As I said in my previous blog post, I flew lots and lots of miles over three continents in the course of 2011. But when I was in Chicago, I made sure I slid my butt into a theater seat (over the objections and recriminations of friends and (ex) lovers who I ended up not seeing during those so few weekends). So I still managed to go to a significant number of shows this year despite feeling as if I lived at O’Hare instead of my Ravenswood loft. No regrets on this end, since Chicago continued to be a dazzling North American capital for live performance, with a bounty of world premieres, Chicago stops of great touring productions, and storefront theatrical treasures. Here, then, is my annual top ten list of Chicago theater:
I can safely say that David Henry Hwang’s Tony-winning M.Butterfly is one of the plays that shaped my love for theater. I saw several local productions when I was growing up in Manila in the 1980s and I was just deeply impressed by the stylized approach to live performance and the impeccable, impactful, very clever use of language. The major themes of M. Butterfly- the tension between Asian and Western cultural norms and perspectives; the nature of sexual identity – were important, resonant themes for a gay kid growing up in an Asian city that was often called the most Western city in the Asia-Pacific Rim, a city filled with multi-national corporations, expatriates, and the enveloping presence of American pop culture. But I have always been unsettled by Hwang’s portrayal of Asian, specifically Chinese, culture in M. Butterfly – how Song Liling, the Peking Opera singer who turns out to be the opposite of what she has purported herself to be, trafficked, both explicitly and subtly, in deception, ambition, and power plays, and how the culture she inhabits condones these traits and the grey ethical areas they inevitably create. And pity the white guy, Gallimard, clueless, weak-willed, trapped. Many theater critics and aficionados have lauded Hwang’s portrayal of Sing Liling, and Chinese culture by extension, in M. Butterfly as brazen – Asia finally portrayed not as some exotic unknown but as powerful, willful, and able to subdue the machismo and hubris of the West. Well, uhmmm, ok. I personally don’t think cultural relations can be reduced to powerful vs. non-powerful, moral absolutes vs. moral ambivalence. Cross-cultural discussions, because of context and history, will invariably always be complex. So though I liked a significant amount of Hwang’s new play Chinglish, now in a world premiere production at the Goodman Theatre before it transfers to Broadway in the fall, it still seems to have some of the same value judgments that bothered me with M. Butterfly.
In November of last year, I came back to Manila, where I was born and lived till my early twenties, for the first time after 13 years of living in the United States. It was a joyous, heart-bursting, reinvigorating trip, but it was also an intensely dislocating one. Not only has the city physically changed in the more than a decade I’ve been away, which made navigating through it’s chaotic, rambunctious streets (it’s a grand city that is as big as Chicago) both thrilling and nerve-wracking, but I’ve changed as well, in terms of some of my outlook, beliefs, and social expectations. Some of the things I grew up with – intrinsic characteristics of Filipino society such as the rigid and self-perpetuating social stratification, a general aura of languor and fatalism, a subtle but intentional show-offyness among those who “have” – bothered and discombobulated me. How can my Manila friends shrug away what I was seeing and hearing? Why can’t I shrug it away like them, when none of these things are foreign to me? Have I forgotten how to maneuver through the social rules of engagement in a complicated milieu such as Manila’s? Am I now too “Western”? That’s why Tanya Saracho’s robust, electrifying, big-hearted new play El Nogalar, now receiving a too-short world premiere run at the Goodman Theatre as a co-production with Teatro Vista, is so resonant and affecting for me. In its vividly painted characters searching for the “right” balance of identity in a borderless, immigrant, socially-permeable world, I see parts of myself.
One would think that living and working in a globally-oriented, diversity-embracing, socially and politically liberal city such as Chicago as a highly-educated, professionally-mobile gay person of color, I would never feel like I’m being treated differently because I’m “gay” and/or because I’m a “person of color”. And 99% of the time I don’t. But there is that 1% of the time when I am made very conscious by other people, some of them highly-educated and professionally-mobile as well, intentionally or not, that I am living in a society where I am a minority. There’s that time when a client requested for another consultant to take my place on a project since I wasn’t a “fit” with their corporate culture. “Client fit” is a necessary hazard of my professional services occupation, so everyone took it in stride, including myself. But my co-workers and I knew what this client’s corporate culture was – macho, blue-collar, Alpha-male, and “not a fit” was a nice way of saying something else. Or there was that time when an acquaintance long-gone, a University of Chicago MBA to boot, sheepishly, embarrassedly, asked me: “I hope you’re not offended, but I really have to ask this, do Filipinos really eat black dogs?” My flippant answer, followed by a laugh, meant to mask any embarrassment, shame, anger, or hurt feelings (and the ridiculous fact that she didn’t really have to ask it): “No, we eat all colors of dog.” Of course I am infuriated and offended by these situations, but I have also recognized that someone’s values, perspectives, opinions, and intolerances are cultivated by upbringing and experience, and education, enlightenment, and constructive debate can only do so much in re-shaping these. Hey, I have some myself which I keep unexpressed. That’s why I applaud heartily, rousingly, with feet firmly planted in a standing ovation, the Goodman Theatre’s audacious, divisive, blistering, expectations-upending world premiere of Thomas Bradshaw’s Mary, a show that has been vigorously hated on by many of the city’s theater critics and bloggers, but which I encourage my blog readers to discover for themselves so they can come to their own conclusions about the value and impact of the work. I may not like all of Mary, and I have some reservations about Bradshaw’s writing, but I highly recommend it.
