Photo: Cesario Moza

RECOMMENDED

Three plays currently playing in Chicago urgently grab hold of prescient national issues both imperative and sickening: “Teddy Ferrara” at the Goodman Theatre, “columbinus” at American Theater Company and, completing the triptych, the forceful “Crime Scene: A Chicago Anthology,” which opened on Monday night at Collaboraction.

Besides topical relevance, what invisibly binds these brave theatrical expressions is their messages, powerful and ambiguous. Certainly, they all endeavor to create a more hospitable world and harmonious local community, but, more importantly, they understand that the “how” necessitates a proactive conversation; not finger pointing or rigid thesis statements. These shows never tell you exactly what to think, and, in so doing, stimulate lingering vigorous thought.
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Dean Evans/Photo: Evan Hanover

RECOMMENDED

He’s back! Honeybuns, that gap-toothed, canary-yellow bouffon with a demented sense of humor and an insidious libido has triumphantly returned to his rightful place on the barren stage of Collaboraction. That’s right—no sets and no plot. Other than two oversized white hands, a deceptive gift and an eleven o’clock soapbox, Dean Evans, a masterful clown and Neo-Futurist, needs little more than his bustling person and a meticulously sculpted character to inspire an uproar of laughter and impart more clever wisdom than a Maya Angelou commencement speech.

After an abbreviated summer stint—”Honeybuns” was the unexpected hit of Sketchbook 12 Reincarnate—Collaboraction has wisely resurrected Evans’ seventy-minute love letter to the human psyche for the entire month of October to the delight of his devotees and to the dismay of clown-hating, narrative junkies. During the summer run of “Honeybuns,” this critic proclaimed it the “one true surprise I’ve had all year in the theater.” Well, I have certainly had a few gleeful shocks since that scorching July marathon, but still none quite like “Honeybuns,” the biggest, brightest present under the tree. Read the rest of this entry »

Juan Francisco Villa

On a Friday night at Calles y Sueños in Pilsen, a small crowd gathers for the monthly Noche de Monólogos (Night of Monologues), a night of performances and open mic that on this night ranges from fiction reading to monologues in character to non-narrative movement-based performance. Organizers of the event speak in Spanish and English, as do the performers. People greet each other with hugs and kisses; throughout the night, audience members occasionally yell encouragement to performers and applaud with a level of enthusiasm you might get from a proud, affectionate family.

This month’s Noche de Monólogos was a preview of the upcoming festival of Latino solo shows, “Yo Solo,” a collaboration between Teatro Vista and Collaboraction. The festival will be a series of six solo performances by Latino artists arranged in three repeating programs, each of which is a pair of two of the shows. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Saverio Truglia

“Sixty Miles To Silver Lake,” billed as a coming-of-age depiction of Denny (Ethan Dubin) as his divorced father Ky (Sean Bolger) drives him from his soccer game to his dad’s home in Silver Lake, is actually only about the self-centered schmuck Ky; we don’t get the personality of the son. Dubin is a superb actor in reacting to his father’s clumsy attempts at hilarity and explaining sex. The play, with its fifties-era thinking; the meaningless work the father does and the father’s progressive disintegration, reminds me of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” But here, the father has no redeeming characteristics, and the gay- and women-bashing gets tiresome.  Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Cesar Moza

RECOMMENDED

“Dark Play or Stories for Boys” is a cautionary tale about teenagers’ willingness to avoid face-to-face conversations and retreat to the worldwide web in order to feel what they want to feel. The omnipresence of the internet today, and the resulting confusion about what’s real and what’s not real, perpetuates cruelty that only shows through their stifled cries. Director Anthony Moseley’s intimate staging and the undeniable rawness of the actors render “Dark Play” a deeply felt Chicago premiere. Read the rest of this entry »

Darren Criss (#4) with Team StarKid

With our criteria shifted back to artistic accomplishment in theater, dance, comedy and opera this year, our task got infinitely tougher. Because while the number of performing venues grows at a steady rate, the increase in the number of noteworthy artists seems to grow exponentially. For everyone we name on the list below, we had to leave off five, an embarrassment of riches for Chicago. We made a conscious effort to introduce a meaningful number of new faces to the list this year; the necessary absences should not be construed as a loss of worthiness as a consequence. We often find trends when we do the research these lists require; this year we’re starting to see a more meaningful effort to redefine performance itself in the internet age, from the runaway success of StarKids, to the more calculated endeavors of Silk Road. So what defines a “player”? Consider it some complex stew of career achievement, recent “heat” and, in some cases, rising stardom.

