From the Ledge

I get really frenzied for the week and a half prior to the Oscars trying to catch up on my nominated movie-watching; keeping abreast of all the online Oscar speculations, prognostications and gossip; and of course, writing my Oscar predictions note with Cindy Margolis’ new BFF, the divine Ms. Jennifer M, whose sizzle and spark at the barricades of the Independent Spirit Awards red carpet  (see her Oscar recap below) should have made Rainn Wilson block and tackle her instead of Philip Seymour Hoffman (if you haven’t seen that video on YouTube yet, you should, it is quite ridiculous but also quite hilarious!).  However, it hasn’t been quiet on the Chicago arts and culture front.  Despite the Oscars and working on 5 client projects in my consulting job, I managed to catch a couple of plays and work it at a couple of arts benefit events during the past two weeks.

Blog mentor and all-around-good-guy Tom and I managed to catch Harriet Jacobs, the new Steppenwolf for Young Adults production.  Everytime I mention the Steppenwolf, I do need to say, for purposes of full disclosure, that I am a Governor of the Auxiliary Council, the young professionals group supporting the theater, and I hope people don’t think I’m shilling for the theater all the time.  Lydia Diamond, who wrote the much acclaimed adaptation of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which began as a Steppenwolf for Young Adults production a couple of years ago and which subsequently moved intact with the Chicago cast off-Broadway where it got more raves, also wrote Harriet Jacobs, the adaptation of a true-to-life book written by a slave girl who hid in an attic for three years after escaping from her master.  It is intense, harrowing subject matter that is given the appropriate respect and emotional resonance by the production.  As to be expected from Steppenwolf, the quality of the acting is very high-caliber with the ensemble very effective in carrying out what I think is an intriguing artistic decision - the African-American actors also play the white characters.  I also believe that the integration of acapella gospel music and movement throughout the play are very powerful ways to depict not only the characters’ thoughts and decisions, but also the crushing socio-cultural environment they lived in.  I think Harriet is such a wonderfully complex, multi-hued character, and the astonishing young Chicago actress Nambi E. Kelley captures her strength and her will to survive so powerfully, but I do feel that some of the other characters are mere sketches which help move the narrative along, not really fully-fleshed out. I also feel the play’s ending is a little unfinished…maybe it is intended to be ambiguous, but I really want to get a better sense of where Harriet ended up and how she overcame her plight.  The show closes this weekend in Chicago, but it is going on to the prestigious Williamstown Theatre Festival in the Berkshires this summer (which is another indication of how significant Steppenwolf is right now in the national theater consciousness).

I was also at two arts-related fundraising benefit events in the past week; every time I go to one, I am always amazed (and very heartened) by the number of people who generously give their time and their money to the arts in Chicago.  Last Friday, I went to support BFF Debra who was one of the co-chairpersons of Thodos Dance Chicago’s annual benefit, which was held at the Chicago Historical Museum.  It was a lovely night of cocktails, dance performance, more cocktails, wine roulette, dinner, cocktails once more, silent auction, and even more cocktails (I like going to these events because of the arts, honest!).  The benefit event was very elegant, sedate, and very well-organized, and I was thrilled to have won a pair of Chicago Opera Theatre tickets in the silent auction, but I did have to wonder, what was that speed bump doing underneath one of the silent auction tables?  Why would the Chicago Historical Museum need a speed bump? (Were there drag races after museum hours?).  Last night, I went to the Heartland Alliance Junior Board’s Art Against AIDS benefit at the River East Art Center.  I was planning to go anyway, but very luckily, my employer gave a generous contribution to the event so I got to go for free.  The Heartland Alliance does such good work for those afflicted with AIDS, and this benefit showcased around 80 Chicago artists who generously donated pieces to be auctioned off.  Some of the art was very good (there was a stunning oil by the visual artist Stephen Metcalf that I very nearly got into a bidding war with), and some of the art was gulp-inducing, head-scratching, or both.  That’s kinda par for the course anyway for visual arts events.  The party vibe was quite different from Thodos’s benefit- it was also well-organized and the lovely River East space was so thoughtfully used to highlight the art, but it was quite the noisy, raucous, pulsating shindig (leave it to the gay boys to show how to really throw a party), that at times I thought I was in the middle of Sidetracks, where everybody suddenly was in formal wear.  And not that I am exhibiting any sense of gay self-hate, but really, what is the deal with some gay men whose, uhmmm, derriere, rival JLo’s or the upholstery in a Mercedes Benz?  Did these guys come to the event with butt pumps?  Heavy padding?  Why would anyone want their ass to look like a cocktail table?  (I nearly set my highball glass on a couple of unbelievably protruded ones!)

As for the other play I saw last week, let’s just leave it unnamed for now.  The play was ok, although a little one-dimensional in its treatment of the West vs. the developing world, but one of the lead actors was a former neighbor, who, gulp, was full-frontally naked, and had an extended scene where he and one of the lead actresses simulated oral sex. Yes, it was a little awkward, since I still remember him coming to my unit one time looking for the cable box for his unit (strange!).  Bizarro world!

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