Here’s the press release from the Goodman:
MARY ZIMMERMAN REIMAGINES BERNSTEIN’S CANDIDE IN A MAJOR FALL MUSICAL EVENT;
ROBERT FALLS RE-EXAMINES CHEKHOV’S THE SEAGULL; PLUS NEW WORKS BY SARAH RUHL,
REGINA TAYLOR AND THOMAS BRADSHAW HEADLINE GOODMAN THEATRE’S 2010/2011 SEASON
***THE GOODMAN CELEBRATES A DECADE OF ACHIEVEMENTS AS ANCHOR OF THE NORTH LOOP
THEATRE DISTRICT, STARTING WITH A SEPT. 27 EVENT AT THE ART INSTITUTE’S MODERN WING*** Read the rest of this entry »
Krapp's Last Tape/Photo: Liz Lauren
RECOMMENDED
The constant level of high-quality theater to be had on both the Equity and non-Equity levels in Chicago is nothing short of astonishing, to be sure, but every now and then a performance comes along that manages to stand in a class all by itself. Such is the case with the double-bill of two one-act masterpieces by two fascinatingly different yet similarly iconic twentieth-century playwrights of Irish descent, Eugene O’Neill and Samuel Beckett, performed by a single extraordinary Irish-American actor—Brian Dennehy—who came up with the inspired idea of pairing and performing these two works together.
The Dennehy/O’Neill alliance originated under Robert Falls at Goodman nearly a quarter of a century ago and climaxed with last season’s O’Neill Festival which spotlighted the Dennehy/O’Neill/Falls “Desire Under the Elms.” In fact, Dennehy and Falls actually presented “Hughie”—a forty-minute work O’Neill wrote during the period of his greatest genius at the end of his life as part of a planned series of short plays that became a rara avis when he destroyed the other entries—just six years ago, at that time simply allowing it to stand on its own.
That experience proved inadequate enough that Dennehy began experimenting with adding another one-act to be paired with “Hughie” at other venues, initially settling upon a comedic Sean O’Casey opus that Falls came and saw and thought was a mismatch that trivialized O’Neill. It was Dennehy who finally came up with “Krapp’s Last Tape,” a forty-five-minute Samuel Beckett work also from the period of his greatest genius, as a bookend for “Hughie,” and that configuration was presented two summers ago at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, with Falls directing “Hughie,” Canadian director Jennifer Tarver helming “Krapp’s Last Tape” and Dennehy in both. A huge success, that experience has been enlarged and brought to Chicago, with New York and national tour aspirations. Read the rest of this entry »
Jennifer Tarver/Photo: Liz Lauren
This week Goodman opens its highly anticipated marriage of two one-acts about aging, regret and mourning lost choices: Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie” and Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape.” The lineup of artists involved is formidable: Robert Falls continues his collaboration with Brian Dennehy in “Hughie,” who plays against Joe Grifasi in this play about the ways we deceive ourselves in order to go on. This act about the tragedy of “just going on” culminates in “Krapp’s Last Tape,” Beckett’s masterpiece of a one-man show about an aging performer who confronts his early self through recorded diaries that painfully chronicle a lost love. “Krapp’s Last Tape” relies on the contrast between the youthful hope in the tapes and the decayed abjection of older Krapp—also played by Dennehy and directed by Toronto-based director Jennifer Tarver.
Tarver, who directed Dennehy in the play at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival two years ago, is no Beckett newbie. She garnered acclaim for her curation of five Beckett shorts in 2006, and with a background in music as well as dramaturgy, she’s an easy match for the musicality and rhythm of Beckett’s prose. Newcity talked with Tarver the week before previews about space, composition and the demands of directing Beckett. Read the rest of this entry »
Tara DeFrancisco, No. 36
In this town of performers—theater makers, dancers, comedy creators—you’d think it’d be pretty easy to assemble a list of artistic influencers and innovators. And it is. The challenge is paring that list down to a mere fifty. It’s a testament to the wonders of the performing-arts culture in Chicago that we easily came up with about 200 names when we set out to create this year’s version of The Players. Unfortunately, we’re only listing a fraction of those worthy of your attention, but that’s the problem with an abundance of riches. Hopefully you’ll see a handful of recognizable names and a whole lot more you’ll start noticing from this point on. We’ve retooled the criteria for this year, focusing on onstage artistic achievement, rather than the backstage influence of artistic directors, executive directors and the like—who will get their day again next year. Let the arguments begin. Read the rest of this entry »
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: nick mangafas/linz09
We received the following response to Goodman’s cancellation of Joan D’Arc this morning from the artistic director for the performing arts at 2009 Linz European Capital of Culture. (The European Capital of Culture is a one-year designation of a showcase city by the European Union.) In the email, Airan Berg takes strong exception to the Goodman’s characterization of the show as “not ready” and suggests “censorship” on the Goodman’s part and pledges to “take all necessary steps to present the work in Chicago.” Needless to say, this is an unusually strong manifestation of “artistic differences.” We’ve asked Goodman for their response, if any, and will add it to the mix when we get it.
