For Kate Buddeke, it all began with hormones. She wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll singer, but in the early 70s a friend invited her to a rehearsal of the Chicago Free Theater, which put on original rock operas. She was 16. “I kind of fell in love with this guy onstage,” she says. “They said they had classes on Monday nights, so I went–just to go meet this guy. And then I ended up in the Free Theater.”
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A Free Theater show in New York led to a part in a European touring production of Hair, which got kind of hairy in Spain. “We were with some shady people,” she says. “I didn’t speak a word of Spanish, mind you, so I didn’t really know what was going on. I mean, the producers of the show were very–I don’t know, I want to say mafioso but I didn’t know. We had to flee one night in a Volkswagen to get away from this guy and ended up in London.”
Buddeke recently spent a little over a year as Brian Dennehy’s other woman in the Goodman Theatre’s production of Death of a Salesman both here and on Broadway. Despite her success, she can be a bit starstruck. On opening night in New York there was an incident: “Gregory Peck was there,” she says. “And Gregory Peck is in my all-time favorite movie, To Kill a Mockingbird. I had to meet Gregory.” But a woman was standing between them. “I kind of pushed her out of the way because I was so focused on Gregory Peck. And someone told me, ‘Kate! You just shoved Lauren Bacall!’ I thought, ‘Tough.’ But she was cute, she was OK about it. I think.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Nathan Mandell.
