Members of 2nd Story (John Wilson, Kim Morris, and Doug Whippo)

RECOMMENDED

Lifeline Theatre and Live Bait Theater offer a smorgasbord of storytelling experiences by presenting the fourteenth-annual Fillet of Solo Festival. Fans of the solo performance medium should have no problem finding something to enjoy at the festival, which performs at a variety of locations in Chicago over the next few weeks.

Last weekend’s offerings included performances by three members of 2nd Story recited stories that, though otherwise disconnected, were told in an interwoven fashion that echoed one another in parts. Following 2nd Story, the storytelling collective Sweat Girls delivered five monologues, under the title “The Sweat Girls are A-Gaga!,” that touched on late motherhood, first-time home-buying and seeing your child off to college, among other topics.

If these performances were any indication, the Fillet of Solo Festival shouldn’t disappoint. The festival has programmed such a wide variety of performers, the only caveat is that even a little research into who is playing on a given night will go a long way. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

The Fillet of Solo Festival (Lifeline Theatre and Live Bait Theater) at Lifeline Theatre, 6912 North Glenwood and The Artistic Home, 3914 North Clark, (773)761-4477. Through August 21.

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Since 2001, artistic director Pete Guither has been projecting images onto naked performers as part of “The Living Canvas.” “Demons,” their seventh show in Chicago, delves into the mind of a troubled young woman as she transports her sister into the fantastical world she lives in: a world filled with faeries, phantasms and playful creatures. These creatures are boldly portrayed by eight other unclad actors of varying shapes and sizes who are constantly in motion: scrambling up the scaffolding of the set, executing elaborate movement routines, or creating a living wall of art. The psychedelic color displays projected onto the actors and the set coupled with Isaac Mandel’s invigorating sound design exquisitely highlight the simple beauty of the piece. For anyone feeling particularly affected by the summer heat, Guither has a solution for you: take those restrictive clothes off. Seriously. There is a full number designed for audience participation at the end of every show. From the packed house on the night I saw it, and the amount of willing audience participation, “The Living Canvas” is highly regarded not only as a visually striking performance, but as an exciting, interactive experience. (Zach Freeman)

The Living Canvas at National Pastime Theater, 4139 N. Broadway, (773)327-7077, through August 14. $20.

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The story goes that songwriter Harold Arlen hailed a Manhattan taxi one rainy day only to have the cab driver serenade him with “Stormy Weather.” “Do you know who wrote that?” Arlen inquired. “Sure, Irving Berlin,” answered the driver. “Try again.” “Richard Rodgers.” “Nope.” “Cole Porter?” “Actually, I wrote it.” “Who are you?” asked the skeptical driver. “Harold Arlen.” “Harold who?” Despite having composed more than 400 songs including many of the biggest hits of the twentieth century, Arlen has never been a household name. Though he was the songwriter’s songwriter, when “Over the Rainbow” was voted the No. 1 “Song of the Century” by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001, Judy Garland’s name was there but Arlen’s name was never mentioned. And yet, had you asked Garland, Sinatra, Ella or virtually any of the singers or songwriters closely associated with the classic American Songbook who their favorite songwriter was, the answer was simply, “Harold.” Read the rest of this entry »

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There are no seats for “Fuerza Bruta: Look Up”; you’ll spend the entire sixty-five minutes standing on the stage of the Auditorium Theatre. Actually, you’ll spend most of the time jumping, cheering and dancing along with the joyous cast of this truly spectacular event, leaving the theater in a state of euphoria, wanting more. Or not, if your idea of a night at the theater is a well-defined personal space and a performance that at least attempts to create a cohesive narrative. Cohesion is consciously, anarchically rejected in “Fuerza Bruta,” as evidenced in one of the pieces—the show is made up of a series of disconnected performance fragments—when the cast is crammed into a too-small room above and in front of the audience, fidgeting to the point of destruction, where walls made of boxes, furniture in the form of checkered-tableclothed plastic tables, chairs and trash cans are soon rained down toward us. Soon free of the confines of conformity, the cast breaks into a joyous dance before descending the stage to frolic amongst the audience, dancing, breaking harmless styrofoam forms over unexpectant heads and then suddenly disappearing to regroup for the next piece.

