After recently grumbling that the dog days of August have brought with it a semi-drought of interesting events to check out, I suddenly had a deluge over the weekend, which saw me shuttling all over the place (well, actually, mostly around my neighborhood of Lincoln Square as well as New Caledonia, Illinois). Be careful what you wish for, as the wise ones say….
I started the weekend by catching a screening of a small, independent film, which is, refreshingly, unlike many of the alleged independent films that have come out over the past several years (the icky Little Miss Sunshine is as similar to sex, lies, and, videotape or Boys Don’t Cry, some of the pinnacles of true American independent cinema, as a root canal is similar to a therapeutic massage). Frozen River, the debut of director Courtney Hunt, won the Grand Jury Prize in this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and it is one memorable, vivid, powerful and impactful film about desperate people trying to survive and hold on to their dreams, regardless of what they are (Ray, the movie’s heroine’s, holy grail is a double-wide trailer). Ray is a cashier at the dollar store in a small town in upstate New York bordering an Indian reservation, a mother of two boys who suddenly has to find a way to scrape by when her gambling-addict of a husband disappears with all their savings, savings that have been earmarked as downpayment for the double-wide trailer of her dreams. In order to earn a lot of money quickly and make the deadline for the downpayment for the trailer, she teams up with a notorious smuggler from the reservation, Lila, to bring in Chinese immigrant labor illegally into the United States by making dangerous crossings across the frozen St. Lawrence River, which borders upstate New York and Canada. Despite a bittersweet ending, most of the movie is grim, gritty, emotionally bludgeoning. But that’s what I really like about it - it doesn’t romanticize its multi-dimensional, ignoble anti-heroines and the destitution they live in. And in Melissa Leo, the movie has a Ray that is so believable, so stunningly realistic, you’d think she just wandered on to the set from an actual trailer park. It’s a magnificent performance, full of moral contradictions and prejudices, but also yearning for sympathy and understanding. I’m sure they didn’t need to employ a make-up artist on set; every wrinkle, crow’s feet, laugh line, pursed lip on her face is shockingly, and bravely, magnified. Last summer, around this time, people were incredulous that an unknown actress in a little French film that no one went to see could make a real run for an Oscar for best actress. Well, Marion Cotillard won despite all odds. I think Melissa Leo, harrowing yet haunting, can follow the Cotillard template. See Frozen River before she gets crowned with an Oscar! I think she’s the first, truly serious contender for an Academy Award nomination this year (in addition to Heath Ledger’s The Dark Knight turn).
On Friday night, I was at another kind of body of water. Fake Lake, the latest site-specific production from the absurdly creative Neo-Futurists, is being performed not at a real lake, but at the Wells Park swimming pool in my Lincoln Square neighborhood. What seems, on the surface, as a water movement-based production about a summer of sexual and romantic maturity is really a thoughful essay on ecology, preservation, and our responsibility to the planet. I think the whole concept is commendable - site-specific productions are incredibly difficult to pull off, and have production and thespic requirements that are not present in plays staged in regular theaters. So, I really congratulate the Neo-Futurists, the director Helena Kays, the playwright Sharon Greene (who also doubles up as a performer) and the Speedo-clad cast for attempting to stage this work in this manner. I am a very big fan of “off-loop, storefront, self-referential,….,spectacle-based,…., meta-theatrical, post-modern,…., physical theater” as Kays puts it in her director’s note. However, I am not a fan, and am actually highly irritated by, didactic lectures that masquerade as theater. Fake Lake spoonfeeds the audience with its positions on the environment, backed up with facts and figures, and what we should do to responsibly protect it. I prefer theater that allows me to make inferences and to build conclusions based on information presented, that illuminates the way for me to formulate and defend my opinions. That’s “good theater 101″ for me. If I wanted a lecture, I’d stay home and watch 60 minutes (although I don’t think Andy Rooney would look as good in a Speedo as the cast’s male performers do).
Most of Saturday was spent travelling to Northern Illinois for one of the most memorable, most inspirational, food events I have been to this year. Angelic Organics is one of the leading community-supported agricultural (CSA) farms in the country, and their Learning Center, is a forerunner of educational outreach and community involvement. The Center held its second annual benefit event in the middle of the Angelic Organics farm in New Caledonia, Illinois, which is right up there at the northern part of the state near the Wisconsin border. My friends know I’m pretty much an urban cat who loves the sights, sounds, and funky smells of the city, even when I was living in Manila. I’m not really a farming kind of guy, so I was a little apprehensive that I might be Paris-Hilton/Nicole-Ritchie redux in New Caledonia. But I just have to say, I was very much awe-struck throughout the evening, not only by the beauty of the location, and the fabulous six-course dinner catered by my buddies at the Sunday Dinner Club, but also by the achievements and the ongoing work of Angelic Organics Learning Center. I was very thrilled to have had an opportunity to actually be in a place where food was produced responsibly, surrounded by people who were passionate about food and its connection to the environment and communities. More on this fantastic dinner in another blog post, which might include a mention of my Paris Hilton moment, a stupefying encounter with goats nonchalantly going to the toilet!
Sunday afternoon found me at the Book Cellar, one of my neighborhood favorites, attending the final reading in GreasyJoan and Co.’s new “Cutting Edge Classics Series”. As my avid blog readers know, I am a very strong advocate of GreasyJoan, which, in my humble opinion, is one of the truly innovative storefront theaters in Chicago, by putting contemporary perspectives on classic dramatic texts. The “Classics Series” allows GreasyJoan to work with playwrights developing plays based on classic material, which are then given a public reading. It’s a really terrific program that needs to be actively supported. I attended a reading of Chicago writer Joe Meno’s Lady Into Fox, which is interesting material (I kept on thinking during the reading how the play could be staged and what kind of visual metaphors it could employ); the day before, the “Classics Series” had readings of works from New York writers Ann Marie Healy (whose What Once We Felt will be given a world premiere staging by About Face Theater this upcoming season) and Peter Campbell.
Frozen River continues to play at the Landmark Century Cinema, 2828 N. Clark St. Fake Lake runs at the Wells Park swimming pool, 2333 W. Sunnyside, until September 19. GreasyJoan and Co.’s first production for their upcoming season will be an evening of Chekhov one-acts this November. Look out for more information about that!
Tags: Angelic Organics Learning Center, Frozen River, GreasyJoan and Co., Neo-Futurists, Sunday Dinner Club
August 19th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
1) Little Miss Sunshine was not Icky by any means. It was totally fun and enjoyable.
2)The Neo-Futurists are not the first company to do a show in a pool, but it is tricky, so way to go neo-futurits.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Jonathan, I don’t know why you’re trying to go incognito on my blog…yes, performing in a swimming pool is risky business, and I kept on thinking about you and your colleagues in Pegasus’s “The Frogs” last year. So props to “Fake Lake”’s cast, definitely. As for “Little Miss Sunshine”, the less said about it, the better.