The creation of Dear Rhoda began 30 years ago when Donna Russell and her daughter bought a beat up trunk at a garage sale on the Island. They were told the trunk was empty and Donna put it in her garage where it sat for ten years. When her husband, Larry was about to take the trunk to the dump while cleaning the garage they noticed it was locked. Larry broke the lock and they stared at a treasure trove that included a woman’s clothing, newspaper clippings, photographs and over 300 letters written between 1924 and 1928 by a Chicago bookseller to his lover and later his wife while she was confined to two Tuberculosis sanitariums.
Donna and her friends and children read these letters to one another regularly for another five years until Donna decided it was a story that needed to be told. She approached her friend Dave Ranney and they began a collaboration that resulted in the play Dear Rhoda. Donna and Dave first selected the letters that could tell the story of a love affair threatened by disease, long absences, anti Semitic hatred and a “red” scare. While the letters written by Jerry Nedwick to Rhoda Katz were all in the trunk, Rhoda’s letters were lost. So Donna’s first task was to become Rhoda and answer Jerry’s letters. Dave’s task was to research 1920s Chicago in order to dramatize the events and people Jerry talked about in his letters. Dave’s research was done at Chicago’s Newberry Library, a world-class cultural research institution that was founded in 1887 and stands blocks away from where Jerry’s bookstore once stood and where Rhoda and Jerry worked and played.
The play was first produced at the Trueblood Performing Arts Center in 2016. After the final performance, Donna donated the original letters to Newberry where they are now archived. Newberry then applied for a grant that enabled them to hire the Shakespeare Project to perform it in their auditorium/theatre. After Donna, Dave and Peter did some further development of the play, it was performed at the Newberry in 2024. Following that performance some new scenes were written and tried out by the entire Newberry cast in a day-long workshop. The new version of the play was then performed last March at three public libraries in Niles, Prospect Heights, and Des Plaines, Illinois.
The return of Dear Rhoda to its birthplace at the Trueblood Performing Arts Center will include much of the Chicago cast. The June 27th performance will raise the funds needed for performances in the future. In November the play will return to the Newberry Library as well as another Chicago cultural institution, Glessner House. We are presently exploring other venues for more November productions. Ultimately Donna, Dave and Peter’s goal is to have a full production of Rhoda at one of Chicago’s regional theatres in 2027.