As I’ve previously said, one of the great things about having such a lively theater scene is the fact that there are new works premiering all over town every weekend. Some of them may be boring, formulaic reflections on twentysomething self-absorption, but many, many of them give us interesting glimpses into new, intriguing worlds. Two of the plays currently onstage in the city tackle the volatile, complicated topic of cultural identity, something, as an immigrant, I am particularly keen on. After the triumphant success of the brilliant, Pulitzer-nominated, off-Broadway transferring The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, my choice for best production of 2009, the hot, young playwright Kristoffer Diaz is back with a world premiere at the American Theater Company of a play that he actually wrote before Chad Deity, Welcome to Arroyo’s, mixing a heady brew of Latino identity politics, doctoral dissertations, sushi-eating, graffiti-making, and hiphop. Over at Chicago Dramatists, arguably the best incubator of new work in the city, Will Cooper, a new playwright, is having the first professional production of his works in Jade Heart, a world premiere about international adoption and the tension between keeping true to one’s cultural roots and assimilation. I love strongly advocating for new work; however, I can only recommend Welcome to Arroyo’s with reservations, since, although it confirms for me Diaz’s brilliance and future greatness, and his exceptional ability to crisply capture the 21st century zeitgeist, it lacks the clarity and audience engagement of Chad Deity. On the other hand, as an Asian, I struggled mightily with Jade Heart- although I think its intentions are noble, it is so simplistically-written and so old-fashioned in its worldview, Cooper might as well have been writing about cultural identity concerns in 1980 versus 2010.
I’m not a theater critic, nor a theater practitioner. I’m just a regular, passionate theater aficionado who writes a blog (and who pays for most shows that I go to see). And it was wonderful to be a regular, passionate theater aficionado who wrote a blog in 2009 in Chicago, when great-not merely good, not just serviceable-theater was available every weekend night. 2009 began with the Goodman Theatre’s Eugene O’Neill Festival, a singular, unsurpassable program of theatrical bravado that I will always remember, and which even long time Chicago residents marveled at. But 2009, for me, was also a year of getting a thrilling first look at world premieres; of seeing plays in random places, whether it was in a warehouse in Ravenswood, inside the rehearsal hall of the Goodman theater, or on the actual stage of the MCA; of discovering new theater companies putting on plays with so much impressive, balls-out fierceness; of finally being validated in my very firm, vocal belief that it is Chicago, not New York City or any other self-proclaiming town, that is the theater capital of the US.
Because the beginning of this year’s fall theater season has been so busy, I’ve been going to a show almost every night since last week (thankfully, I’m in between client projects right now and temporarily off the road). Hey, I’m not complaining – I am grateful for this bountiful harvest, especially since it’s chockful of world premieres and original work emanating from a diverse set of really unique playwriting voices. But of all that is onstage in Chicago currently, I don’t think there are voices as unique, as singular, as jolting as those of former Chicagoans and Tony-winning creators of Urinetown, Neo-Futurist founder Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann. They’ve created a musical about yeasts, those unicellular fungi that we associate with breadmaking, beermaking, and certain delicate types of infections, and theorized that these cells are the forerunners of all living creatures. They’ve set this yeasty (sorry, couldn’t resist) musical under the sea, around 5 billion years ago, in some “primordial soup” ruled by an iron-fisted king who is starving his salt-eating citizens to prevent them from asexually reproducing, in what can be surmised as a primitive form of birth control. They’ve thrown in a Greek Chorus led by a blind yeast-seer, named, well, the Unnamed. They’ve set the story to a pop-rock score that contains such titular gems as “Stasis is in the Membrane”. Absurd? Yes. Insane? Absolutely. Ridiculously over-the-top? You got it, man. But Kotis and Hollmann’s Yeast Nation (the Triumph of Life), which is receiving its Midwest premiere at the American Theater Company (although it supposedly is quite different from its world premiere at Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre a couple of years ago, so we could possibly consider this a quasi-world premiere), is also thrilling, exuberant, imaginative, hilarious, so exhilaratingly alive. Yeast Nation is the one show that should make everyone want to go to the theater. In its energy, creativity, and mind-heart-gut pull, it proves why live performance will never be matched, or supplanted, by television, webisodes, Wii games, and all other media that cater to the 21st century’s short attention spans and instant gratification needs.
