Here’s the press release from Saint Sebastian Players:

“A COLLECTION OF COLLECTIONS”

SAINT SEBASTIAN PLAYERS ANNOUNCE 29TH SEASON

CHICAGO—A collection of monologues, a collection of Chekhov short plays and a collection of nuns make up the Saint Sebastian Players’ 29th season, as well as the company’s annual Monologue Matchup Competition fundraiser. Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: On September 14, Apple Tree announced it was closing. Read the press release here: http://newcitystage.com/2009/09/14/apple-tree-closes-its-doors/

Here’s the press release from Apple Tree:

Apple Tree Announces 2009-2010 Season of “Love and “Laughter”
Highland Park, IL – Apple Tree Theatre is proud to announce its 27th season of plays and musicals—some classics, some new—all with inspiring stories, exceptional directors and designers, and exciting casts of some of Chicago’s favorite actors. Our 2009-2010 season features four productions of “Love and Laughter” that will move your heart and tickle your funny bone. Read the rest of this entry »

The Second City just launched its Neighborhood Tour this month, designed to be an entertaining—and educational—walk through Old Town. Second City originally considered doing an all-Chicago tour, but “we talked about Old Town for an hour and a half. There are so many landmarks and so much history just in Old Town alone,” says Managing Director Jenna Altobelli. The Tour was written by Margaret Hicks, who is also the primary guide. Altobelli says a similar tour had been done before, but time restraints had prevented a revival. “Margaret Hicks came in last year and wanted to bring it back,” she says. “It’s her persistence that made it happen. We’re coming up on our fiftieth anniversary and we’re trying to do some auxiliary things to celebrate our time in this neighborhood and in Chicago.” The tour highlights local bars, homes, churches and architecture, including St. Michael’s Church, Old Town Ale House and Pipers Alley, as well as Second City facilities. While rooted in history, the tour is designed for humor. “It’s based in fact, but there’s also improvisation in there, and it’s funny,” Altobelli says. “It’s not for the major history buff, but it’s for somebody who wants to learn some stuff and have a lot of fun.” The tours run Wednesdays and Sundays through October 4.

Photo: Peter Wynn Thompson

By Whitney Dibo

In another life, Steve Scott might have directed high school musicals. The prolific Chicago director actually got his start in the classroom—teaching high school and then college in his home state of Kansas. “I originally taught at a small religious university,” he says with a laugh. “Let’s just say I didn’t fit in terribly well.”

That life is a far cry from Scott’s current career as a sought-after freelance director and associate producer of The Goodman Theatre (a job he’s held for twenty-two years). But it wasn’t the straight-and-narrow path that led Scott to his current post. “I never had a system,” he says, “I never had a plan for the next ten years.” In fact, the reputable Scott has no formal directing training—whatever that may say about the necessity of pricey MFA training programs. The origin of Scott’s career stems from directing one-acts in grad school (“They asked me to help because everyone else was busy,” he says) and later from running a summer-stock company in Kansas.

After skipping out of Kansas and heading for the big city, Scott landed a job as The Goodman Theatre’s Director of Education, due to his extensive teaching background. Around that same time, he started directing at small theaters around town. “I would do a production that was reasonably good, so another theater would call me up,” Scott says with a shrug. It was a slow burn, but the consistent high quality of Scott’s work eventually earned him the most valuable currency in the theater community: a good reputation. Seven years later, after a stint as a teacher at The Latin School of Chicago, newly crowned Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls brought on Scott as his right-hand man. “Bob didn’t want to be burdened with administrative work,” the persistently jolly Scott says without a trace of resentment. “He is impatient with details.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Saverio Truglia

You know you’re completely uninvolved in a performance when a cell phone goes off for the second time, you’re not bothered one bit and you actually find yourself trying to identify its musical ringtone.  Such was my experience at the opening night of “El Grito del Bronx,” a play whose fierce title proved to be the most stirring thing of the evening.  Literally translated, it means “A Cry from the Bronx,” but I prefer “Bronx Scream” since the poetry is more in line with playwright Midgalia Cruz’s highly visceral and at times unrealistic writing style.

As the press release for this Teatro Vista/Collaboraction/Goodman production trumpets, “El Grito” is a “powerful new work exploring the recurring cycle of violence, the universality of suffering and the power of the human spirit to soar again.”  This describes the themes upon which the play touches, although it also comments on the plight of death-row inmates, machismo, homophobia and forgiveness—none of which are explored to any satisfaction.  The action gives us patricide—Puerto Rican style—when a 14 year-old teenager in the Bronx bludgeons his abusive Latin father to death with a hammer, a man who has been physically and emotionally abusive towards his 12-year-old daughter and the family’s mother.  It’s a story that’s been told a thousand times before, replete with the same Latin stereotypes, but probably not as colorfully as it has been here given Ms. Cruz’s acute language, poeticized moments, song fragments and tonal shifts between different time periods and places.  Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Carl Wiedemann

