For someone who makes a living working with organizations to get through change, it’s ironic that I can sometimes be a little resistant to it; hey, I’ve driven the same Honda Accord for ten years, dents, peeling paint, multiple muffler replacements, and all. So I’m a little ambivalent about the numerous changes that Collaboraction’s Sketchbook Festival introduces this year in its eight annual edition. I’ve been going to Sketchbook over the past several years to see 14 short plays, nothing more than ten minutes, many running quite less, most startlingly original and unique, presented amidst a dance club/party/art gallery atmosphere - and I firmly believe that it is one of the must-see, must-go-to theatrical events of any given season. It is theater as sensory overload, as an experiment in synesthesia - where risks are taken; where creative bubbles are explored and exploded; where music, language, dance and visual art (plus the occasional beer keg) are mixed together to come up with one heck of a night you’ll recall shuddering, either from excitement, exhaustion, or both. I fondly remember my first Sketchbook evening in its former home at the rough-and-tumble Chopin Theater- DJs spinning madly as if in a rave party, kids breakdancing, people sitting on the floor, paintings everywhere, dresses suspended in mid-air (which I never figured out if they were part of the art or part of the set), plastic cups of beer being passed around, and a collection of strange, intriguing, riveting plays (there was a puppet show, a really cryptic play from Brett Neveu about people on the el changing seats all the time for no apparent reason, something about vampires, and a tight, suspenseful, interrogation drama). None of these, except for the strange, intriguing, riveting plays part (and I think there are less of them this year than in previous years), are in the Sketchbook at the Steppenwolf Garage Theatre. Don’t get me wrong - I still highly recommend Sketchbook to anyone who loves Chicago theatre and its creativity and unpredictability; it’s something I will bring out-of-town guests to, or acquaintances whose idea of theater is seeing Wicked fifteen times, since it is still quite a unique, memorable, and fun evening. Something’s missing, though, and call it maturing, evolving, reinventing, embracing adulthood, but it’s a different Sketchbook, and I’m a little wistful at the thought.
To be honest, I never really cared for the DJs. But I miss the musical performers and the visual arts displays (last year, Sketchbook’s first year at the Steppenwolf Garage, there were three-dimensional photographs and video and audio installations). In his program notes, Anthony Moseley, Collaboraction Artistic Director, says that “This year we have internalized the elements of music and visual art that have been the hallmark of the festival.” Well, this particular audience member thinks there needs to be some more internalizing to do, since the musical interludes are few, brief, and not very memorable. They are not substitutes for actual performances. Most of the music is really pumped-in house music (so why were the DJs given the boot then?). The “integrated” visual art consists of a continuous loop of photographic slides, and many of these photos look like published ones from the 1970s. I don’t really get the connections between the photos and the plays, and maybe it’s because the slides are projected on flimsy scrims, instead of actual screens, making them really hard to make out. Oh, plus there’s a silent movie as part of one of the plays in Program A, Gregory Moss’s “Count Orlock’s Castle”, a bizarre combo of a 40s horror movie and a 70s slasher flick which really didn’t make any sense.
Another big change this year too is the introduction of SUBMIT, a program which allows audience members to submit responses to thirteen questions about random topics (such as “What is your first memory as a child?”, “How do you feel about the American economy?”, “How do you support the American soldier?”, and my favorite, “How has the internet played a role in your sexual relationships?”). These responses, either emailed in, or left as voicemail, are read by an ensemble of five actors, or played as voiceovers in between the plays. I like the concept a lot, and some of the responses are quite interesting (and because there are thousands of responses to choose from, the SUBMIT portion varies from show to show), but I don’t think they are appropriately highlighted (the ensemble’s readings, at times, come off a little too matter-of-factly instead of dramatic, and the voiceovers are sometimes overlapped and repeated so you really lose the power and impact of the stories).
But what about the plays? I really like the format of Sketchbook with the 14 plays divided into two Programs (A and B) of seven plays each, so you can choose whether to just see one evening of short plays, come back on two evenings to see all of them, or attend a marathon (usually Saturdays and the Closing Night) to see all of them in one sitting. As it is with all short play collections, there will be undeniable flashes of brilliance and undeniable duds too. I’m not too enamored of Program A, since it contains head-scratchers like Laura Jacqmin’s “Parkersburg” where the feuding coalminers are teenage girls in frilly dresses, and uninvolving sketches like Eric Ziegenhagen’s “Bad News” about a father and his daughter having one last conversation before he goes to prison for something. The best play in Program A is Sean Graney’s “I’s N Ur B1UDStR33M COZIN FA6OSITOSIZ” about a young boy dying from a degenerative, hereditary disease, staged with a voiceover using the Internet shorthand leetspeak while the actor Bubba Weiler silently, but expressively, types into a laptop. It is intriguingly staged and has real emotional punch when the kid says he forgives his mother (who apparently transmitted the disease to him through her genetic makeup).
The gems are in Program B, so if there is only one Sketchbook night to attend, it’s this one. The Neo-Futurists’ Greg Allen contributes “Hackneyed”, a comedy sketch more hilarious than anything on Saturday Night Live, about two actors who alternately scream, shoot, and fall down dead based on instructions from an announcer. It’s really difficult to describe, but quite impactful. Ira Gamerman’s “Dated: A Cautionary Tale for Facebook Users” is very fresh, hip, of-the-moment, and contains a wonderful performance by the exciting young actor Juergen Hooper, as a guy whose girlfriend breaks up with him through Facebook, MySpace, and Live Journal, and whom he subsequently stalks obsessively. The best play among the 14 plays this year comes at the end of Program B, with Emily Schwartz’s “Cowboy Birthday Party”, which involves yes, six cowboys having a birthday party, a blindfolded string ensemble, and some random shootings. Outrageously original, and can’t-take-your-eyes-off thrilling, “Cowboy Birthday Party” is the reason, for me, that Sketchbook needs to continue, to thrive, and yes, to mature and evolve, in the Chicago theater scene - it showcases theatrical voices which assure us that our future artistic lives will be rich and satisfying. So, ok, I’ll take the changes that have been made this year, and know that it’s all for the better, but Sketchbook better have folks like those cowboys in future editions. An abundance of imagination is something that shouldn’t ever change.
Tags: Collaboraction
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