Pride has come to Chicago once again. It is time to take to the streets and celebrate the diversity that gives our city so many reasons to be excited. About Face Theatre is one of those reasons. This season the dynamic institution dedicated to the exploration of sexuality and gender issues will have new artistic leadership. Award-winning producer, director and playwright Bonnie Metzgar has taken the helm as artistic director and is excited to continue the company’s dynamic programming. Although Metzgar won’t make it to the parade this year—she is currently traveling Africa with her partner—she did take a few minutes to share a little bit about how she got here and what she is looking forward to as she makes Chicago her home.

How did you get to Chicago and About Face?

I spent the last year traveling around the U.S. for the 365 Festival with Suzan-Lori Parks. We partnered with 600 theaters; fifty-two of them were here in Chicago. Congo Square, Next, Steppenwolf, Goodman, Writers, Hypocrites—I learned fast that, wow, the Chicago theater scene is amazing! Bold artists, bold audiences—that’s my kind of town. So when the opportunity with About Face came up, I jumped at it. About Face has always had a unique place in the American theater as a home for new work that furthers the national dialogue on sexuality and gender.

How do you plan to continue what is great about About Face?

I will continue the commitment to artistic excellence and to developing the voice of our youth. I will expand the tradition of collaboration by continuing to find new ways to reach out to the community. And I will throw really great parties. I am excited and proud to be producing our whole season at the Center on Halsted. The Hoover-Leppen Theater is gorgeous! And having a home in the heart of the LGBTQ community feels right.

What excites you about Chicago?

Chicago is fierce—in its commitment to the arts, its celebration of diversity and in its history of political struggle. So for someone like me who is interested in the messy intersection of art and politics, Chicago is a fascinating place to be in 2008.

The country is changing for the LGBTQ community. What is the role theater can and must play in shaping perceptions and advancing LGBTQ causes?

The country is not changing for us. We are changing the country—by working hard, building bridges, making art that moves us all closer to each other. We need to feel the urgency in each day—as citizens and artists, in our homes, in the streets and in our art—if we dare to believe that another world is possible.

What message do you have for the LGBTQ community as we enter this year’s gay pride celebration?

Our community is in all communities. Reach out. Beyond your comfort zone. And support LGBTQ artists in Chicago during pride and all year round! (William Scott)

Learn more about Bonnie Metzgar and About Face Theatre at aboutfacetheatre.com

There is something unsure and unformed in this production of Richard Wesley’s play about upwardly mobile African-Americans, directed for Congo Square by Aaron Todd Douglas. The company has endured some financial and administrative challenges, and I wonder if it’s starting to bleed over into the work on stage. But I’m not sure even a bang-slam production of this material could overcome the script’s off-putting tendency to speechify. A group of friends—a generation of Howard graduates that gave rise to Black Power—are now comfortably in their forties, having traded black consciousness for the yuppie consumer dream. Bernard (Ron Conner, miscast as a former activist with a slick eye for business) is having major doubts about his career and his marriage, and he destroys both in an effort to get back to basics—or rather, the truth he felt so deeply as a radical. But too often what should be organic conversations feel like artificially induced debates about intraracial biases and whether pursuing the American dream is equal to selling out. The women in the cast are quite good, especially Ericka Ratcliff as Bernard’s on-the-side girlfriend, a driven beauty who has boiled the dance between men and women down to its essence: “The women who can do things are most prized by the men who can do nothing.” Bakesta King (as Bernard’s wife) and Tracey Bonner (as her longtime friend) get the show’s strongest scene, laying out their mutual resentments and fears while lounging in a sauna, clutching at their towels. Otherwise, the play feels stagey and stilted, lacking the kind of lived-in quality that can turn rhetoric into theater. (Nina Metz)

At the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green, (312)733-6000. This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

Sex is on the menu this weekend at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Curious Theatre Branch remounts its “Round and Round: asexfarcetragedy,” this time with more elaborate sets and six more years of living to inform the piece. The bedroom farce revolves around one woman and her relationship with three different men as they plot against one another for power. Jenny Magnus, co-founder of Curious, serves as writer and co-director. She also plays the central femme fatale, this time with a more maternal touch. “As you age, the sexual ethics of your youth become rotten. But now, I’m more sympathetic to her…I see more shades of gray.” The experience does not stop when the lights go down on this show. Join Magnus (February 9, 2pm-4pm) for a discussion on the unique contributions of women in Chicago theater. The panel, also representing Steppenwolf, Teatro Vista, Congo Square and others, will speak to the challenges as well as advantages existent in the field today. (William Scott)

At the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago, (312)280-2660. This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

How ironic that the Goodman Theatre is playing host to Congo Square Theatre’s “Black Nativity” just down the hall from its “A Christmas Carol,” a cash-cow shopworn spectacle still in search of a heart after three decades. While the throngs are heading to watch Marley, Scrooge and the like go through the motions yet again, a much smaller crowd is gathering to experience a show so full of emotion and sensitivity that it literally wears its heart on its sleeve. And while “Christmas Carol” has not changed a line or a set in more years than Marley has been as dead as a doornail, Congo Square’s “Black Nativity” has been completely rethought this year by New York director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, who takes the brilliant and bold step of setting Langston Hughes’ 1961 Christmas opus in the conflict-ridden Darfur region of western Sudan. “There is no God in Dafur,” a young, desperate pregnant woman says as she agonizes over the chaos that she is bringing a child into, only to be comforted by an angel and a subsequent dream of another birth brought about in hopeless circumstances some two millennia ago. These parallel birth stories and their parallel relevance resonate with deep overtones, highlighting the optimism, hope and potential reversal of social justice that new life can represent, whether in an ancient Judea brutally occupied by the “Pax Romana,” or in an African village being brutalized by tribal genocide. This dramatic arc brings more power to the proceedings, which are traditionally quite loose with one gospel song and Christmas carol following another, but here even many of those familiar words and melodies take on new meaning. The first-rate cast sing and dance their hearts out, and are clothed in colorful tribal garb and accompanied by lively and propulsive African djembes. For those in search of a deeper and more meaningful holiday experience than the usual ho-ho hum-bug, it is not be missed. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn, (312)443-3800. This production is now closed.