RECOMMENDED

Atalee Judy takes a by-any-means-necessary approach to art—a fight club method of performance, a fierce training regimen replete with lumps and lesions that strips away the fat and bores through tenderized flesh to the core of her subject. No medium is left unturned in the hunt and what is found is no less than the raw materials of humanity: violence, humor, sex, silliness, passion, more flesh and—addressed head-on in this latest work—death. The choreography of this inquiry is a collaborative effort; seven postmortem ruminations—some tender, some terrifying, some bizarre—were developed by the ensemble, who pulled stories from the public and private spheres, setting their swan songs in spaces familiar and strange, imaginary and claustrophobic. The deaths of Mama Cass, a neighbor, a fondly remembered grandmother and the young man who died two years ago whilst running the Chicago Marathon are reimagined and plumbed, along with a death narrowly averted by a stranger’s intervention and the simulacrum between a publicized story of two hoarding agoraphobes and the cancer gradually destroying one company member’s mother. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Hamlin Park Studio Theater, 3035 N. Hoyne, (773)841-2663. July 29-31 and August 5-7, 7:30pm. $15.

Derick Grant/Photo: Joanne Chan

RECOMMENDED

Rewatching Gene Kelly in a snowy, over-played VHS tape of “Summer Stock” at my parents’ house this weekend, I was reminded that tap is joy. I dare anyone to watch Kelly barrel roll or Astaire grapevine or Hines spin a mind-blowing improvisation and not wonder like a child at the magic of possessing limbs, or resist the urge to stomp and spin about the kitchen afterward. No wonder summer is the season of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project and “Rhythm World,” a fortnight of performances and workshops taught by some of the greatest tappers alive; it’s the time of year when the pulse of the city is up-tempo and full of life. The rhythmic manifestation of this vibe starts with workshops and classes around the city this week and culminates at the beginning of August with a free concert in the Pritzker starring every brilliant youth ensemble, soloist, hoofer, beat-boxer and barrel-pounder CHRP Director Lane Alexander can get a hold of. The crème—Rhythm Project faculty, Bessie winners, the finest young tap prodigies—perform a few days later in “JUBA!” on the MCA Stage. “Rhythm World” is a lively celebration and a history lesson in the American art form that exemplifies the best qualities of the designation: optimism, inclusiveness, innovation and irrepressible energy. (Sharon Hoyer)

Classes and workshops being July 27, with the first public performance at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph, Sun, Aug 2, 6:30pm. Free. “JUBA!” at the MCA Stage, 220 E. Chicago Ave, (312)397-4010. Thu, Aug 6 and Sat, Aug 8, 7:30pm. $30.

Photo: Lynne Glazer

RECOMMENDED

It’s ironic that Normand Latourelle, the man behind “Cavalia,” a big-top spectacle boasting an international mix of glorious horse breeds, was also one of the driving forces, around the mid-1980s, behind “Cirque du Soleil.”  Ironic since it was this nouveau-circus-outfit-turned-global-franchise-blockbuster, easily Canada’s most successful entertainment export of all time (sorry, Celine), that helped audiences of all ages all but forget that the “Greatest Show on Earth”— as the formative circus of my childhood, Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey, used to be known—at one time featured a wild kingdom of sorts (elephants, lions, tigers and llamas) for audiences to gawk at.  With “Cavalia” the animal element has been (thankfully) reintroduced into the ring, but not in any way that would have animal-rights’ groups picketing outside the 100-foot tall and 26,000-square-foot wide touring tent that has been pitched at Racine and Jackson for “Cavalia”’s Chicago engagement.  Given the complete lack of “equestrian entertainments”—I don’t know about you but the last time I saw a horse successfully execute a battement tendu it was for choreographer Twyla Tharp in the movie “Hair”—this expensively produced and exotic entertainment juggernaut featuring horses certainly fills a niche.  But although it’s always entertaining, at two-and-a-half-hours running time, the show as a whole is slightly less than exhilarating.  And while its creators have guaranteed a unique evening out—for a hefty price, it must be said, although at least one can see where the money has gone—they haven’t molded it into something that is as yet uniquely special. Read the rest of this entry »

Amanda Blake Davis, Beth Melewski, Andy St. Clair, Christina Anthony, Timothy Edward Mason and Tom Flanigan/Photo: Bob Knuth

RECOMMENDED

Second City revues rarely diverge from format.  The rhythms are bright and confident, and comedic actors with darker, more unusual inclinations typically have a steeper learning curve adjusting to the form while retaining some bite.

For audiences, the setup provides a baseline consistency.  It has also served many a Second City alumus very, very well—banging out the same show every night, they leave here with TV-ready experience and polish.

Ultimately, the quality of any revue is contingent on how well its writer-performers mesh—their comedic philosophy, their personalities—and the cast occupying the Second City’s e.t.c. stage is among the best in recent years.  The same cannot be said of their current show, directed by Matt Hovde. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Bailiwick’s ‘Cousins Grimm” begins with the song “Why not a Fairytale?” and by the end of Scott Ferguson’s world-premiere production, the audience feels like singing along.  A musical about playwrights creating a gay, musical version of the Grimm’s fairytales may sound ridiculous—and it is—but it is also fabulous.  Shamelessly campy, Bailiwick’s “The Cousins Grimm” is jam-packed with laughs—so much so that one audience member said that her mouth hurt from smiling.  Read the rest of this entry »