A cultural mashup that might be the perfect entertainment for our times, “Fuerza Bruta: Look Up” is a burst of joy, a feast for the eyes, ears and mind. A fin-du-monde what-the-hellness seems to wash over the whole affair, sometimes decadent, sometimes erotic, always playful. The cast is a handsome mix of youngish boho chics, with a vaguely exotic aura emanating from the Argentinean origins of the work’s artistic director/impresario Diqui James (who also co-founded the seminal “De La Guardia”), composer Gaby Kerpel and many of the other key creators and cast members. The show’s pieces seem to alternate between a dystopian futurism and a utopian surrealism, with tableaus distinctly conjuring up visual art motifs from those movements. Or, alternately, men suffer, women play. As in a man, in a suit and tie, running on a giant treadmill for no apparent reason. He is shot, wounded and keeps running. Does he represent the seemingly constant state of political turmoil, with coup d’états and brutal military regimes that haunt Latin America? Or perhaps the inextricable blend of big business and violence that accompanies commercial power flexed outside its natural borders? Juxtaposed with such dramatic imagery, women soon frolic balletically on a giant shimmering wall, as if dancing on the wind. Later, erotic nymphs enchant the crowd in a giant overhead dipping pool of sorts, conjuring up Homerian Sirens, Surrealism and synchronized swimming at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: AJ Zanyk

By Monica Westin

Playwright-director Young Jean Lee brings one of this spring’s most anticipated shows to the MCA this week: “The Shipment,” a subversive minstrelsy performance that’s in keeping with her history of experimental, confrontational plays about racial identity. What’s different is that where previous shows about race centered around stereotypes of the Korean-American experience Lee identifies with, “The Shipment” addresses African-American identity politics, presenting cultural images of Black America through various sketches, dance, stand-up comedy and drama.

We spoke with Lee about seeking discomfort, avoiding irony and bringing her ever-changing and highly praised show to Chicago.

“The Shipment” has gone through several adaptations after what you’ve described as “unsuccessful workshops.” Has it continued to change?

We’ve continued to tweak the show based on where we are in performances, from Carolina to Europe… We actually had to make a major change in touring the show in Europe because in the first shows the audience thought the play was about how backwards Americans are for having race problems—one more quaint story of American stupidity—with the idea that Europe doesn’t have race problems. We had to add in a long paragraph making clear that they were implicated too. Read the rest of this entry »

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The world of experimental performance can feel quite elusive and tough to navigate in Chicago—lucky for us, accomplished local artists Mark Jeffrey (SAIC faculty) and Sara Schnadt (Department of Cultural Affairs) are working hard to make it a little easier, by curating the bi-annual IN>TIME Performance Series. An eclectic mix of local, national and international artists, this latest installation of IN>TIME includes a much anticipated work-in-progress showing from new local company Every House Has a Door, which is the latest project of Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish, co-founders of the renowned Goat Island performance group (of which Jeffrey was a member), which disbanded in 2008. Other artists include Angela Ellsworth, presenting “Another Women’s Movement,” a “roaming durational tableau of well-armed frontier women;” SAIC students and emerging local artists Justin Cabrillos and Jessica Hannah, performing work developed through the IN>TIME Incubation series; and, featured international performance group OOUR, from Zagreb, Croatia. So clear your calendar for Saturday night—this is a one-night-only event, not to be missed.

In conversation with the performance series, there will be an artists’ symposium on Friday afternoon, examining professional sustainability for artists. The panel will feature an array of prominent artists and scholars, including Sara Jane Bailes, Roberto Sifuentes, and Tricia Van Eck. (Valerie Jean Johnson)

IN>TIME Performance Series: Saturday, March 27. 6pm-9pm, Chicago Cultural Center. Free. Symposium: Friday, March 26, 1pm-5pm. Chicago Cultural Center, 5th floor, Millennium Park Room. Free (reservations required).

Great Small Works' "Marcovaldo Planets"

By Monica Westin

It’s a big weekend for Seth Bockley. In addition to his highly-anticipated performance promenade “The Twins Would Like to Say” with Dog & Pony opening at Steppenwolf Garage on Sunday, Bockley has curated the impressive lineup of artists at Links Hall’s Toy Theater Festival this weekend.

Bockley champions toy theater for its populist roots in nineteenth-century paper theater, which could be made in anyone’s living room as a precursor to television. The form has morphed from living-room entertainment to a cheap, DIY way of making performance that Bockley loves because it’s “not rarefied art.” We spoke to Bockley about this form he wants to be reclaimed as an everyday act.

Toy theater seems to be an exciting and increasingly popular form lately—I’m thinking of companies like Great Small Works, who I know are going to be part of this show. Why do you think there is such a strong interest in toy theater today? When did you personally become interested in the medium?

