I promised a couple of weeks back that I would be blogging extensively about Steppenwolf’s phenomenal “August: Osage County” as it pummels New York City theatre like a hurricane of ever-increasing velocity; unfortunately, it just hasn’t happened. First, your dear theatre blogger has been using the telephone as an extended body part; I have been on four-hour conference calls every day since Monday working on a client proposal due Thanksgiving week. Four hours on the phone? Uhmmm….let’s see I could have watched two movies (or one movie if it’s directed by Peter Jackson or Bela Tarr) or two plays (maybe one and a half if it’s a Eugene O’Neill); completed four rounds of body waxings and facials; played eight games of mah jong; and at least read through a quarter of a Murukami novel. Secondly, and more alarmingly, performances of “August” in New York have stopped due to the Broadway stagehands’ strike (which has closed down all but eight Broadway theatres). As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the early word from the “August” previews at the Imperial were nothing short of rapturous and stunning; unfortunately, for close to a week now, our beloved Chicago actors like Amy Morton and Rondi Reed, have been unable to cross the striker’s picket line and perform onstage. As an HR professional, I have definite opinions on labor and employee relations, but this blog isn’t about workplace practices (I’ll leave that to my friend Frank’s much read HR blog), it’s about culture and art. My great sadness then, as an avid theatregoer, with what is going on in New York, is the practical realization that commerce time and time again trumps art. It’s a shocking reminder to the system, sort of like the effect of that cold plunge after half an hour in a Finnish sauna.
As I mentioned in the previous blog post, since there are so many arts organizations in Chicago competing for the arts consumer’s disposable spending dollar, Chicagoans are in an enviable position. Chicago is probably one of the few cities in the world where one can go to a different arts event every night. It is exhilarating to have so many choices, but one also needs to recognize that one can’t just blow this week’s paycheck on plays, symphony concerts, or ballets. So on Saturday night, given the choice of going to yet another Tennessee Williams revival, or another rethinking and psychoanalyzing of Eugene O’Neill, or a multi-cultural staging of a world premiere of a rising playwright’s latest work, I opted for the latter, which turned out to be a great thing. The Silk Road Theatre Project’s production of Shishir Kurup’s innovative Shakespearean update, “The Merchant on Venice“, is dazzling, astounding, memorable, and highly enjoyable. Williams and O’Neill, if they were alive today, might not have thought of mixing such a potent formula consisting of the perceptions that non-Muslims have of Muslims, Hindi self-awareness, Bollywood, and a mind-blowing rollercoaster of cross-cultural references from Leif Garrett to Jim Morrison to Satyajit Ray.
I am a passionate supporter of new works, since it goes without saying that they are essential for ensuring that our artistic lives continue to thrive. I am always up for seeing a new performance piece, whether in any of the major downtown performing arts venues, or in a musty, creaky storefront in Wicker Park, or in an art gallery in the northside, or even somewhere in the unfamiliar terrains of the Chicago suburbs. Last Friday, I motored via executive coach (actually BFF Debra’s car) to the unknown reaches of the 60077 zip code, better known as Skokie, Illinois, to watch my friend Alfie perform in a new ballet of “Frankenstein”, the inaugural presentation of a newly-created ballet company, the Alma Dance Company, whose mission is to present ballets with “original stories, original choreographies, original music- and taken one step further.” Although I laud the hard-work and dedication that are required from those who launch new arts organizations, after last Friday’s performance, I’m really not sure where that “one step further” is going.
I seem to be on the mailing list of all arts organizations in Chicago, so I get a lot of invitations to benefits and special events, subscription offers, ticket discount codes, donation and gift-giving requests, solicitations to be on a kidney donor list, etc. etc. Both my mailbox at home and my email inbox are filled to the brim with mailings from a variety of arts groups, which is terrific since I get to see what are coming up in the very dynamic, very busy Chicago cultural calendar. I was particularly thrilled to get the attractive glossy brochures for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s World Stage Series, beginning November 21 and Chicago Opera Theater’s 2008 spring season, beginning April 30, 2008. These two companies have delivered knock-out, brilliant, world-class productions in the past so that I was reaching for the phone and my credit card even as I was thumbing through the marketing materials.
I’ve been trying to go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series for a while, and I especially wanted to see Dawn Upshaw’s soldout, acclaimed performance of Oswaldo Golijov’s song cycle “Ayre” last spring. I finally made it last Monday for the 10th anniversary season opener, and I have been kicking myself for waiting this long. I think MusicNow is one of those precious gems that make Chicago truly an indisputable world-class cultural community - it promotes new work by exceptional musical artists performed by the acclaimed CSO members, makes these performances available to a wider range of audiences by pricing tickets at a reasonable level (who can beat 20 bucks for the symphony, 15 if you have the TimeOut Chicago discount), and provides a channel for social interaction among the audience members after the concert with its beer-and-pizza reception (think a really cultured frat party where people are talking about the Nietzschean undertones of Philip Glass’s oeuvre instead of say college basketball).
“Wedding Play”, written and directed by About Face Theatre’s Artistic Director Eric Rosen, is about a playwright who leaves his male lover to marry the pregnant actress who stars in his plays, and about the tragedy that befalls them. Loosely based on “Wedding Song”, by Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the play contains a lot of “hip” theatrical devices such as a play-within-a-play, actors directly addressing the audience, constant repetition of lines and scenes (a maddening trend in “hot new plays”such as those by wunderkind Noah Haidle, which is about as interesting to me as watching asphalt being laid on the ground over and over again), and actors playing multiple roles, to go with a theatre-insider sensibility. Unfortunately, interesting theatrical devices cannot generally make up for a coherent storyline, involving dramatic conflict, and empathetic characters.
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