…to the American Blues Theater, the new company that is immediately being formed by 23 of the 28 ensemble members of the American Theater Company, who is leaving their artistic home due to irreconcilable “artistic and administrative” differences with Artistic Director, PJ Paparelli. It has been the big news in Chicago theater since late last week, with more than 110 comments on Chris Jones’ blog entry alone. As an audience member, I should ultimately judge a theater company based on the quality of its product, and not on its internal workings, but this time, I felt that I personally should put my money where artistic integrity lies. One of the things that has been justly celebrated about Chicago theater in the performing arts worlds, both national and international, and which I am particularly proud of, is our ability to build and nurture theatrical ensembles – it’s one of our differentiating trademarks. So I can’t really support a person or an organization that tries to undo one that has stood strong for 25 years. I’ve written on this blog about Paparelli’s significant achievements in his short stint here in Chicago – last year’s wonderful Speech and Debate, this year’s searing True West. Unfortunately, those achievements seemed to have come at a tremendous cost to the ATC ensemble, many of them stalwarts of the Chicago theater community. And I don’t think I, as an audience member passionate for our town’s theater-how it works, why it sustains, can stand for that.
It has been “all-theater, all-the-time” during the month of January. Hey, I’m not complaining – the extraordinary, singular, multi-month Eugene O’Neill Festival at the Goodman Theater, for one, is worth every single freezing minute on the Brown Line “L” platform painfully waiting for a train to arrive. This city’s cultural audiences owe a huge debt of gratitude to Goodman Artistic Director Bob Falls for devising, curating, and tirelessly promoting this fantastic Chicago cultural event of the season, if not the year. But there were also a lot of other must-see productions to go to in the Chicagoland area, some of them immensely satisfying, others gravely disappointing, some of them flawed but still a great night of live performance. Here are impressions on other plays I’ve seen during the last month:
In the midst of compiling New Year’s resolutions that I’ll most likely not be able to follow through on (do thirty sit-ups a day, eat more fruits, stop flirting with straight boys even if they offer to buy me a sidecar, finally break my vow never to see a Renee Zellweger movie again), I’ve been browsing the action-packed January calendars of the various arts and culture institutions in Chicago. After the cultural wasteland that is the month of December (really, how many Ghosts of Christmas Pasts and Snow Queens can you stomach outside of the Boystown Halloween parade?), the beginning of the year is offering quite frankly, and wonderfully, an embarrassment of artistic riches.
Recently Attended Events
- 8/31/2010: The Scottsboro Boys (Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis)
- 8/22/2010: Carousel (Light Opera Works)
- 8/18/2010: Frost/Nixon (Timeline Theatre Company)
- 8/11/2010: A Little Night Music (Walter Kerr Theatre, New York City)
- 8/07/2010: Hesperia (The Right Brain Project)
- 8/03/2010: Billy Elliot - The Musical (Broadway In Chicago at the Ford Center for Performing Arts)
- 7/25/2010: Red Noses (Strawdog Theatre Company)
- 7/23/2010: F**king Men (Bailiwick Chicago)
- 7/18/2010: A Guide for the Perplexed (Victory Gardens Theater)
- 7/11/2010: A Parallelogram (Steppenwolf Theatre Company)
- 7/10/2010: Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida (Bailiwick Chicago)
- 7/09/2010: La Visita de la Vieja Dama (Teatro Buendia at the Goodman Theatre)
- 7/08/2010: Eros (National Pastime Theater)
- 7/04/2010: The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles)
- 6/27/2010: Equus (Redtwist Theatre)
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