Below is the email from Berg in its entirety and original form:
URGENT – response from linz09 to JOAN DARK & a statement by the goodman theatre Read the rest of this entry »
Citing “additional time for artistic development prior to the show’s scheduled Chicago opening in September,” Goodman Theatre’s artistic director Robert Falls today announced that the Aida Karic-directed “Joan D’Arc,” its planned world-premiere adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s “Die Jungfrau Von Orléans (The Maid of Orléans),” would be replaced on the fall schedule by the Chicago premiere of Dael Orlandersmith’s solo performance, “Stoop Stories,” which will run September 11-October 11 in the Owen Bruner Theatre. A spoken-word artist best known for her play “Yellowman,” a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, Orlandersmith also received an OBIE Award for “Beauty’s Daughter.”
Photo: Michael Brosilow
By Whitney Dibo
The old saying, “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity” seems an appropriate adage for Charlie Newell’s directing career. When the D.C. native originally applied for the associate artistic director position at Court Theatre back in 1993, he couldn’t have known the company was actually in search of a replacement for their retiring artistic director. A lucky break to be sure—but Newell was also firmly prepared for the opportunity: his very first directing gig for Court, a production of Marivaux’s “Triumph of Love,” won a Jeff Award for Best Production. “After that, I guess Court felt comfortable handing over the reigns,” Newell says with a modest laugh.
Fast forward to 2008—fourteen years into Newell’s successful tenure at Court Theatre. Tom Stoppard’s new music-infused play, “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” opens on Broadway, and Court tries to nab the production rights for the Chicago premiere. “They got back to us on a Thursday and told us our request had been declined,” Newell says.
Newell was naturally disappointed, and wondered which major Chicago theater had successfully wooed the producers of “Rock ‘n’ Roll” with bigger royalties and larger production capabilities. The answer came the next day, with a phone call from The Goodman Theatre. “On that Friday, the folks at Goodman called me up and asked me to direct the show,” says Newell, obviously still tickled by the serendipity of it all. “Rock ‘n’ Roll” started previews in the Goodman’s Albert Theatre on May 2 and will run through June 7, with a cast comprised almost entirely of Chicago-based actors. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s the press release from Goodman:
FOUR WORLD PREMIERES, A BROADWAY-BOUND DOUBLE-BILL,
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN’S GOODMAN DIRECTORIAL DEBUT AND
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS HIGHLIGHT GOODMAN THEATRE’S 2009/2010 SEASON
Note: On June 26, Goodman announced that Joan D’Arc had been dropped from the new season and replaced by the solo performance show, Stoop Stories. Click here for more information.
(March 12, 2009 – Chicago, IL) Artistic Director Robert Falls proudly announces a diverse line-up—from musical hilarity and classic yarns, to memory pieces and family dramas, to stories with ethnic roots that reflect today’s world—in Goodman Theatre’s new 2009/2010 season.
