Chicago is My Home

14
Feb

Top Chicago Theater Picks For Feb. 14, 2008: ‘Heat Wave,’ ‘Augusta,’ ‘Columbinus’

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Theater

Here are this week’s top Chicago theater selections and deals.

Title: “Heat Wave” Venue: Pegasus Players at O’Rourke Center Dates: Feb. 21 to 24, 2008 Full Price: $15        Partner Price: Free! Description: Based on the book “Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago,” Steven Simoncic’s moving new play looks at the heat wave of 1995 that took the lives of 739 Chicagoans. Simoncic presents a vivid portrait of a city in crisis but with its resources and humanity firmly intact. Snag your free “Heat Wave” tickets now!

Title: “Columbinus” Venue: Raven East Stage Dates: Feb. 14 to March 15, 2008 Full Price: $25        Partner Price: Free-$12.50! Description: “Columbinus” is a fascinating examination of human behavior based on interviews with Columbine residents. The play first creates a general world of adolescence and then morphs into the factual events leading specifically to the school shootings. “Columbinus” asks: “Why do people treat each other the way we do?” Snag your half-price “Columbinus” tickets now!

Title: “Augusta” Venue: American Theater Company Dates: Feb. 14 to 24, 2008 Full Price: $30-$35        Partner Price: $15-$17.50! Description: American Theater Company presents the Chicago premiere of Richard Dresser’s “Augusta,” which is directed by “Saturday Night Live” alum Nora Dunn. This searing dark comedy puts the clash between working people and corporate America under the microscope. Two women and their boss scheme with and against each other as they strive to make a housekeeping service their ticket to success. As the trio’s desperation moves them to test ethical limits, Augusta confronts the real meaning of getting ahead. Snag your half-price “Augusta” tickets now!

Title: “Good Boys and True” Venue: Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre Dates: Feb. 15 to 16, 2008 Full Price: $55-$68        Partner Price: $27.50-$34! Description: Steppenwolf Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s “Good Boys and True”. When Brandon Hardy – a highly regarded student at an elite prep school – is embroiled in a scandal that threatens his future, his mother must investigate to separate fact from fiction. Snag your half-price “Good Boys and True” tickets now!

Title: “Talking it Over” Venue: Lifeline Theatre Dates: Feb. 11 to March 16, 2008 Full Price: $25        Partner Price: $12.50! Description: When steady Stuart marries the enigmatic Gillian, his impetuous school chum, Oliver, senses that three has become a crowd. But who will end up on the outside as this love triangle struggles to find balance? This darkly comic look at friendship, loyalty and love is at once funny and brutal. Snag your half-price “Talking it Over” tickets now!

08
Feb

Top Chicago Performance Picks For the Weekend of of Feb. 8, 2008

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Theater

Has watching Hulk Hogan on American Gladiators made you yearn for the good ‘ole days of wrestling?

Then let’s get ready to rumble as it’s time for a comedic foray into the lives of professional wrestlers in “Bodyslam! The Rise and Fall of CAWC”. The show playing at the Annoyance Theatre features an on-stage ring and is sure to please all your full-nelson cravings. Performances run at 10 p.m. on Fridays through April 11. Tickets cost $15.

Does the statue of David by Michelangelo make you want seek out other naked works of art or do you just have obsession with nude masterpieces?

If so, the Art Institute of Chicago is the place to be on Feb. 9, Feb. 16 or March 15 as it’s having a “Naked at the Art Institute Scavenger Hunt” where participants search for nakedness in exhibits for a chance to win a T-shirt. Tickets are $25.50 and can be purchased at WatsonAdventures.com.

Looking for some alternative action for you and your sweetie on Valentine’s Day?

Rev up your love life with some girl-on-girl shorts and a candlelit champagne reception at the Chicago Filmmaker in Andersonville. “Dyke Delicious Series: A Valentine For Lesbians” shows on Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. and includes film highlights from Anne Renton’s “Love is Love,” which depicts a world where heterosexuals are the minority. Tickets cost $8 to $10 or $15 a couple.

By Stephanie Huls

30
Jan

‘Contraption’ Examines Mad-Scientist Intersection Between Invention, Insanity

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Theater

CHICAGO – There’s a fine line between being batty and being brilliant. If there’s anything the world’s most brilliant inventors have taught us, it’s that most world-altering creators blurred that very line or visited the crazy farm before the world acknowledged their genius.

Generated by a thought current from the Christian Bale film “The Prestige,” previous writer and first-time Chicago theater director Bilal Dardai created “Contraption” so society’s often-portrayed mad scientist could question the burdens and the blessings of his own devices.

