater.

I make work in rooms where the whole person is honored, whether actor, designer, or audience.

Full Directing Resume

Traditional Drama

Photos from The Hecubae, adapted from Hecuba by Euripides and produced by Bare Boned Theatre. Includes thre review from The Chicago Free Press: “Conviction counts. Like Euripides’ never dated “Trojan Women,” “The Hecubae” succeeds by fleshing out suffering and solace, making both too real to ever be comfortingly abstract. You feel it in the simple acts of kindness the women do for each other, cooking bad rice around a solar stove, their fury over stolen water, their devotion to the babies who survive because of the others they lost, and their fear that no one will know their grief. The latter at least is one problem this play works overtime to fix.”

Music & Comedy

Photos from Miami Nice: A Golden Girls Musical produced by Gorilla Tango Theatre, and Altered Boy, written by and starring Garrett Allain, produced by Pride Films and Plays. Contains the following review from Gaper's Block: “The whole theater was bent over laughing before five minutes of the show had passed. Who knew that
combining some real musical and acting talent with crossdressing, a wholesome 1980s television show, and a
dash of melodrama could be so funny?”
Contains the following review quote from Windy City Times: “To keep things interesting in a one-man show—not always an easy feat—Garrett is all over the stage and even embodies several characters, from a cheesy Christian New Age evangelist to a female receptionist at a religious switchboard. He also does some subtle acting and body movements to separate three different characters in a thrupple relationship. He literally jumps into the audience several times.”
Contains the following review quote from Chicagoland Musical Theatre:
“Altered Boy is a funny, light-hearted, one-man musical and comedy show written by and starring the engaging and charismatic Garrett Allain, and directed by the multi-talented and preternaturally brilliant Jeff Bouthiette.”

Photos and marketing materials from Choice: The Musical by Sheri and Josh Flanders and The 'Ville by The 'Ville writing staff. Contains the following review quote from Chicagoland Musical Theatre:
“Jeff Bouthiette further solidifies the ridiculous antics that pervade Choice, given that the movement of bodies around the stage is clean, concise, and motivated by humor. The blocking paints aesthetically-pleasing pictures that are compelling to look at—nobody is blocked by someone else, the motivations and reactions of characters are clear, and the engagement of audience members in the action is riotously
funny.”
Contains the following review quote from The Chicago Free Press:
“Director Jeff Bouthiette gives the show true movement and focus.”

Devised

Photos and marketing materials from 'Tis the Seasonal Depression, produced by Gayco and written by the ensemble. Contains the following review quote from the Chicago Reader (a recommended review):
“In one of the most endearing sketches of this holiday comedy revue from GayCo Productions and director Jeff Bouthiette, Christopher Thies Lotito plays a grumbly mall Santa conducting an open call for a new Mrs. Claus. Katie Cutler steps up, states her name, and through a combination of hilarious gaffes that I won’t ruin gives the worst audition of all time. Lotito, who'd make a great Orson Welles, despairs of finding the right lady when in strides Evan M. Duggan, whose charms instantly warm Santa to the idea of casting a man. There are dozens of other moments like this, livening the banality of Christmas cheer with a dollop of wholesome identity politics and a bigger dollop of rollicking, irreverent sass. The war on Christmas never felt so good.”

Six productions in eighteen months on The Second City’s New York Mainstage: two original revues, an archive revue, and three improv shows. Writing and rehearsing at that pace is an endurance test, and it’s all done in front of an audience.

Writing

“Towards a Fat Theatre: Reimagining Bodies Onstage” HowlRound Theatre Commons, October 2020

A quote from the article: "If we as creative artists decide that representing a full spectrum of bodies on stage is a priority, then our imaginations will start to generate exciting solutions to the "problem" of those bodies' physical limitations."

Read the full essay.

I’m currently directing in Chicago and developing new work. I’d welcome a conversation about your season.

Jeff Bouthiette
773.936.7671
jbouthiette@gmail.com

Production photos, video, and additional references available on request.