Sometimes what’s obvious to one person turns out to be an “Oh, yeah!” moment for the rest of us. Playwright Vivian J. O. Barnes happened to be watching television when the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, was leaving the hospital 7 hours after delivering the youngest of her three children. Barnes saw more than just …
Duchess! Duchess! Duchess! : Nightmare Inside the Fairytale Read More »
Theater for One: Here We Are is a lot more than you think. A concept that flew into New Yorker Christine Jones’ mind after attending a wedding reception in 2002, it all began with an illusion. Roaming through the gathering while entertaining guests, a magician beguiled Jones with a magic trick performed just for her. …
Theatre for One: Court’s Intimate Micro Treasures Read More »
Until you understand its context within the play, you might consider the title both unimaginative and disparaging. In that sense, Some Old Black Man sets you up for the unexpected. Beautifully effective, in the end the ploy delivers a resonant message about people in conflict who find healing resolution. It does not come easy. So …
As maddening as life has been since March of 2020, there have also been some bright moments when the weight of these past several months briefly melted away and our hearts became a little lighter and freer. Many of those times, it was the arts and the people who conceive, develop and perform creative expression …
Everybody can feel it. These last 10 months have been excruciating. For far too many of us, staying in the game is proving so endlessly demanding that it’s taking on the feel of perilousness. That’s why you just can’t knock a guy for trying, even if the result of their efforts may not be what …
The arts have a way of transforming expectations. What’s astonishing is how well they sometimes succeed in refashioning the familiar into the spectacular and the beautiful. Glencoe’s Writer’s Theatre likely did this twice with its Two Scrooges: A Christmas Carol, Two Ways. Both productions opened on December 8th and will run through January 3rd, 2021. …
When you listen to two people talking, and their words reveal an intimacy that goes beyond the bond of a family member or friend, who they are becomes irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether they’re old or young, rich or not rich, the same sex or of opposite sexes, the words don’t change. They’re the kind …
According to Collaboractions, a Chicago theatrical cooperative intent on making art for and by everyday people, “theater permeates all aspects of life”. You can nudge that thought just a little harder and say life is theater. Following their mission of inclusion, broad access and social action, the group’s works embrace voices that rarely receive the …
It can be maddening to realize how much you don’t know. It can also be just as liberating to have knowledge gaps you weren’t even aware of filled in wonderful ways. Those are only two of the impressions that’ll linger in your mind after catching The Neo-Futurists latest entertainment sparkler, 45 Plays for America’s First …
Bravo to The Neo-Futurists and Their Great Reveal Read More »
In Goodman’s Theater’s traveling performance of Fannie Lou Hamer, Speak On It!, E. Faye Butler blows in like a hurricane when she takes the stage as Hamer, the late civil rights icon. Back in the sixties, Lyndon Johnson attempted to obscure the impact and purity of Hamer’s simple truths and unshakable convictions by dismissing her …