Midway through the latest MCA Stage production, Anna Halprin/Anne Collod and guests: parades & changes, replays when dancer Laurent Pichaud was transformed into a wacky, flummoxing cross between Rae Dawn Chong in Quest for Fire and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind run through a trash compactor, wearing a variety of disparate costumes and accoutrements, from animal heads to hoop skirts to fur-lined clogs to trash bags to a mop and bucket which the rest of the cast had piled on him while a hypnotic, electronica score played in the background, I had to remind myself that I was neither drunk, medicated, or ‘shroomed. I have always been an avid fan and passionate advocate of MCA Stage, but this adventurous, highly audience-demanding show, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it plays an essential, irreplaceable role in making sure that our beloved Chicago will never just be flyover country in the minds and hearts of serious performance artists everywhere. I’m not really sure if parades & changes, replays is dance, theater, bizarro fashion show, or a combination David Lynchian-Burning Man fantasia, but, it is a highly memorable, intriguing, jaw-dropping night of performance (and I guess the New York Times and the audience in this summer’s Athens and Epidaurus Festival, one of the most prestigious dance festivals in the world, also didn’t really know what to make of it, as well.)
As avid readers of this blog know, I have pretty definitive ideas on what I like when it comes to theater (challenging material, creative re-envisionings) and on what I don’t (inanity, inauthenticity, audience pandering). Sean Graney and The Hypocrites are definitely often in the “like” column, and sometimes even in the “very much liked” one; I strongly feel that they have an abundance of collective creative genius which is not often surpassed in the city’s storefront theater scene. Although I admired elements of Graney’s new adaptation of Frankenstein, the first time the Hypocrites, a truly edgy storefront theater group was performing at MCA Stage, a truly edgy performance space and presenting entity (why did it take so long?), I left the show discombobulated, the second straight Hypocrites production (after Oedipus) that I didn’t really buy into.
The biggest laugh I had over the weekend (more so than the bellyaching guffaws I tried hard to suppress while watching pseudo-hipsters pretend to look impressed by some atrocious art during the West Loop gallery openings last Friday, but that’s a topic for another blog post) was over New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood’s almost sheepish admission – in print, for everyone to read -that New York theater, specifically Broadway, should be considered the east side of Chicago, given the number of Chicago-originating productions and artists currently on stage in New York. Thank you, Mr. Isherwood, but our fair city already has an east side, so we don’t really need to annex New York City. It was still pretty hilarious, though, to finally see the snobbish, self-promoting, out-of-touch Times theater section admit what many of us passionate theater aficionados have known for a while now – that the vital center of American theater has already migrated from the Big Apple to the City of Broad Shoulders. So while one-step-behind New Yorkers will be drooling over chi-town exports Superior Donuts, A Steady Rain, and David Cromer (making his Broadway directing debut with revivals of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound, running in repertory) this fall, theater-forward Chicago audiences will be immersing ourselves in some of the best theater this side of the Atlantic. I’ve compiled below my annual list of the ten must-see theatrical events in Chicago this fall, most of them world premieres, never been seen anywhere; hopefully I’ll bump into many of you in some of them. You never know, but that obscure, low-key, storefront production you paid twenty bucks for may be next year’s frenzy-inducing hot ticket in New York (exhibit A: A Steady Rain).
As my avid blog readers know, I am an enthusiastic supporter of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s performance season, known as MCA Stage. I whole-heartedly agreed with one of my Chicago culturati friends when he said that MCA Stage is like our own version of the Brookly Academy of Music (BAM) in New York, the one institution in the city that has the vision, the commitment, and yes, the balls to present cutting-edge, risky, courageous, potentially audience-distancing work from both US-based and international arts organizations. The fact that they brought New York experimental theater Elevator Repair Company’s mesmerizing seven and a half hour Gatz last year (one of my top ten cultural experiences ever!) makes me want to throw money at them, regardless of what they’re showing. They just released their 2009-2010 season this week, and I’m already itching to open my wallet. I’m a little surprised, and a tad disappointed, that MCA Stage only has two straight-up theatrical offerings next year: our very own The Hypocrites is putting on an original adaptation of Frankenstein (October 21-November 1, 2009) from Artistic Director Sean Graney, to be staged in his trademark promenade staging; and experimental theater provocateur Young Jean-Lee’s The Shipment (March 26-28, 2010), a “Black identity politics” show using a mix of song, dance, theater, and stand-up comedy, which may make the Wooster Group’s controversial The Emperor Jones seem like an Easter garden brunch by comparison. There’s a very strong dance focus this year, with dance greats Lucinda Childs and Anna Halprin, and contemporary dance groups that have never been seen in Chicago such as the John Jasperse Company, as part of the season, but the one performance I’m looking forward to is a potentially bombastic collaboration between London-based choreographer Akram Khan and the National Ballet of China called bahok, from the Bengali word for “carrier”, which explores issues of cultural and national identity within the throughline of multi-cultural passengers stranded in an airport. It sounds ridiculously good! You can view the entire MCA Stage season here.
Last Sunday evening, in what was supposedly spring in Chicago, as I miserably waited for the train to arrive on the Brown Line platform, pelted by freezing rain and snow, standing in slush, I wondered what kind of perfect past life (maybe filled with warm, tropical breezes, constant sunlight, and boys in thongs?) did I have that I should be paying for it in this life. The weather for the rest of the month may continue to be unseasonably cold, but the city’s performing arts scene is continuing to warm up and sizzle, with tons of major theater and music events to go to. As my monthly public service announcement to my avid blog readers, I’m giving a preview of the noteworthy performances and events I’m planning to go to in the month of April.
Sometimes when you think you’ve seen it all at the theater, a sweet roll, perfectly aimed like a stealth missile, knocks you senseless. Thank goodness, I didn’t mean this literally, because the buns that the actors of Teatro de Ciertos Habitantantes‘ Monsters and Prodigies: The History of the Castrati were pelting the audience with during a wacky, whacked-out foodfight at the performance on Friday night at the MCA Stage, hit my shoe instead of my forehead. But I might as well have been clobbered over the head by this heady, outrageously eccentric, undeniably informative, trainstopping hybrid of theater, opera, and an MFA lecture, the latest entry in an unforgettable Museum of Contemporary Art performance season. It is that good, and that memorable. And I am so thrilled that between the Goodman’s Eugene O’Neill Festival, the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s World Stage season, and the MCA Stage line-up, Chicago audiences have, since the fall of last year, had the opportunity to sample some of the best of the world’s theatrical offerings. This production, though, from the Mexico-City based theater company is quite a unique, one-of-a-kind experience – inventive and riveting, each artistic decision an essential contributor to communicating its themes and advancing its narrative structure.
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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