In his Chicago play at The Neo-Futurarium, Dardai examines a titular character like we’ve seen in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” who is part “nutty,” part “absent-minded” and perhaps “sobered by tales of arrogant inventors who should have known better than to clone velociraptors” all while being made aware of his fanatical nature.

It wouldn’t stretch your imagination to imagine the passionate rage inherent in both Thomas Edison when he was creating direct current and Nikola Tesla when he was competing with alternating current. You could imagine they’d become so fixated on their creative divinations that missing meals or forgetting to bathe wouldn’t be alien.

But would they notice? Would their aptitude to blaze a path completely unknown to the world exceed their own ability to recognize the personal costs of their actions?

Are these people ever content or do they live a life full of frustration, failure, regret and loneliness? Are they just like the rest of us but shoved to an extreme? Dardai realizes: “How much difference is there between an inventor, an artist and somebody experiencing hallucinations? All three see things that aren’t there.”

In a vaudeville-style, screwball-comedy format, Chicago actor Kurt Chiang is Dardai’s science puppet who’s haunted by being forced to question his own sanity. Like real-life predecessor Wallace Carothers (the inventor of nylon), Chiang’s “Figure A” character also carries a vial of cyanide around his neck in preparation for suicide. Would he die for his pursuit for perfection?

Chicagoan Erik Newman sets him on a quest for the answer through the design of a convoluted machine that performs a hilariously simple action. Chiang’s perfectly panicky, unnerved character builds Newman’s pre-designed contraption before your very eyes.

While we won’t reveal whether the doohickey works or what it’s designed to do, the very action of creating the doodad sends Chiang on the brink of insanity and the border of bliss. He’s goaded by an antagonist (played by Joe Dempsey), guided by a curious conscience (Dina Connolly) and aided by an accomplice (Dana Dardai) in erecting a thingamabob he himself doesn’t understand all because he think his destiny is to do so.

Scripted into motion by his four human stage props, Dardai brings to life a wildly entertaining and thought-provoking play that’s cognizant of its own reality and consistent with the intersection between innovation and insanity. We’re left sympathetic to the dual-edged sword of genius and we’re reminded to respect so much we enjoy that came at such great cost.

“Contraption” runs through March 1, 2008 at The Neo-Futurarium at 5153 N. Ashland in Chicago. 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets cost $15.

By Adam Fendelman

17
Jan

Top Chicago Performance Picks For the Weekend of of Jan. 18, 2008

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Theater

Do you cry yourself to sleep at night because you never got your big break in show business? If so, here’s your chance to become the fantasy of every teenybopper. The CW’s “One Tree Hill” has an open casting call coming to Chicago.

Head on over to 11 N. State St. on Jan. 19. The call begins at 2 p.m. Get there early because you probably weren’t the only one with salty show business tears on your pillow.

White people talking about racism? Is that acceptable in our politically correct country? The cast of “White People” playing at the The Gift Theatre sure think so.

Shows are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The production runs through March 1. Tickets range from $15 to $25.

Do you run your life by the Mayan calendar and believe the world will end in 2012? One woman is faced with how she will spend her last day on Earth as an asteroid plummets to destroy it in “How I Spent My Last Night on Earth”.

The show plays at the Storefront Theater and tickets are $15 to $22. As times vary day by day, check out the Web site.

By Stephanie Huls

12
Jan

Theater: ‘Bird Dog Sedition’ Billed as ‘Most Dangerous Play in Chicago’

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Theater

CHICAGO – With Chicago’s art gallery district as its conversational and thought-provoking backdrop, the free thinking “Bird Dog Sedition” is written, directed and performed explicitly to dangerously deconstruct theatrical conventions.

The three actors in the unusual performance are slaves to their scripts and – interestingly – Marrakesh, Rebecca Pyles and Stephanie Schnorbus (who go by their real first names) clearly know it and often admit it. They ask – in fact, warn and even attempt to scare – audiences to heed a strong warning through statements, rituals and revelations geared to shock, mislead and disturb.

“Bird Dog Sedition”. Photo credit: Chuck Przybyl

“Bird Dog Sedition” – which has transformed ROOMS Gallery on Chicago’s south side into a white world of deep-thinking quotations from some of society’s most brilliant minds – attacks normalcy and warns us not to live life thoughtlessly according to the status quo.

Though it’s short (40 minutes), cheap (only 10 bucks) and sometimes feels like it’s trying too hard to hammer home a theme, the play forces busy Chicagoans to take time away from the traffic of our busy way of living to consider some of the strongest, most touchy and most controversial subjects of life including god, religion, spirituality and idealism.