I became interested in toy theater, and puppetry more generally, through work with Redmoon back in 2004 during my mentorship with Frank Maugeri, now the artistic director there. I originally was more interested in writing and had no intention, really, of getting involved with puppetry, but through seeing what Frank was able to do with the medium, I became extremely excited and interested in this form of storytelling. So oddly, I had become involved as a writer for puppet theater, which was a strange thing to be, and our collaboration allowed me to see the potential of this form. I see it as a form that can both be in dialogue with and in competition with cinema—working with puppetry is closer to the work of a filmmaker rather than a theater director. One of the many cool things it allows is a way of performing animation—performing film really—by other means. Read the rest of this entry »

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Unfortunately, there was only one performance of Chris Sullivan’s creepy, gorgeous, hilarious, and profoundly one-off show at Rhinofest this year. However, “Mark the Encounter” has been in development for years (it shows), and so it’s possible there will be another incarnation in Chicago, though its creator plans to take it on the road before that happens. If and when it does, it’s an important one to see—rarely do we get a chance to see a performance piece that has been as meticulously worked as Sullivan’s, nor one that incorporates truly arresting—and at times brilliant—writing, perfectly disturbing comedy and a sense of the absurd delivered with droll understatement.

This is all to say that “Mark the Encounter” is very smart and at most times seemingly the work of a deranged consciousness. The show follows a dream logic, beginning with a doctor convincing a woman to donate her newly vegetable husband’s heart to a creepy marionette named Fred. Fred appears again as the fantasy of the dead man’s alleged brother Nosmo, whose insanely funny, and very very sad inner life turns out to be the expressionist hinge around which the short scenes rotate. Nosmo has a Peruvian mountain man living where his heart used to be (dysphemistically called a homunculus). His fantastically depraved and hilarious fantasies of seducing his brother’s widow run up against deeply unhealthy psychotherapy sessions that easily outstrip the subject’s usual treatment. Other scenes, intertwined and undermining one another, including an undertaker with the hustle of a used-car salesman and a series of horrific funeral elegies delivered with professional deadpan, somehow do more than stay afloat. This show embodies the niche between performance art and theater that Chicago desperately needs filled, and it does so in a damn smart, damn funny way. (Monica Westin)

Rhinofest.com

John Sanders, Kate Fry and Rob Lindley/Photo: Michael Brosilow

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When the Noël Coward revue “Oh, Coward!” opened in late 1972, Coward himself was still around but his detached and wry style had fallen way out of fashion. British actor/director/playwright Roderick Cook thought that the time was right to remind us all of what an original voice Coward had been, and the result was a hit show that even Coward himself came to check out in early 1973 in what turned out to be his last public appearance (he died in March of that year).

Cook’s idea was astonishingly simple: two male performers—one was originally Cook himself—and one female performer, all in evening clothes and sipping champagne, singing Coward songs and acting out scenes from his best-known plays. It was a passport to another era, and nearly four decades later, it feels as fresh as ever, at least in the hands of Writers’ Theatre. Entering the performance space in the back of a suburban bookstore, you are offered a glass of champagne as you head into an intimate theater transformed into an elegant, art deco nightclub of the 1930s. Music director Doug Peck greets you in tails as he is playing Coward songs on a grand piano and you find your way to small tables encircling the space in inviting, cabaret style. Read the rest of this entry »

Wayne Wilson, Jerry Kernion, Daniel Passer/Photo: Kristie Kahns

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Traditional Cirque du Soleil fans—and they are legion—are likely to find this latest comedy-packed, vaudeville-style entry in the franchise a perplexing, even tedious experience in that it has little in common with past offerings. “Daniel, help me down from here,” says clown Wayne Wilson, caught on a rising microphone. “I can’t,” says Daniel Passer, “I’m not in the union.” So much for the Chicago topical humor (the show is dress-rehearsing here for a New York opening).

Still, the take-off on American “talent” shows is hysterical, though it is likely to be unappealing to those who actually like such shows. “Is there anyone with any talent here?” says emcee Schmelky (Jerry Kernion), and seat numbers of “volunteers” are read aloud to audition on stage. All are clowns, of course, although out of makeup and just initially “normal” enough that they could pass for actual audience members. Before long, we get a ventriloquist whose dummy is deaf (the ventriloquist silently moves his hands endlessly, imitating sign language), a streaker/contortionist as a “modern dancer” (Patrick de Valette) and “the oldest mime in the world” (Gordon White) who comes on stage with a walker and takes his time to pantomime a large glass box that takes him long stretches of time to make his way across to its four corners.  Cruel humor, to be sure, but funny nonetheless.

As for actual circus acts within the show, these are few and far between, and consist mostly of juggling and a couple of gymnasts, albeit all excellent, as you would expect. What we get instead are elaborate dance routines, colorful costumes and an overdose of skits with no overall theme to any of this other than apparently being scaled-down Cirque du Soleil stuff reconfigured for theater venues.  (Dennis Polkow)

“Cirque du Soleil Banana Shpeel” runs through January 3 at the Chicago Theatre, $23-$98.