Committed to her craft: West Dundee actress at home on city, suburban stages
Andrea Uppling is one dedicated actor. Her commute confirms it.
For the last few months, she’s traveled from her West Dundee home to Chicago where she’s appearing in Invictus Theatre Company’s production of William Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.” Uppling plays Queen Hermione, a devoted wife and mother falsely accused of infidelity and imprisoned by her jealous husband, King Leontes.
Putting the often two-hour drive to good use, Uppling spends it running lines (she has an app that helps actors memorize and rehearse), listening to music and catching up on podcasts.
Fortunately, she has understanding colleagues who don’t mind when she runs a few minutes late.
It’s one of the things she loves about her fellow theater artists who she describes as a “beautiful group of people.”
“They’ve been so warm and loving. It’s a really fun group,” said the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, native who discovered her love of performing at 3.
“I was quite the dramatic child,” said Uppling, who took dance lessons as a youngster until 8th grade when acting supplanted dance.
Following her parents’ divorce, she moved with her mother to Alexandria, Virginia, and attended a high school with a top-notch drama department whose students performed at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. That experience, along with the performances she attended at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts spurred her interest in theater.
After high school, she returned to her hometown to study acting at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh whose “small but wonderful program” provided burgeoning theater artists with lots of stage time.
After graduation, Uppling moved in with her older brother, then a student at Northwestern University’s law school. Rockford’s now-shuttered New American Theater marked her professional debut. It’s also where she met her husband, fellow actor Erik Uppling, who teaches English and drama at Lake Park High School in Roselle.
“The type of acting really drew me (to the city),” said Uppling, adding that Chicago actors “get under the skin of characters.”
“That’s the type of theater I love,” she said.
A veteran of Paramount and Williams Street theaters, “Winter’s Tale” marks her third production with Invictus Theatre, whose founder and artistic director Charles Askenaizer she met over a Zoom class during the pandemic.
“Everyone talked about how true they were to the text, their focus on language and literature,” she said.
She acted in “Hamlet” with them in 2021 and returned the following year to act in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 2022, earning a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for her performance as Martha.
“To this day, that’s my favorite theater experience,” Uppling said.
After several productions with Aurora’s Copley Theatre (2024’s stellar “A Streetcar Named Desire” and 2023’s “What the Constitution Means to Me” in which she understudied Cory Goodrich), Uppling returned to Invictus and Shakespeare to play the fiercely devoted Hermione, whose forbearance and willingness to forgive Uppling, a mother herself, understands well.
“There has to be such grace about her,” said Uppling. “When the whole world is having a tantrum around you, it’s important to stay steady and let it run its course.”
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“The Winter’s Tale”
When: 7 p.m. Friday and Monday; 1 and 7 p.m. Saturday; and 1 p.m. Sunday through April 20
Where: Invictus Theatre of Chicago at Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago, invictustheatreco.com
Tickets: $38