The madcap Marx Brothers musical Animal Crackers, book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, directed by Henry Wishcamper, launches the season in the Albert Theatre (September 2009). Next, Falls and Brian Dennehy team up again for a Broadway-bound double-bill of Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie directed by Falls, and Samuel Beckett’s one-man-show Krapp’s Last Tape (January 2010) helmed by Canadian director Jennifer Tarver. In March 2010, Rebecca Gilman’s Goodman commission, A True History of the Johnstown Flood makes its world premiere production. Finishing the season in June 2010—and launching the fifth biennial international Latino Theatre Festival—is Karen Zacharías’ The Sins of Sor Juana, directed by Henry Godinez, following one of the legendary figures of Mexican arts and literature. Still to be announced is one Spring 2010 production directed by Chuck Smith in the Albert Theatre (now updated to include this production of The Good Negro). Read the rest of this entry »
By Fabrizio O. Almeida
Recently, I found myself defending foreign-language theater to a colleague who loves opera. We were discussing curator Robert Falls and The Goodman Theatre’s ambitious stage event “Global Exploration: Eugene O’Neill in the 21st Century,” and while he could share my enthusiasm for its controversial (Wooster Group’s “Emperor Jones”), community-boosting (Hypocrites’ “The Hairy Ape” and Neo-Futurists’ “Strange Interlude”) and classic programming (“Desire Under the Elms”), he could simply not understand why anyone would want to see O’Neill performed in Portuguese or Dutch. (The festival, now midway through its run, features theater companies from Brazil and the Netherlands performing the notoriously obscure “Sea Plays” and the rarely staged “Mourning Becomes Electra,” respectively). I can see his point. After all, experiencing some foreign-language theater—the kind staged in the playwright’s native tongue, for example—makes sense. It’s the operatic equivalent of hearing Puccini in Italian, or Wagner in German: the authentic cultural-aural experience. So why do I still think, having now sat through two of Brazilian Companhia Triptal’s three productions of “Homens Ao Mar” or “Sea Plays” (the final installment, “Cardiff,” completes the triptych this weekend) without understanding one peep of Portuguese, that it would be an absolute shame if any viewer missed out on this rare and once-in-a-lifetime experience afforded by the good folks at the Goodman?
I think for me it’s quite simply all about the language. It helps, of course, being a linguaphile and having under my belt a history of international theatergoing that includes not just plays rendered in their original spoken-languages (Chekhov in Russian by the Moscow Art Theatre; Strindberg in Swedish courtesy of The Royal Dramatic Theatre of Stockholm), but also straight plays and musicals originally performed in English but enjoyed in a half dozen other foreign languages. Nevertheless, even without this primer, any curious individual wishing to be provoked by a piece of exotic theater but wary of the potential for pomposity, can rest assured that there is nothing pretentious about or posed by Companhia Triptal that the average theatergoer can’t handle.
So you’re afraid you may not “get it” in another language? All you need to know about “Sea Plays” is that they are informed by a playwright whose early life experiences were spent at sea, and who must have had a love-hate relationship with this siren that tore individuals from—and reunited them with—their families. As well, O’Neill’s early plays were exercises—not always successful—in lacing realistic situations with symbolism and heightened theatricality. Even in English, these plays can come across as ambiguous. Companhia Triptal’s aggressively atmospheric and mood-enhancing staging puts you there and offers a visceral experience not dependent on narrative details.
So you hate the idea of supertitles? After all, why shell out $20 to “read” a play? Well then, don’t. The first installment of “Sea Plays,” whose original English-language text was projected back to the audience via supertitles, was a cumbersome experience if you sat too close to the stage: halfway through the performance I felt like a nodding dog with my head tilting up and down between the words across the sky and the action down on stage. It also seemed at times like the supertitle projector could either not keep up with the actors or vice versa, making for some ponderous pauses (I wondered if this is what it would be like to see Pinter in Portuguese). So for the second installment, armed with a quick scan of the synopsis only, I ignored the supertitles, took in the experience as if I were watching the show in its hometown of São Paulo and learned to appreciate a company of actors whose robust physicality, brandy-soaked vocal instruments and Latin temperament were the perfect interpreters of O’Neill’s motley crew of sailors and whores, as well as of the playwright’s famously demanding and persnickety stage directions. In fact, my relationship as audience member with these Brazilian actors was probably heightened precisely because we could not depend solely on words for communication.
So you know nothing about Brazilian culture? Well, maybe you’ll learn something. In my case, the “global” insights were unsurprising but nuanced and pronounced: a patriarchal culture whose dichotomous existence between beauty and violence—as might be experienced every day on the dangerous streets of Rio or São Paulo—echoed through the ebb and flow of O’Neill’s symbolic sea.
All good stuff, but for me secondary to the unique thrill of letting go, letting the experience wash over me and allowing a foreign language to caress my ear. Inherently disorienting at first, but that’s the way O’Neill’s rough-hewn dialogue—especially at this point in his early writing career—affects some in English. And in the case of the Portuguese, with its emphasis on elongated open vowels, a curious case of unintelligible aural beauty reminding me of this playwright’s later gift for the poetic vernacular. (Dutch’s guttural-heavy pronouncements for the upcoming “Mourning Becomes Electra” will most likely re-emphasize the jagged aspects of O’Neill’s language.)
You’ll be hard-pressed to see, let alone hear, something like this again for a long time to come. And what do you mean you think an Afghan “Anna Christie” sounds like fun?
“Global Exploration: Eugene O’Neill in the 21st Century” runs through March at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, goodmantheatre.org
