Photo by Bethanie Hines

By Valerie Jean Johnson

“Audiences should bring all their expectations of hip-hop culture and put them in one pocket,” says poet/performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph of his widely acclaimed performance piece “the break/s.” “And then, those same expectations,” he continues with a warm and infectious laugh, “they should throw out over their shoulder.”

Sound advice from an artist whose enormously successfully career is marked by constant evolution. Joseph began his life in performance at the age of five, acting in television commercials, then moved on to the Broadway stage [“The Tap Dance Kid”] when he was just ten. In early adulthood he became an English teacher, the vocation whereby he became involved with slam poetry and spoken word performance. Within the last ten years his solo devised work has taken the theater/dance/poetry worlds by storm and, in turn, taken Joseph around the world. This week he brings his act to the MCA with “the break/s: a mixtape for the stage,” his “travel diary across planet hip-hop.” Read the rest of this entry »

Kirsten Shelton, Jessica Alejandra Wyatt, Vanessa Valecillos in "Carmen"/Photo: Cheryl Mann

RECOMMENDED

In an effort to give much-needed exposure to female choreographers, Artistic Director Eduardo Vilaro filled the Luna Negra Spring Program with pieces by four Latina choreographers. But don’t expect Saturday night at the Harris to be a politicized evening that mulls over ponderous gender issues; the three works I’ve seen (two in rehearsal) differ thematically and stylistically but have in common a raw, thrilling power. Expect an immensely pleasurable feast of passionate energy, performed by one of the most captivating companies in Chicago.

New York-based choreographer Nancy Turano addresses the subject of Latina femininity directly in her deconstruction of Carmen, the übersexual gypsy of Bizet’s famous opera. Read the rest of this entry »

Cassandra Bissell and Ron Rains

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Although best known as the Academy Award-winning 1952 John Ford film with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara that featured the Irish countryside shot in Technicolor as virtually a major character, “The Quiet Man” began life as a 1933 Saturday Evening Post piece by Irish author Maurice Walsh.  The character of onetime sparring partner Shawn Kelvin, who had gone to the States to make his fortune and returned home to marry Ellen O’Grady despite her boisterous brother Big Liam—whom Kelvin would have to face in a climactic pugilistic showdown to win her dowry—fired up Ford’s imagination.  Ford bought the film rights to the story from Walsh in 1936 but meanwhile Walsh had expanded his tale into a series of short stories called “Green Rushes” and had even restored the lead character’s name to the actual person that the original story had been based on, Paddy Bawn Enright, while Ellen and Liam O’Grady became Ellen Roe and Red Will O’Danaher.  In that expanded and more overtly political telling, Enright was not only a onetime boxer but an Irish freedom fighter during the Irish War of Independence.  Read the rest of this entry »

David Rhee, Keith Uchima, Erik Kaiko and Peter Sipla

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When Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” first appeared on Broadway back in 1976, few knew quite what to make of it.  World War II was as close to the show opening as we are now to the American Bicentennial Celebration that the piece was in part written to commemorate.  The story of the Westernization of isolationist Japan told from the Japanese perspective as imagined by white guys, the show began with Japanese-born film star Mako as “the Reciter” taking a samurai position and screaming at the audience and acting as narrator and commentator on kabuki-style staging with an all Asian-American cast singing Western-style show tunes.  The brainchild of producer Hal Prince, the show began as a straight drama but along the way, Prince thought that music could help the viability of the work, and Sondheim became involved.  Well, at least Broadway portrayals of Asians in musicals had come a long way since “Flower Drum Song.” Read the rest of this entry »

Edward Fraim as John and Christopher Marcum as Tomkins/Photo: Paul Metreyeon

I never knew there was such a thing as BeatleFest, but if the modest pleasures of a movie can spawn Lebowski Fest, then surely the Beatles merit their own event and Scott OKen’s “Mop Top Festival” (at Factory Theater) is a gentle invitation into world of fan worship.

Most Factory shows are about subcultures: the Chicago theater scene, strip clubs, Renaissance Fair freaks.  The company’s current show is probably closest in tone to 2005′s “Lonesome Hoboes,” an amiable riff on Bob Dylan acolytes that spoofed their devotion while also explicating the various reasons why a certain musician might have a stranglehold on a person’s outlook on life.  Yes, it’s an obsession.  But it’s music, man.

