Finding his muse on, off stage

CHICAGO — The theatre bug first bit Michael Dalberg when he was an elementary school student in rural Wisconsin, during the school’s Christmas play. When he took the stage as Santa Claus, he did not know that nearly 30 years later, theatre would be the center of his life.

“We had a play every year, and all the students had to pitch in,” Dalberg said. “All the kids were invested in it, (and) I always thought it was a bunch of fun. I remember being so proud of myself at fifth or sixth grade, to not only help create the play, but to be Santa, which of course was the lead role every year. I was delighted and over the moon.”

Dalberg’s family owned a 100-cow dairy, operated by his grandfather, Cyrus, and his father, John, just outside of Boaz. Although the cows were sold in the mid-1990s, when he was 5 or 6 years old, Dalberg said the memory of that farm is firmly imprinted in his heart.

“It was a rough patch, milk price wise,” Dalberg said. “There were lots of farmers in the area that sold their cows at that point.”

The Dalbergs remained on the farm for several years, until it was sold to help pay for the care his grandmother needed following a series of strokes.

The family moved to nearby Richland Center, where Dalberg attended the Richland Center Intermediate School. There he experienced the first setback of his theatre career. After being told that everyone who auditioned for the Missoula Children’s Theatre’s production of “Rumpelstiltskin” would be cast, Dalberg learned he was one of two not given a role.

“It humbled me very quickly,” Dahlberg said. “I started thinking this wasn’t something I needed to be doing.”

Acting returned to Dalberg in high school.

“I did radio in forensics and a group was rehearsing their play acting scene and needed a stand-in for their blocking,” Dalberg said. “I had such a good time doing that one practice, and the coach told me I needed to do play acting next year.”

His confidence somewhat bolstered, he auditioned and won a small part in the high school’s production of “Beauty and the Beast.”

“I found not only was theatre fun, but maybe it was something I was actually good at,” Dalberg said. “I realized that it was something I wanted to invest my time doing.”

Dalberg completed his general education studies at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Richland, transferring into UW-Parkside, majoring in theatre.

“My dad had told me that he didn’t care what I did, but I needed to make sure I could always keep food on my table and pay my bills,” Dalberg said. “I accepted that maybe I was not always going to be able to (do) that with theatre work, but I wanted to see if I could. As a theatre artist, I didn’t specialize at Parkside. I spent time working on acting, directing and playwriting.”

With a plan of diversifying his talents, Dalberg headed to his first professional job at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, Minnesota, working as an apprentice actor for a summer, serving as an understudy and performing in “Macbeth.”

From there he returned to Parkside to work as an assistant director in a production of “The Importance of Being Earnest.” His break into the Chicago theatre scene came when he was selected to serve as an artistic intern at the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. To ensure he could fulfill his father’s request of providing for himself, Dalberg took a day job working at JCPenney, while doing his internship and continuing to attend auditions.

Slowly his diligence and willingness to be diverse began to pay off when he was selected to be an inaugural ensemble member for Theatre Above the Law, eventually becoming a literary manager. He also joined Idle Muse Theatre Company and is now their literary director.

“I first met Idle Muse as an actor in a show called ‘Equivocation,’ which got great reviews,” Dalberg said. “They were planning a fundraiser based on Sherlock Holmes short stories, so I threw my hat into the ring and mentioned I was a playwright, as well. They were able to bring me in, and I have never left.”

Writing has become a passion for Dalberg. “Family Values,” his first professionally produced script, went overseas and ran for a month in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Following that success, he was commissioned by Theatre Above the Law for an adaptation of “Cyrano” that opened this spring. Idle Muse Theatre Company premiered an adaptation he wrote of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” receiving great reviews and recognition from the Jeff Awards, Chicago theatre’s answer to the Oscars.

The work he is most proud of Dalberg said is a play called “The Blood Countess,” about Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noblewoman, who inspired many Dracula-esque legends, which earned two nominations for Jeff Awards.

“I blended historical fact with a bit of the myth,” Dalberg said. “I didn’t make her a vampire in it, but I took from historical record on who she was and the threats that were aimed against her that were politically motivated. She was just a woman, trying to keep her lands together, while there was a war with the Ottoman Empire going on around her, and these men just wanted to take what she had because her husband was dead.”

Dalberg said he quickly found a demand for his scripts.

“It is a great problem to have,” Dalberg said. “I’m continuing to work as a playwright, but also wanting to get back into acting. A friend brought it up, that I’d sort of accidentally retired from acting, because if (I) went after roles, I wasn’t spending that time writing.”

The diversification that has allowed him to ensure he could pay his bills has in actuality made him better at all aspects of his theatre career, Dalberg said.

“I’ll never be the best at anything, but I can be pretty good (at) a bunch of different things,” Dalberg said. “Each area informs and improves every other area. My work as an actor is now really influenced by my work as a director and playwright, because I have a better understanding of how the director is seeing something, or what the playwright might have actually intended. It makes me more open to making different choices as an actor and better at receiving feedback.”