Instead of pushing his own personal politics on you, though, writer and director Todd Frugia merely slathers critical thoughts on a white wall of intrigue without shoving them down your throat so you can do with them what you please.

“Bird Dog Sedition” – titled to incite healthy mental rebellion – also effectively exploits the mechanisms of awkward silence and the ability to act in a moment believably and then immediately switch to remind you they’re only acting. Standing on a pedestal with a blindfold and hands tied is only a metaphor for the bondage that can be our robotic ways.

The play thinks well outside its boundaries – and even opens the front door to consider what’s happening in the real world outside the performance – while being clearly cognizant of how its patrons might react. Some may take to the school of thought that is inspiration while others may feel angry, ambivalent or indifferent.

Either way, we’re begged to “stop! stop! stop!” being a slave to society and wandering around monotonously like sheep without meaning or purpose. While the performance’s own purpose isn’t to answer yours for you, the first step is caring to think about yours yourself.

Frugia bases his “accidental meditation” that is “Bird Dog Sedition” on Sam Shepard who once said: “Plays don’t come from ideas. Ideas come from plays.”

“Bird Dog Sedition” runs through Jan. 26 at ROOMS Gallery at 645 W. 18th St. in Chicago. 7:30 and 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets cost $10.

By Adam Fendelman

03
Jan

Top Chicago Performance Picks For the Weekend of of Jan. 4, 2008

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Theater

Were you the first hipster on your block of that undiscovered Chicago neighborhood only to see it become infested by yuppies and vampires? Yes, bloodsuckers are here to change your neighborhood along with gangsters and too-cool urbanites – well, at least for a month at the Annoyance Theatre.

The new sketch comedy “Idiot Tango” is guaranteed to make you feel a little better about urban sprawl and the jerks now living in your hood. There is a special performance on Friday at 8 p.m. The show officially opens on Jan. 12 and runs through Feb. 16. Tickets run $8 to $10.

Now that you’ve moved to that wonderful neighborhood and killed all the vampires, other social edifices start to bother you. Do you want to be a cool dad but still show your kids how to be responsible? Learn how to be a wonderful citizen from the masters of comedy at Second City.

“Pratfall of Civilization” is a satire of all things socially acceptable. It plays at the Second City e.t.c. stage with two showings on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 and 11 p.m. The performance also shows on Thursdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. Tickets are $19 to $25.

Does the phrase “let’s get ready to rumble!” get you all pumped to watch some masterful pummeling? If so, the “KTF Championship: Battle For the Belt” takes skilled dancers and pits them against each another in an all-out dance mêlée.

Head over to the Lakeshore Theater every first Friday of the month to watch the combatants. Tickets are $10.

Do you read business Web sites like MidwestBusiness.com religiously so you have something interesting to say at parties? If so, skip the party, read our news and head over to I.O. in Wrigleyville for “Whirled News Tonight”.

You will be the hit of the theater as you stump improvisation experts with insightful Midwest business news as they try to make it funny. The show, which is on Saturdays at 8 p.m., will run you $14.

By Stephanie Huls

27
Dec

Top Chicago Performance Picks For the Weekend of of Dec. 28, 2007

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Theater

It is a Santa extravaganza this weekend at the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre in the Lakeview neighborhood.

Who wouldn’t need detox after making toys for screaming kids all day long? Watch as Santa pays for drinking and driving his sleigh by going to a rehab center run by the estranged Mrs. Claus in “7 Santas”. The show is on Friday at 10:30 p.m. and Sunday at 4:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 to $25.

If a drunken Santa isn’t your thing, watch as Trista Smith and Jason Grimm recreate a Missouri Christmas complete with candied yams and sing-alongs. “Santa Claus and Other Lies” shows on Saturday at 10 p.m. and costs $12. If you bring a ticket stub from “Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer,” your price is only six bucks.

If you like to be surprised when you see a play, then check out the Cornservatory’s “Soon-to-Have-a-Witty-Title Chicago Christmas Spectacular”. Watch as the center rotates 14 hilarious plays inspired by the staff’s holiday photos. The show is Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.

By Stephanie Huls

24
Dec

Theater: ‘Marrying Terry’ a Comedic Chicago Musical Without Music

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Theater

CHICAGO – It’s a musical without the music.

Ana Sferruzza closes her eyes and recites poetry from John Keats while
Dan Rodden listens in the Chicago production of “Marrying Terry”.
Photo credit: Joanna Kozek

Coupling the common theatrical themes of love and humor with the uncommon counterparts of radiology and rare books, “Marrying Terry” is not only performing now in Chicago but was also derived entirely from the city and its familiarities.

