We attended the last play of the season last night. It seemed to confirm my intuition that the best thing we have going in Chicago theater is this International Voices Project, extant for ten years but off my radar until a fortnight ago.
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We have no shortage of talented actors in Chicago, nor in any other of the subset disciplines of theater. The deficiency has always come at the helm. Theater companies tend to serve up the routine pablum and take no chances. (I used to attribute that to the season-subscription factor but now am less sure; banality may be the popular taste.) And, as ever, there arise marvellous exceptions—in Chicago with an unexpected frequency if never regularity.

Oddly, Patrizia Acerra, Executive Director, confided that they tend to draw fewer people from the theatrical community than not in composition of their audience. But this may not be so odd given the provincial outlook of many of our practitioners. Diversity in constitution and makeup would help; as director David Rhee said in the post-performance enforced talkback, Chicago theaters tend to segregate their plays—evidenced by a typical Goodman season quite well—into one Black play here, one Hispanic there, and, with greatest infrequency, an Asian one. Nor is there any reason—to draw on Rhee’s example—that an actor who looks like him should not be permitted to play George Washington.

I ought to add, given the nature of the project, that I was not put off by the immediate segue into a talkback, as I might be at a theatrical performance elsewhere. In the case of Inching Towards Yeolha by Sam-Shik Pai (translated by Walter Byongsok Chin) the audience was much less packed than for Dušan Kovačević’s play last week; either Serbians come out in force to support their own whereas Koreans do not (which seems rather unlikely) or word was not spread effectively in the community. (Koreans in America have no dearth of alternative entertainments.)

The reading was put on in collaboration with Token Theatre Chicago, a new company helmed by David Rhee that has not mounted its first production yet. That will be Our Town by Thornton Wilder (which seems a rather hackneyed choice) albeit with “racially-diverse” casting.

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Below: cast of International Voices Project’s Inching Towards Yeolha by Sam-Shik Pai at Instituto Cervantes

​Apparently there’s an annual play-reading festival that I hadn’t heard about, called the International Voices Project. More free theater in Chicago. (I can’t imagine another city to vie with this.) We went to The Balkan Spy by Dušan Kovačević done in collaboration with Vitalist Theatre of Chicago (who?), presented at the Instituto Cervantes which I have never been to before.

The play has been done into an award-winning movie that I warrant is worth checking out. The almost entirely Serbian audience suggested (in a forced talkback after the reading) that you had to live in Yugoslavia during the time period to appreciate the play but I’d counter that. You really must dwell in a cultural bubble (or be very young) to not pick up on the themes of state surveillance and all its accoutrements. The acting was over-the-top, which drove the play, especially Antonio Brunetti in the lead. Done as a radio play the reading I attended would be unstoppable; but at least one and more probably two roles were miscast. Twin brothers who appeared not remotely similar and a young daughter played by a significantly older actress—despite excellent performances—were stumbling points. It shouldn’t matter but it did. Would a return to masks in theater get you the best performances unhampered by distracting trivialities?

Apparently the founders of the festival recognized a lack of opportunity to see international plays in Chicago. Hope was expressed that productions might follow if readings generate sufficient interest—already a tall order though. World premieres from England are in vogue on the Chicago stage, specifically in some theaters, but theater programming, unlike (say) a reader’s personal choice of a novel, veers toward the banal and away from the eclectic. My own experience of having a play read calcifies my prejudice: congratulations all around led to no mounting. The Balkan Spy felt refreshing because it evidenced (directly or indirectly) the influence of Gogol, which is seldom found in American plays.

World theater comprises many strains, one or two threads at most becoming predominant in the contemporary fabric locally. It's good to “see” something different, even if the seeing restricts itself to realms of the imagination instead of full-dress. A good play will carry without the trappings, even as an opera may suffice with merely a piano. Full orchestra is better; full performance ideal, but not necessary.

Meanwhile, the new play at Jackalope is worth seeing, if you're in Edgewater. The title is something like Life on Paper. Not sure, because we saw a preview. It went without stopping. (You gets no playbill at a preview.)
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Jackalope has come a long way. The production still evinces a lack of money. Their performance space above the gym at the Broadway Armory has gotten refined since the early days, but still leaves something to be desired. (The company contracted a storefront nearby but persists at the Armory, I'm not sure why.) The set was serviceable, but little more.

