Raven Award for Excellence in Arts and Entertainment 2010 Honoree
Heidi Stillman
Heidi Stillman is a Lookingglass Ensemble Member and its Artistic Director of New Work. Lookingglass directing credits include Trust (co-directed with David Schwimmer), The Brothers Karamazov, Hephaestus (co-directed with Tony Hernandez), The Wooden Breeks, Hillbilly Antigone, Hard Times (Jeff), and The Master and Margarita. Adaptation/writing credits include The Brothers Karamazov, Hephaestus, The Old Curiosity Shop (Jeff Award), Hard Times (Jeff Award), The Baron in the Trees and The Master and Margarita. Heidi was last seen on stage in The Arabian Nights and Our Town at Lookingglass.
A self-described "Army brat," Stillman experienced an early life marked by familial expectation and transient homesteads divided between the upper Midwest, England and Germany. A detachment naturally borne out of new environments and circumspect attention to behavior, led Stillman to cultivate an internally rich, imaginative life.
Once her family settled in tiny Stillwater on Minnesota's St. Croix River, just 20 miles east of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Stillman expressed her lifelong passion for reading and staging plays by acting in her high school's productions. In her junior year, Stillman earned an invitation to Northwestern's summer National High School Institute, which annually hosts a gathering of the nation's budding arts, forensics and debate talent. She lost her heart to the school, and while she gave lip service to other majors, knew immediately she wanted to seek a life in theatre.
After graduating from Nortwestern in 1989, Stillman was invited to join other fellow classmates in the theatre company they had founded, Lookingglass - a diverse crew that includes David Schwimmer of Friends fame. After years of roaming, she had found a home where she "got to do everything."
Stillman believes the Lookingglass community of artists, who share work, friendship and even their families with each other, is rare. "I'm very, very lucky. We've just grown a lot together and do almost all original work. We couldn't find the plays we wanted to make - so we started making our own," she said. "A lot of us act and write and direct, and we've found in each other real opportunities for growth."
Stillman embodies the Ensemble's versatility. She was Lookingglass artistic director from 1997-2000. As an actor, she has appeared in more than 15 Lookingglass world premieres and was in the original New York cast of the Tony-awarding winning Metamorphoses. Stillman has also performed on WBEZ's (NPR) Stories on Stage in Chicago and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.