I normally don’t want to use this blog to rant against my day-to-day mundane annoyances (especially since regardless of how much my day sucked, I am always grateful that I’m not being forced to wear a burqa, or have grenades and machine guns going off right outside my loft’s windows), but the Chicago Tribune’s imbecilic, condescending, and unfunny article entitled Theatre 101, totally ruined my morning commute (not to mention my ability to make flirty eye-contact with the cute buzzed-cut blonde guy at the Ravenswood train station platform). Who writes dyslexic crap like “When the play ends, there’s a blackout, then the lights come back on and all the actors come on stage to take a bow. This is when you should clap.”? Was this meant to be satirical? instructive? clever? Was this meant to disprove the fact that human communication is more advanced than pigs snorting or goats bleating? Or what about this gem – “People who go to the theatre are snooty. Okay, this is partially true.” Anyone who thinks this moronic sentence belongs in a piece of writing that supposedly aims to encourage more people to go to the theatre is probably in a crystal meth haze.
I hope I don’t turn into a one-trick pony over the course of the next several weeks, but I will try to write regularly about Steppenwolf’s “August: Osage County”’s Broadway transfer. Not only because it is one of the best plays I have seen or read in my lifetime, but also because I can hardly contain my excitement that a quintessentially Chicago play, written by a Chicago-based playwright, and employing the magnificent talents of Chicago-based actors and artistic staff, has the potential to take New York City, the self-anointed theatrical capital of America, by storm. The success of “August” on Broadway will be both vindication and validation – that Chicago is not flyover country, “the provinces”, the second city, but rather the dynamic, beating heart of new American dramatic writing.
Reeling, the Chicago gay and lesbian film festival begins November 8 and runs till November 18. The opening night film is, as always, a tittilating tale of forbidden gay-straight love, called Shelter. I think you’re better off to see some of the more intriguing films like the film festival favorite, No Regret, from South Korea, about a male prostitute and his wealthy benefactor; Nina’s Heavenly Delights, from the UK, about an Indian chef who finds true love in the kitchen, a movie that was shown a couple years ago at the Chicago International Film Festival; and No Homos in Iran? The Birthday, about…well, homos in Iran, or to be technical about it, transexuals in Iran. And then there’s Naked Boys Singing…the “art film” version of the “artsy” stage musical, which former NYC mayor Ed Koch recommends. Ed Koch recommending a movie about naked boys singing is like a group on safari staring stunned at a sitting pride of lions. They had him at hello…or at least when they bounce (or flop?) in with the first song of the movie and the play, “Gratuitous Nudity”. And of course what is a gay and lesbian film festival without parties? There are 5-6 parties spread out over the ten days, from shindigs in art galleries like River East, to a karaoke party at Goose Island, to a Bears mixer at an Andersonville B and B…and no this party is not for Bears like Rex Grossman (although I don’t think anyone will mind if he comes bouncing in wearing buttless leather chaps), but Bears as in big, bearded, hairy, sweaty, non-pedicured/non-facialed gay men wearing buttless leather chaps (well, I hope they’re wearing at least those chaps!)
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