The set is a miniature facsimile of the household Drake Hotel. References to the Chicago Transit Authority, its 151 bus, a frenzied Chicago street, Lincoln Park and Michigan Avenue allow the local production to shine a tongue-in-cheek – albeit campy – spotlight on what many Chicagoans hold dear.

The story’s crux rests on endearing rare-books librarian Terry Adams (Ana Sferruzza) and the twist of fate that bestows her to another Terry Adams (Dan Rodden) while in what he thought was his bed.

Brian Simmons and Debbie Laumand-Blanc sing “Auld Lang Syne”
in the Drake Hotel bar in “Marrying Terry”.
Photo credit: Joanna Kozek

He’s a radiologist being reluctantly coerced to tie the knot by his assertive girlfriend while she’s meeting her own assertive, long-distance boyfriend thinking she wants the same. Strong supporting characters round out the feel-good production that clearly makes no mystery of where it’s heading.

Just in time for the glacial, snow-white New Year’s Eve the Windy City sees every year, the romantic comedy comes from the mind of playwright Gregg Opelka. Though known as a musical composer, “Marrying Terry” only bursts into a melodic number in one drunken scene.

Still, many of the components of a musical – a simpler storyline, an upbeat plot and a light-hearted romance – resonate loudly.

Mary Mulligan (left) and Ana Sferruzza square off in “Marrying Terry”.
Photo credit: Joanna Kozek

Elements of “Marrying Terry” draw on the feel of classics such as “Bye Bye Birdie” or “The Music Man”. The performance is directed by Suzanne Avery-Thompson who directed Opelka’s 2002 chanson musical “La Vie Ennui” and choreographed his musicals “Charlie’s Oasis” and “Hotel d’Amour”.

Its storyline is adapted from real, semi-autobiographical events. Opelka drew inspiration for the performance in part by the Russian film “Irony of Fate,” in part by his days at the American Library Association and in part by a real-life incident at a New Orleans hotel.

“Marrying Terry” runs through Jan. 27, 2008 at the Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater. 8 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays; 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on Saturdays; 3 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets cost $24-$30.

By Adam Fendelman

20
Dec

Top Chicago Performance Picks For the Weekend of of Dec. 21, 2007

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Events, Theater

Do you need something saucy to keep you warm? Did you just think of women in bustiers as you read that? If so, “The Flaming Dames in ‘Naughty & Nice’” just may be the thing you need to get your blood pumping.

While this Chicago-based burlesque show has been around since 2002, for the first time it is dancing to the tunes of the holiday season. Check them out at The Spot in the Uptown neighborhood for $15. The seasonal extravaganza runs through Jan. 4 and shows are on Fridays at 10:30 p.m.

Burlesque not hot enough for you or do you just like things warm and fuzzy (like bunnies)? If the latter, hit up the Climax Lounge Christmas party on Dec. 22 starting at 9 p.m. There will be a featured appearance by Playboy.com “cybergirl” of the month Brie Anna as well as go-go dancers and festive decor. The cost is $10 before 10:30 p.m. and $20 thereafter.

Does all the endless shopping make you want to ship your family off to keep all the gifts for your greedy self? Bah, humbug!

Go check out the play “Seasonal Disorder 3: Christmas in Paradise… Arizona” for a story about what really happens to holiday cheer as one mother ships her overly festive daughter to the desert. Shows are on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. The performance runs through Dec. 29. Tickets are $12 for the Chemically Imbalanced Theater show.

13
Dec

Top Chicago Performance Picks For the Weekend of of Dec. 14, 2007

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Comedy, Theater

Run, man, run! Anthrax is coming! Take this HAZMAT suit and Santa hat to protect you.

Join other chemical warfare paranoids in a four-mile fun run to be followed by four hours of drinking and food to calm those frazzled nerves. For $30, the “Great Chicago Anthrax Scare/Santa Hat Run” is on Dec. 15 at 2 p.m. at the Hidden Shamrock.

Do you blame Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for the nightmare that is the CTA? The creators of “No-El, or How the BlagojeGrinch Stole Christmas” sure do.

Feel a little bit better about your own commute as you watch frustrated commuters spend 45 minutes to go two blocks on the CTA. The show runs at the Gorilla Tango Theatre in Bucktown on Fridays and Saturdays at 10 p.m. with a Sunday showing at 3 p.m. The performance runs through Dec. 23. Tickets cost $10.

Did you wake up this morning with a case of the Brits?

Then grab your dentist and go see “Lord Butterscotch and the Curse of the Darkwater Phantom” as the cast takes British clichés to new heights. Lords and randy ladies will be at the Storefront Theater from Friday through Sunday until Jan. 3. Shows are at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets cost $10 to 20, baby.

By Stephanie Huls