I grew up in the Philippines in the early 80s, during the height of the “conjugal dictatorship” of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. I remember, as a child, being told by my mom not to mention the Marcos name on the phone in any manner whatsoever, in case there was a wiretap and the whole family got into trouble. I remember being told the story of one of my grand-aunts and her housemaid who inadvertently crossed in front of one of Imelda Marcos’ sacred, un-crossable beautification gardens and were then taken by military police to the local police station and, in an act of flabbergasting intimidation, told to sing the Philippine national anthem and pledge allegiance to the Marcos government. I still distinctly remember the palpable environment of fear and mistrust, of covertness and suppression, of anxious caution. Anyone who has ever lived under an authoritarian regime is permanently marked by it. Conversely, anyone who has never lived under one will never fully understand it. Harold Pinter, despite his masterful, incisive storytelling gifts, and his empathy for oppressed populations such as the Turkish Kurds, whose plight he reflected in his short play Mountain Language, always lived in the free world. Consequently, I feel that his late 80s “political plays”, which, in addition to Mountain Language, also includesThe New World Order and One for the Road, all three I saw together in a spectacular basement production from the now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t SlimTack Theatre Co. last year, beat you over the head more than punch you in the belly or pierce you in the heart. However, when these plays are performed by the astonishing, courageous, invaluable Belarus Free Theatre, a theater company that has been repressed by the Belarusian government for speaking out in defense of the basic freedoms we sometimes take for granted, and now unable to go back home, you get the heartplunge and the bellypunch, and these plays become such a painful, illuminating, powerfully wrenching night of theater. Especially since Pinter’s angry words are interspersed with the heartfelt ones of Belarusian political prisoners. If you have only one night of theater you can go to this year, then let it be Belarus Free Theatre’s unforgettable Being Harold Pinter, which started performances at the Goodman Theatre last weekend, and will continue its month-long Chicago residency at Northwestern University and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in the upcoming weekends. It is as simple as that.
It is that time of year again when I’m making lists – from things I’m going to give up in the new year (eating pork belly being one of them) to places I’m going to visit in 2011 (return trips to Hong Kong and Vancouver and a first trip to Rio de Janeiro on top of that list) to the various ways I can meet hot chefs in the city (oops, ok, that’s a secret list). I’ve also compiled my annual ten best theatrical experiences for 2010, a list, as always, compiled from the point of view of a passionate audience member. It was another strong year in Chicago theater, and I saw plays everywhere in the city, from the major houses like the Goodman and Steppenwolf, to most of the storefronts, to the basement of an apartment building in Uptown where folding seats were set up in front of washers and dryers. Fantastic!
Recently Attended Events
- 2/02/2012: Disgraced (American Theater Company)
- 1/29/2012: Time Stands Still (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 1/28/2012: Ameriville (Victory Gardens Theater)
- 1/22/2012: Enron (Timeline Theatre Company)
- 12/21/2011: Penelope (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 12/17/2011: Spring Awakening (Griffin Theatre Company)
- 11/12/2011: Red Light Winter (Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.)
- 10/16/2011: The Ugly One (Sideshow Theatre Company)
- 10/15/2011: Overweight, Unimportant: Misshape - A European Supper (Trap Door Theatre)
- 10/08/2011: Follies (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre)
- 10/02/2011: Elling (Redtwist Theatre)
- 10/01/2011: Becky Shaw (A Red Orchid Theatre)
- 9/25/2011: Violet (Bailiwick Chicago)
- 9/18/2011: Clybourne Park (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 9/16/2011: The Kid Thing (About Face Theater and Chicago Dramatists)
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