What a contrast with Caryl Churchill’s play at Writers. There the production values were top notch. The script flowed seamless, its major defect being a reliance on too much David Mamet-style writing (incomplete sentences). But, more than that, it felt mainly the working out of an idea—not quite with the sterility of a Tom Stoppard play but in that ballpark.

The script—by Kenneth Lin—moved forward in unexpected directions yet remained consistently well-balanced. Five actors—mostly excellent—were well used. In tandem, they provided nuance and soul, something genuine, without a shortage of ideas if however sans a grand overarching one like Churchill’s (her play dealt with cloning).

​We paid $5 for the preview; regular tickets will be $30. You may not see the value there. But if you come by that easily, or can snag a free seat, it will get you a glimpse of the best of grassroots Chicago theater. We do not “insist that our theatre be… dull”.

Earlier this month I wrote, “I don’t think that anyone much cares for my opinions, or cursory thoughts on theater.” That is still true. However I am changing in my assertion, “Nevertheless I try not to restrain my tongue.” In daily practice, and now extending to the web, I find myself hesitant. Time moves me away from the world of theater, at least in my putative role of playwright, and while plenty of opportunities exist to see things, in Chicago and without, I begin to doubt the value of opining on any particular play.

Recently it was suggested that Lynn Nottage is our best playwright, and I duly endeavored to find out if I agreed. More recently Alison Croggon has a post at Witness Performance about, “according to Tony Kushner, one of the most important playwrights now writing in the US.” She asks, “Why do we insist that our theatre be so dull?” scoffing “that the biggest risk our major theatres face is of boring themselves and everyone else to death.”

I gave some thought to the question; mostly familiar with Melbourne theater only through Croggon’s own reviews and blog posts, yet I had some ideas about theater in Chicago, particularly our prevalence of black boxes, which I don’t know if have their equivalence in Melbourne, and thought of scribbling out some apropos response. Then I had second thoughts and chose not to, opting instead to put something here, with intimations that I may be letting go of this forum sometime soon. After all, who am I to have an opinion?

This marks the closing of a period for me: several years ago, I decided to not pussyfoot around anymore, but rather voice my opinion online whenever I felt it. It was a staking out territory in the fringes of an industry that would not have me. So, even though it got me accused of harboring “sour grapes” (I’m sure I did) and being “such a dick” yet I persisted. The fact is, you have no reason to believe that any opinion voiced by me holds value beyond the assertion: what, indeed, have I done?

Still, it felt good; and you have an archive of things I put up on Disqus, not to mention comments scattered about in other places such as the aforementioned Witness Performance website that lie beyond tracking. Yet a realization that it is almost exactly twenty years since I opened my first email account got me thinking of this past two decades’ trend in my life.

The email came about specifically to facilitate the preproduction of my Non Fit Press book The Requiem, and all subsequent engagements with the internet (excepting one social media site) were done with one eye partially blinking to see how it would move (to paraphrase Richard Huttel) “my illustrious (writing) career.”

Now that course has run; and I find myself bent on disengaging. Not to promise that I will let the website lapse, or even slow my commenting in this “News” section, but to reorient my relation to it a little if I can. Email is no frivolity anymore, and maybe even social media. You have to have it with more business transacted online these days than ever in the past; the (alleged) “public presence” of a personal website may be less critical, yet why should I pull it down? I’m not embarrassed of that course, even if I find myself wanting to change direction.

Yet, opining on theater: is it really necessary? Performance reviews lack utility without a specific audience that needs information to know what it wants to see, whereas off-the-cuff criticism such as I might make here probably will not have much of a shelf life. (Ever the optimist at one time I gathered some of these blog posts et al. into a collection of literary criticism. It is clear that I believed them worth the publishing, even as with single poems, but I have fallen into doubt.)

The immediate catalyst for this post was feelings I have about plays just seen. The one, The Children by Lucy Kirkwood which opened last night is the best contemporary script I have ever seen mounted at Steppenwolf. Jonathan Berry, a director about whom I have posted and whose work I make it a point to follow, proved once again that given a strong script his direction is masterful. The other is an abysmal local production of Peter Handke’s Self-Accusation which I attended night before last. Originally a two-hander, the company expanded the play’s cast to eight and introduced all kinds of extraneous shenanigans in an effort (largely failed) to add interest. I have admired Handke novels, but cannot assess him as dramatist based on this the first production I’ve seen.