By Mary Kroeck

Chicago is a diverse city. Whether one says this in terms of its food, museums or neighborhoods, the statement is still true. Now, a group of local actors is striving to make it true of one more thing—Chicago’s theater scene.

dueEast Theater Company, in collaboration with A-Squared Theater Workshop, have joined forces to make the voices of Chicago’s Asian community heard. Their first production together, “Trial by Water,” by Qui Nguyen, tells the story of how, in 1988, 110 Vietnamese people tried to escape their country by crowding on a small boat. They were hit by a storm their first day at sea and began to drift. The group was stranded for thirty-eight days and by the time Filipino fishermen came to the group’s aid, only fifty-two passengers had survived. One of them was Nguyen’s cousin.

“This is a new play that is really well written,” says dueEast’s artistic director, Allen Hope Sermonia. “It’s the story of the playwright’s cousin and it not only captures the existence of the human condition after Vietnam but also sits apart in the way of other scripts that were written in the seventies and eighties that have already been done.”

Though dueEast has been a theater company in Chicago since 2003, they have only produced three plays, mainly because Sermonia and the rest of the company had trouble finding scripts they felt truly spoke to them. A-Squared was started a little under a year ago and this will be their first major production. Yet, Sermonia believes the mission of both companies—to represent Asians and Asian culture through the performing arts—is extremely important.

“We are the fastest growing ethnicity in Illinois and we are sorely underrepresented in film, television and theater,” Sermonia says. “I started as an actor and I kept finding that the really good roles are hard to come by. dueEast was created to allow that director, that writer, that actor to be represented. A-Squared as well is like-minded and it seemed like a natural partnership for ‘Trial by Water.’”

A-Squared Theater Workshop member Ghuon “Max” Chung thinks it makes sense that the groups are working together on “Trial by Water” and this particular piece is one that can bring their culture to the forefront of Chicago’s theater scene.

“The plot and character development within the story are so universal that it is kind of a morality play,” he says. “It begs you to ask the question, ‘What are you willing to give up to survive?’ Telling this particular story through Asian faces is what we’re all about.”

Chung hopes that in producing this play both companies, as well as the script itself, will gain some notoriety to ensure that the stories of the Asian community as a whole are not lost in the melting pot.

“In America especially so many cultures are being homogenized, which isn’t a bad thing because then we all get to learn a little more about each other,” Chung says. “But by homogenizing them too much they begin to lose their distinctive flavors…Chicago hasn’t had a consistent Asian voice in the theater community. We want that to change.”

Chung’s sentiments are shared by other members of A-Squared, including Mia Park, who is playing Sam Pham, a mother who puts her sons on the boat in the hopes they will have a better life.

“I’ve done commercial work for about eight years now and I see the same Asians in every audition,” Park says. “Yet, there’s so much great Asian-American talent in theater, scripts and plays. I keep meeting more and more people when I thought I knew them all.”

Park adds that she doesn’t know why it’s taken so long to get groups like A-Squared and dueEast together, especially when Asians have a presence in the Chicago rock-music scene, which she is also a part of.

“[Asians] are definitely a presence in the city all across the board,” she says. “It’s a very big city, very diverse. But we didn’t see our faces and hear our voices. There are great cultural-specific theater companies in Chicago like Teatro Vista and Congo Square. We want to be a part of that kind of theater, making the stories of our culture known.”

“Trial by Water” at EP Theater, 1820 South Halsted, (312)850-4299. This production is now closed.

In this 2003 drama about the lives of British blacks, fathers are destined to fail their sons—regardless of intent. A bitter pill, but one worth swallowing thanks to a very decent production from Congo Square Theatre, now in residence at the CCPA. The setting is a West Indian restaurant, Elmina’s Kitchen, in a dicey section of present-day London. It is both a safe haven and a trap, and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah lays out the story like a slow-motion car wreck. Deli (Anthony Irons) is the owner, a man too distracted by his thoughts to recognize what is going on around him. He is frequently at odds with his teenage son, Ashley (Phillip James Brannon), who sees the flash and cash of Digger, the neighborhood thug (played by an icily elegant Morocco Omari) and wonders, why not me? Ashley’s motivations are partly driven by his sense of what it means to be a man—especially a black man in today’s world. Deli is the type who would rather look the other way when his pride is elbowed in the ribs. You can see why Ashley would rebel. Things are just as tense between Deli and his own father, Clifton (Cedric Young), an oily charmer whose personal interests come at the expense of others. Into this mix comes a vibrant cook (Ann Joseph, with a jiggly cleavage that seems just right for the character) whose best efforts at shaking these men from their collective funk is met with blank stares. Directed by Derrick Sanders, the show has a lot going for it. There are some excellent performances here (Omari is especially unpredictable). But something in this production is off—it feels choppy and lacks momentum. The final scene, in particular, feels overwrought. Deli has just witnessed a moment of pure horror, and he wails like a baby. Sometimes the more chilling image is a man silent and stunned by the disaster before him. (Nina Metz)

At the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green St., (312)773-6000. This production is now closed.