A Quote by Cecily Strong

I started doing professional theater and industrials in Chicago when I was a little squirt. — © Cecily Strong
I started doing professional theater and industrials in Chicago when I was a little squirt.
I went to Northwestern in Chicago, in Evanston, and then I ended up trickling down in Chicago theater. I did a bunch of plays, but I was non-equity. For a lot of people, non-equity means you're not yet professional. But for me, if you're in a mainstream theater, you're doing something real.
Theater in Chicago will always be my first love. It started careers for me and about 50 of my friends. We all love coming back. As soon as the TV show is over, I'll be back in Chicago, doing live theater.
I started theater when I was three, and I started doing professional acting when I was nine.
I was doing theater in my high school, and I started writing sort of silly songs on the piano backstage in summer theater. I eventually put them online and started getting this little following.
I started in theater. I did theater professionally for seven years with my company before I started doing 'Friends.' I was waiting tables and doing theater.
I've always wanted to do theater in Chicago. Chicago is a big theater town-and, in some ways, I think this city is savvier and smarter than New York. Sometimes, I think it's a little too chic to go to theater in New York these days.
I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A.
I've never seen a theater community to rival that of Chicago. Neither New York nor L.A. has the raw talent or integrity that Chicago theater has, and I think it's because Chicago doesn't have Broadway or the film and TV business to distract it.
I think we sublimated our Broadway desires by doing theater in Hollywood - not on stage but by doing the movies of 'Chicago' and 'Hairspray' and also musicals on TV. We did Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Cinderella' and 'Gypsy' and 'Annie.' Even 'Smash' was like doing theater.
I actually started working in Chicago while I was still a student; I did the Chicago premiere of 'The History Boys' at the end of my junior year. I had come to Chicago for Northwestern University. I didn't quite know about the theater community, and what I did know was mostly the improv.
My character started off on 'Chicago P.D.' as the brother to Detective Jake Halstead, and then I also played on 'Chicago Fire.' So, I really worked on both shows before 'Chicago Med' even started.
I moved to Chicago and I did theater, and then I started writing and I stop acting and I did sketch. You know, I did all of the things that, if you were serious about doing television, don't do.
Chicago theater vs. New York theater. There's just nothing to say about it really. If you've seen Chicago theater, you know that the work is true to what is there on the page. It's not trying to present itself with some sort of flashy, concept-based thing. It's about the work, and it's about the acting you're about to watch. So acting-based theater feels like it was born there to me.
I came up through the theater. I came out of drama college and started working in the professional theater.
When I first got out of school, I went on a children's theater tour, and I went around the country a little bit that fall, and it was the first time I went to Chicago. We spend a couple of days in Chicago, and I was really struck viscerally by the city.
After that, I started going downtown and doing a lot of theater shows in Chicago. When you go downtown there, it's like you're in New York, it's like going to Broadway.
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