Arts & Entertainment
Not your average fairy tale queen
Chicago actress Sydney Ray brings empathy, kindness and her own brand of queenly spunk to her latest role
Every weekend Sydney Ray transforms herself from an average Chicago resident into the Queen of the Land of Contentment and then watches as the eyes of the children around her light up at getting to meet royalty. To the Uptown actress it’s pure joy.
“I love performing shows for young audiences,” she says. “I love the honesty that children bring to an audience.”
Ray is currently performing in Ghostlight Ensemble’s The Princess Without Pots, which ends its run this weekend. She plays the mother to the titular character and along with her husband, the king, is trying to convince their daughter it’s time to get married. Princess Cristina is less convinced this is a good idea, but agrees to marry on one condition – the prince who would win her heart, must first win a battle against the fiercest warrior the age had ever seen – Princess Cristina herself.
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“The Princess Without Pots is such a lovely and unique story,” Ray said. “It is a story about being your best self and being proud of who you are. It's about sharing your talents with your community. It's about finding balance between expectations and what truly makes you happy.
“The story encourages you to try new things, take risks, make new friends and step outside of your comfort zone to discover new things.”
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Ray may be familiar to Chicago audiences from her extensive theater credits, which include productions with The Unrehearsed Shakespeare Company of Chicago, Broken Nose Theatre Company, Compass Creative Dramatics, Otherworld Theatre Company, E.D.G.E. Theatre and 20% Theatre Company, where she is an artistic associate and where she got to play one of her favorite characters from childhood – Jo March in Little Women.
When not on stage, Ray enjoys reading and has lately been trying to teach herself how to knit and play the ukulele. This summer she’ll be taking a short break from theater to concentrate on a production of a different sort – planning her wedding.
“That’s where all brainpower this summer will be turned,” she joked.
Catch Ray on stage in Ghostlight Ensemble's The Princess Without Pots, the inaugural production in the theatre company's young audience series, Nightlight. The show runs Saturdays at 11 a.m. and Sundays at 1:30 p.m. through July 1 at Laugh Out Loud Theater in North Center. More information is available at GhostlightEnsemble.com.