Amateurs happy to pay the price of fame

Harvey and Fran Kaluzna of Buffalo Grove (cast as Pharaoh and Pharoah's Queen) at Bailiwick Chicago Theater's Chicago Casting Auction. | Photo by Jeremy Rill

Fran and Harvey Kaluzna and Amy Robbins have had some of the best roles on stage that money can buy.

That’s because the three suburbanites are annual participants in the Chicago Casting Auction.

The Kaluznas, who live in Buffalo Grove, are playing the Pharaoh and his Queen in this year’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” at Bailiwick Chicago Theater. Northbrook resident Robbins has a heavenly role—Rachel the Angel.

“They’re fun roles,” Fran said of the parts she and her husband are playing. “We’re going to try to be as outrageous as we possibly can. We’ve got big headpieces and Harvey’s wearing an Elvis wig.”

This is the ninth show that the Kaluznas have been in through the Chicago Casting Auction. “One of our friends was in the show a couple of years earlier and she invited us to see her,” Fran related. “We thought, ‘Boy, this is a lot of fun,’ so we decided we wanted to do it, too.”

Although Harvey has sung and played the guitar since he was a teenager, neither he nor Fran had previously been in any shows.

The first show for the Kaluznas was “My Fair Lady.” Fran was in the chorus; Harvey was a Cockney bum and a butler.

“It was great,” Fran said of the experience. “We were so outside of our comfort zone. In a lot of ways it was my favorite show because it was all so new. I’ll never forget the feeling I had of awe and wonder.”

Harvey said he felt comfortable being in the spotlight because he conducts many seminars through his job. “The cast built a tremendous camaraderie,” he said. “All of us still get together throughout the year.”

Fran and Harvey are accustomed to working together. He is an investment advisor and she manages the office.

“We do pretty much everything together. We’re best friends,” Fran said.

That spirit continues in their acting endeavor. “We get to support each other throughout the process,” Harvey added. “And we both enjoy the entire process as well as the show. We really have a good time together while we’re rehearsing with the entire cast.”

Amy Robbins counts “Joseph” as her eleventh show. “Theater was in my blood forever,” said Robbins, a former physician who served as director of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia at Montefiore Medical Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. (She currently does domestic abuse advocacy.)

She first performed as a youngster and teen.”I grew up in a wonderful school district where the arts were stressed,” she explained.

Prior to moving to Chicago, Robbins discovered the Chicago Casting Auction while visiting her then fiancée. They saw a production of “Once Upon a Mattress” at Victory Gardens Theater, which previously held the auction.

Robbins’ first show as a cast member was “Guys and Dolls” in 2002. One of her favorite roles was her second one: the lead in “Kiss Me Kate.” Another special memory was the production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” a couple of years ago.

“I have a tendency to do comedy character roles,” Robbins explained. “I was the villainess, Mrs. Meers. One of the delicious things about that, of course, was this over-the-top, very politically incorrect Asian ridiculous accent that she used.”

Robbins jokingly refers to her angelic character in “Joseph” as Dead Rachel. “Rachel is Joseph’s mother,” she explained. “I’m singing in a lot of spots with the narrator. As an angel, I observe a lot of the action. There’s a lot of comic angst reaction to what’s going on because Joseph is a favorite child of mine. And, thankfully, I do not do any dancing.”

Show / Hide Comments