OKen has been responsible for some of Factory’s more outrageous shows—huge casts performing in style that is loud, messy, ridiculous, exhausting and hilarious all at once.  His current effort (which he also directs) is comparatively mellow, though bursting at the seams in mostly the wrong ways.  The show has potential but needs major trims and a clearer focus. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Sometimes stand-ups claim artistic liberty to fabricate certain chapters of their autobiography or make overblown caricatures of their family members. But you don’t get that feeling from New York’s Ross Bennett, who can conceivably tie most his routine back to the quarrelsome relationship with his curt, simpleminded drill-sergeant father. Bennett’s delivery sounds like honest confession—a David Sedaris kind of storytelling without the irony—as he explains to you how he dropped out of West Point to become a comedian, a decision his father considered like “dropping out of the human race to be a cloud.” Another confession is his retelling of the day JFK was assassinated, when his weeping third-grade teacher dismissed the class, saying, “‘Children, go home, your parents will have something to tell you.’ I went up to my father and said, ‘Dad, Mrs. Lamb is crying, and she says there is something you want to tell me.’ And my father said, ‘she’s a liar and a whore.’” (Andy Seifert)

March 31-April 5, at Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, (312)337-4027.

RECOMMENDED

Remember that “Whose Line is it Anyway?” show? That British improv import hosted by Drew Carey that virtually always ended with Wayne Brady flailing around for cheap laughs? Well, as I recall, there were some pretty decent sketches once in a while, and most involved comic journeyman Greg Proops, whose unrelenting sarcasm and brash attitude constantly shattered the fourth wall. As a stand-up, Proops has a social/political bent; he timidly identifies himself as a San Franciscan with liberal leanings, willing to poke fun at hippies and stoners and derisively slam conservatives and fundamentalists. Delivery-wise, Proops uses gesture-ridden flamboyance to rip into what ails him, occasionally unleashing Dennis Miller-esque ramblings, like this bit on steroids in baseball: “There are a lot of fat white people who say, ‘rahr, Barry Bonds was a cheater, I like the old days.’ Oh yeah, the old days were great, where giant, obese, overfed, underpaid, mustachioed walruses clogged up the base paths like a pork rind in Dick Cheney’s arteries, yeah those were glorious days.” (Andy Seifert)

March 26-27, at Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, (312)337-4027.

Emily Stein, associate director of Chicago’s Zephyr Dance, holds folded pieces of paper in the palm of her hand and discretely passes them out to a group of ten people who are settling into their folding chairs in the auditorium at Holstein Park. “Now don’t show your neighbor,” she says. Everyone carefully unfolds the slips of paper to find out what is written inside (mine says “the forest”). “I want you to keep this word in mind while you are watching the performance,” Stein says.

The only thing that is possibly more secretive than these little notes is how everyone found out about this event in the first place-which is mostly through email or word-of-mouth. The all-female Zephyr Dance collective has been hosting open rehearsals three times a year which allow the public to view the group’s performances-in-progress. “We gear them to be smaller groups so that people can respond to it more,” says Michelle Kranicke, Zephyr Dance’s founder, of the previews.

The collective is rehearsing a performance that will be featured in their upcoming show at the Epiphany Church in June. Tonight is Stein’s chance to showcase her latest project, “Collaborative Solos.” The main theme is “this tree is a dance,” she says. Stein, Kranicke and two additional dancers, Andrea Cerniglia and Anne Kasdorf, each interpret this theme in their own way.

 ”You don’t go to the symphony and ask ‘What did that C-sharp mean?’” Stein says after the performance, as the audience is invited to critique the work. “So it’s definitely about getting people to not be afraid of enjoying dance.” (Katie Fanuko)

Here’s the release from Northlight:

Northlight welcomes back Tony Award winners John Mahoney and Rondi Reed for its 35th Anniversary Season

Season to include The Marvelous Wonderettes, Souvenir, Awake and Sing, and A Life

Chicago, IL-Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans are proud to announce the 2009-2010 Northlight Season, which includes Roger Bean’s pop musical, The Marvelous Wonderettes; Stephen Temperley’s comedic musical tribute, Souvenir directed by David Bell; Clifford Odets’ Depression-era classic Awake and Sing directed by Amy Morton and featuring Rondi Reed and Mike Nussbaum; Hugh Leonard’s Irish drama, A Life directed by BJ Jones, starring John Mahoney; and another production to be announced (now updated to include Low Down Dirty Blues). Read the rest of this entry »

“Y’know what I mean?” is one of those quick interjections comedians like to throw in for rhythmic purposes, but Norm Macdonald says it so often (it feels like approximately seventy times in a twenty-five-minute interview) that maybe he’s unconsciously asking, “Do you understand the joke?” See, Norm’s biting, occasionally offensive and/or incoherently mumbled style has been known to go over the heads of TV execs (see “The Norm Show”) and mainstream audiences (see his coldly received David Hasslehoff one-liners on SNL’s Weekend Update). So when douchebags and dimwits don’t get your jokes, you take ‘em someplace else: stand-up clubs.

“In terms of comedy, it’s preferable,” Macdonald says of the stand-up scene. “Travel sucks. Like I would do one room forever, I don’t really care where I am. But the only place you can do that is Vegas, and then they make you do the same material every time. Read the rest of this entry »