The point is, of what use opining? (Even when I was working in theater doing mostly assistant stage management work nobody wanted my opinion; why should I feel obliged to give it now?) So I begin to reconsider what I put forth. Kirkwood’s play—wherever you are—is something you should see if you have the opportunity. It touches on the Anthropocene maturely, and is worth seeing for that alone, even before its exquisite execution.

Chicago’s black box scene is varied, and the quality of production on offer varies between extremes even in most of our established companies: that is what gives our theatrical community the excitement it has. Even an atrocious production is worth seeing when it adds to the ferment (atrocious—the word I meant instead of abysmal).

It would be lovely to spend a season in Melbourne to see how the theatrical culture differs from ours. My sense is, the all-round artistic quality of Iain Sinclair’s A View From the Bridge exceeds anything we are capable of except accidentally, and that the audience is more attuned with classics and high-toned virtuosity than ours; whereas we excel in messiness. I wish Chicago standards were higher, yet one cannot deny the frisson of it all. One does not ask, “Why do we insist that our theatre be so dull?”

The Children opened at Melbourne Theatre Company a year before Steppenwolf’s production, yet both have done Lucas Hnath’s seemingly awful A Doll House Part 2. It would be curious to see a Berry-directed A Room with a View to judge whether Berry could rise to Sinclair’s standards; or just to see more of MTC and Sinclair to make comparison. Standard fare like Single Asian Female (by Michelle Law mounted at Fairfax Studio) would not be out of place making it to our Goodman stage in due time, hardly differing in tenor to the Nottage play I saw. Meanwhile, Milwaukee Repertory Theater recently mounted an excellent production of Andrew Bovell’s Things I Know to Be True which I got to see.

On the other hand, contrary to David Mamet, of what use is theater if one doesn’t talk about it? Post-performance talkback forums feel a bit too town-hally for my liking, at least in Chicago where our audience lacks the apparent sophistication of Melbourne’s—Melbourne may be a different matter. For now, a bird in the hand is what I have, so why not spout? These are but random thoughts—with some small effort to make them less so, which for me is blogging’s function. Increasingly, the need feels absent. 

The habitat for poetry is vanishing. This is no different to the coral reefs dying, or penguin breeding ground ice melting, but is specifically human. I merely note the fact; it is hard to presume survival. Years ago I identified the problem of bees dying and tigers dying—without them what context can there be for Blake’s “Tyger” or Dickinson’s “To make a prairie”—but suddenly I see that the problem is worse. The “habitat” refers to an interior region in the human psyche, I think. “Animals make us human” is true (or nature makes us human). Without the one you will not have the other. Human empathy may be on the upswing, just at a time when it may be too late to do much good.

As city lights disrupt the habitat for night-flying bats, have cell phones done so for poetry?

Here are some lines on the topic:
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I don’t think that anyone much cares for my opinions, or cursory thoughts on theater. Nevertheless I try not to restrain my tongue.

American Theatre Magazine, on Facebook, linked to an article from last year at Onstage Blog about stage management. Working on the technical side, mostly assistant stage managing, was my entrée to theater (before I quit to write plays), so I am sympathetic to the linked article; but my response went off in another direction, into general speculations on theater, which I copy herewith:

I keep rethinking these two sentences: “The director is the artistic brain of the show that creates this whole other world through their own visions. The stage manager is the technical brain to the show and helps bring the creative decisions of the director to life, especially when calling the show.”

I won’t dispute the second; the first, indeed that is often how it plays out. But more and more productions today feel like they are trying to be film. Theater is not likewise inherently a director’s medium. Directors are actually superfluous: welcome to have, but not, strictly speaking, necessary.

I would like to see theater companies experiment with getting away from the director-centric model. Theater ought to focus on what is unique to the art, instead of trying to replicate something else. (For that reason I would welcome more use of masks.)

Obviously, with our technically superior productions (our machinery making things possible that weren’t available to the ancients, or the Elizabethans, for example), what I suggest might turn out to be exceedingly hard to implement; still I would like to see the effort.

Stage manager is another matter. Granted it would be possible, in some pared-down-to-simplistic type of production, for a bare-bones show to fly without one, but who would want to? The stage manager (mostly indispensable) adds value to the show; the director, not always so.