Written by Zach Freeman, Brian Hieggelke, Sharon Hoyer and Dennis Polkow

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“No wimps at F.S.” reads one of many doodles on the wall of Free Street Theater’s rehearsal space in the attic of the Pulaski Park Field House. This bold, unofficial statement of intent summarizes Free Street Theater’s formal mission: to teach “acting and writing skills to youth so they can open their potential to be creative, active participants in their own lives.” Its latest production, “You Ain’t Seen This,” which the website calls an exploration of “reflection, identity and choice,” is soon coming to an end; after two months of writing, rehearsal and performances in spaces all over the city, they are re-blocking the show for its final indoor performances. These will take place today  and Wednesday in the new space of mixed-media theater company Collaboraction, whose creative director, Sam Porretta, co-directed the piece. “It’s becoming a new show,” says co-director Ashley Winston, former ensemble member and arts educator. They describe the whole Summer Intensive program as “down and dirty”; the ensemble auditioned the week before the writing began, and the “whole piece is generated from their work.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Saverio Truglia

Jason Grote’s postmodern revision of the “Arabian Nights” was a big hit for Collaboraction when they staged the play’s Chicago premiere last fall, and so the show returns, after a week at Theater on the Lake, for a month-long run at the company’s new digs in the Flat Iron Arts Building. It’s not difficult to figure out why the show was so popular—it’s a heady, fresh and intriguingly complicated piece of theater—both head-scratchingly dense and cheekily fleet.

Dahna, a Middle-Eastern American woman, and Alan, an American Jew, modern-day extrapolations of Scheherazade and Sultan Shahriyar, are a couple who form the core of  a play so willfully labyrinthine as to include Jorge Luis Borges (literary figure and maze obsessive) as a character. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Krall (right) and James Zoccoli (left) with audience member Kim Lyle in “A Domestic Disturbance at Fat Little Charlie’s 7th Birthday Party”/Photo: Saverio Truglia

RECOMMENDED

Anyone who was ever curious but hesitant to check out Collaboraction’s annual Sketchbook festival because of the marathon-length run time or the hit-or-miss nature of the lineup, which normally spans two nights in rep, would do well to consider attending “Reverb,” a greatest-hits collection of Sketchbook pieces from the previous decade of the festival’s history. While the eight short plays on the bill aren’t all winners, despite apparently having risen about the chaff, the brisk direction by artistic director Anthony Moseley keeps the ninety-minute production moving along. The highlights include “Deep Blue Sea,” a suspenseful, underwater love story; “The Lurker Radio Hour,” in which a dejected old-timey horror-story radio host searches for his runaway wife through the airwaves; “The Untimely Death of Adolf Hitler,” a wickedly smart and funny science-fiction alternate history; and “A Domestic Disturbance at Fat Little Charlie’s 7th Birthday Party,” an interactive comedy that cleverly epitomizes Collaboraction’s vision of unique experiments in theatrical experience. Music, video and visual art round out the diverse multimedia experience. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

Collaboraction at the Flat Iron Arts Building, 1575 North Milwaukee, (312)226-9633. Through May 28.

Krapp's Last Tape/Photo: Liz Lauren

Top 5 Shows
“The Brother/Sister Plays,” Steppenwolf
“August: Osage County,” Broadway In Chicago
“Hughie”/”Krapp’s Last Tape,” Goodman
“1001,” Collaboraction
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
—Brian Hieggelke

Top 5 Play Revivals
“A Streetcar Named Desire,” Writers’ Theatre
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Steppenwolf Young Adult
“Private Lives,” Chicago Shakespeare Theater
“After the Fall,” Eclipse Theatre
—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Performances
Brian Dennehy, “Hughie”/”Krapp’s Last Tape,” Goodman
Karen Janes Woditsch, “To Master the Art,” TimeLine
Tracy Letts, “American Buffalo,” Steppenwolf
Amy Morton, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
Mary Beth Fisher, “Seagull,” Goodman
—Brian Hieggelke

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