Aug 18

Here and There

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I’m not really ready to let the summer go just yet (although I could definitely live without the sweat baths I take nearly every week while interminably waiting in the ORD taxi line to get home on travel-frenzied Thursday late nights).  But I’ve already began to plan my theater schedule for the upcoming six to eight weeks as Chicago theater companies unveil their fall seasons; I’m also taking several trips during this time period to see some of the more hotly-anticipated productions in other theater-mad cities like ours.  My plate will be quite full, but what a satisfying, bountiful harvest it will contain!

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Mar 11

Garage Band

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There’s a whole lot of shaking going on at Steppenwolf’s Garage Theater with three of Chicago’s up-and-coming theater companies being given Steppenwolf’s formidable resources to stage their plays in rotating repertory.  It’s a very generous, very admirable move from one of the stalwart arts organizations in the city, and overall I can recommend all three, to varying degrees of enthusiasm.  I think this is a terrific shot in the arm for Chicago’s storefront theater scene and all three theater companies stepped up to plate.  Here’s what I think:

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Feb 12

Genius

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Since I’m a pretty frequent theatergoer, I’m probably not as easily impressed by  something as the next guy is (so I heartily snorted with scorn and derision at the suburban soccer dad sitting beside me, over –the-moon with pleasure, at the undistinguished, Broadway-bound trainwreck that was The Addams Family last month).  I see a lot of plays I like, and some that I absolutely love, but it’s pretty rare for me to see something that I’m blown away by.  Something that stops me in my tracks to remind me how invaluable theater can be to living a life intelligently and fully.  It happened in 2007 at Steppenwolf during the unforgettable world premiere of August:  Osage County which indisputably proved the power of great theatrical storytelling.  It hasn’t happened since…well, until this week, when I was at the two necessary nights for Steppenwolf’s Chicago premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s genius The Brother/Sister Plays, which already pulverized with shock and awe New York’s jaded theatergoers, including the New York Times’ Ben Brantley, in their Public Theatre premiere late last year. (My usual full disclosure statement:  I am a member of Steppenwolf’s Auxiliary Council, the theater’s young professionals’ board).  Like August, The Brother/Sister Plays, comprised on one night of the longer In the Red and Brown Water and on another night of the two one-acts, The Brothers Size and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet, is great theatrical story-telling.  But McCraney’s important magnum opus is more epic, more ambitious, more risk-taking, not only in theatrical form, but in theatrical content as it navigates through explosive threads in the African-American experience (underage pregnancy, homosexuality practiced on the “downlow” among straight men).  The Brother/Sister Plays is heady, intense, exhilarating, wrenching, proof that theater, with its mix of drama, movement, dance, and music, is the most complete live performance experience possible; more importantly, with its scope, its creativity, its emotional magnetism, it’s probably my theater-going generation’s Angels In America.

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Feb 10

Viewing List

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In the spirit of constructive feedback, my friend Joel suggested I add a blog section listing any upcoming performances I’m attending, so folks like you, my dear, devoted readers, could decide whether you would want to attend the same shows or performances, as well.  That’s probably not going to happen any time soon, since my preciously scarce blog real estate is already quite packed with Twitter feeds, blog rolls, and a listing of shows I had recently attended (which provides a general indication of what potentially would be content for upcoming postings).   However, I do listen to my friends suggestions, even if they’re delivered a little curmudgeonly (and I say that lovingly, Joel!), so here then are some of the performances I’m planning to go to this month.  February in all its cold, snowy glory is always seen as the “dead zone” of the Chicago winter season, but if you judge by the number of intriguing, lively, potentially can’t-miss shows, it’s probably more equivalent to July in Maui, arts-wise.

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Dec 19

2009’s Theatrical Treasures

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cchad-deity-2.jpgI’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. 

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Sep 15

Ten Plays to Watch in Chicago this Fall

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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). 

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