evanevanevan

This is what I need to start a Doc screening with:

I love how it even fits the color scheme of the site. Thanks, Ralph!

Oh man. My friends continue to be involved in plays that offer critics the opportunity to write the best reviews ever. Here's Chris Jones's review in the Trib of a production two of my friends are in, G.I.F.T. at Collaboraction (which, admittedly, does put on some fine work also):

Collaboraction and the G.I.F.T. that keeps on taking

There is much computer-aided mumbling about present-giving in "G.I.F.T.," Collaboraction's typically ambitious seasonal offering performed, both indoors and outdoors, in a 7,000-square-foot warehouse space at Firehouse Square on Chicago's West Side. But the greatest gift of all arrives when a big overhead door whirs and opens, revealing that this insufferable show is over.

Actually, not quite over. "G.I.F.T." ends around a big outdoor bonfire. But some communing around flames is, compared with what has gone before, positively cathartic.

Collaboraction, which long has favored experimental performances in a variety of urban spaces, always has had a high failure rate. So it goes when you try to do something different. But "G.I.F.T." is surely the worst thing the theater has produced in its 13 years of existence. This piece is so grim, you keep waiting for the actors (who are dressed as slightly funky Pilgrims) to step out of their stark, computer-aided environment (they work in front of projected text) and declare the whole enterprise an elaborate, "Waiting for Guffman"-style parody of bad performance art. Sadly, that moment never arrives.

In essence, this piece (designed and directed by Sam Porretta) is a study of the nature of gifts. It begins in a little interactive chamber, where patrons and performers exchange objects of unfathomable definition and viewers are asked to visit little grottoes, wherein meek performers (apparently) try to discern your emotions and reveal your stories. Yes, you pay them for this stuff. They don't pay you.

From there, you head to the main performance space, where these actors engage in a deadly dull series of exercises about what gifting means. It is as if one has happened upon freshmen at a theater school improvising on a teacher's truisms. We arrive at such staggering conclusions as gifting means more than materialism.

Yes, the holidays are more than a new blender. Now you don't have to waste an evening.

There is, I suppose, a certain trippy quality to the proceedings. And the building (an old firehouse) is a beautiful, atmospheric space. Thankfully, there is a bar. If you find yourself dragged to this show, I suggest plunking yourself there until you hear the lick of the flames of freedom.

My roommate is the accompanist for a musical written and performed by members of pH Productions called Rubbed: The Musical! It opened the other week, which led to maybe the greatest review I've ever seen in the Reader:

At its paltry best, this 50-minute mini-musical is as dead-end as the fast-food job of its loser hero. But then it lurches into a half-baked plot about a bong-trapped genie who grants the slacker slob--and would-be pot dealer--three wishes that presumably teach him to forge his own happiness. Whatever measly truths the folks at pH Productions hoped to share succumb to clumsy blocking, amateurish acting, uninspired tunes, lame lyrics, and subpar singing. Seriously, there are enough notes missed here for a second musical.

Rubbed: The Musical!, um, plays Wednesdays at 8 at Stage Left and Saturdays at 7:30 at Donny's Skybox.

The Court Theatre has announced its 2009/2010 season...and I'm apprehensive.

Court Theatre proudly announces the company's fifty-fifth annual season, which opens with August Wilson's Chicago jazz-era classic Ma Rainey's Black Bottom directed by Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson. The Season continues with Charles Ludlam's camp classic The Mystery of Irma Vep directed by Sean Graney; and the Chicago Premieres of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Tony Kushner's adaptation of The Illusion, both directed by Artistic Director Charles Newell. The Season will close with Athol Fugard's Sizwe Banzi is Dead directed by Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson. The 2009/10 season will be performed at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Avenue in Hyde Park.

I would be very excited to see the Didion play...except that it stars Mary Beth Fisher. In fact, it's a one-woman-show. Fisher is one of the most frequently-cast veteran actresses in Chicago - and, in my opinion, inexplicably so. I just don't get the appeal. I've found that she plays every role exactly the same; even at the level of line delivery, she speaks every sentence with the exact same inflection. I've also seen her cast several times as English characters, yet she seems oddly unable to sustain the accent.

I was pleasantly surprised by her understated performance in the first act of Court's recent production of Ibsen's The Wild Duck - yet she closed out the play with a return to that same reliable inflection, which rendered all of Gina's lines as sardonic jokes at her husband's expense. It seemed like they were playing it for laughs, and the audience the night I saw it responded accordingly. I recognize the inherent challenge in presenting that play, as the characters each cling so feverishly to their ideologies that they do appear ridiculous and comical, even though the consequences are tragic. It's similar to the audience laughter I've always witnessed at screenings of Hitchcock's Vertigo - at the tensest moment of Jimmy Stewart's attempted transformation of Kim Novak into his lost love, the crowd uncomfortably laughs at how extreme his obsession is. Even so, I think there are more strategic ways to deal with the absurdity than jokey line deliveries...not to mention the choice of [spoiler alert] dropping a dead body from the ceiling.

I did enjoy The Wild Duck, all the same, and thought many of the performances were quite strong. The biggest problem in the cast was not, in fact, Mary Beth Fisher, but the young woman playing Hedvig. Charles Newell directed her exactly the same as he directed her as the daughter in Court's production of Carousel - a cloying, squealing, scampering moppet of a 4-year-old. Unfortunately, Hedvig is not 4, but 14 - and a precocious 14-year-old at that. Perhaps things are different in Norway, but I don't recall high school freshmen scurrying hyperactively everywhere they go - bent at the waist, literally running between the couch and the bookshelf of the living room. Hedvig's demise was more relief than tragedy in this particular production.

But back to the upcoming season. We've got some August Wilson - and, I mean, he's great, but I feel a little August Wilson fatigue (and find that most of his later plays really needed the help of a red pen). The Kushner and Fugard plays I'm excited to see.

But then...there's the one directed by Sean Graney of the Hypocrites.

Graney is treated like this brilliant wunderkind of Chicago theatre and I have no idea why. He doesn't seem, in my estimation, to know how to read. He either selects plays of pretty dubious quality, or selects plays that I adore...and then proceeds to butcher them. He rides completely roughshod over the texts, thinking he can do a whole lot better by inserting stupid sight gags and silly audio cues. He completely ignores the verbal wit of the playwrights he claims to adore, like Ionesco, and covers up their lines with gimmicks. The Court press release describes the play he is directing as a "high-camp quick-change romp." This is how he approaches every single play he directs.

I do like the Court a lot. For a long time, I thought it was the most consistent theatre in the city. I just hope they can keep it up.

[court theatre]

Many of my friends regard improv with a great deal of skepticism - and understandably so. When the only available points of reference are Whose Line Is It Anyway? and some similarly game-based high school and collegiate comedy groups, there's no reason to assume that improv is anything beyond formulaic, lazy approximations of sub-SNL humor.

This means that most of my friends, despite living in Chicago for at least four years, have entirely avoided seeing long-form improv, one of the city's greatest cultural offerings, and arguably one of the greatest innovations of American theatre. They all love Chicago improvisers when they hit the "big time," appearing on 30 Rock or writing for The Colbert Report, yet rarely express any desire to see them in the environment where they get their start - and where, usually, they're at their best.

Last night, I saw a special performance of the Armando Diaz Experience at i.O. (formerly Improv Olympic) celebrating what would have been the 75th birthday of Del Close, the i.O.-cofounder and probably the most influential figure in American comedy of the past 50 years. The usual monologist was replaced by all of the performers periodically offering stories about Del, which continued on in a post-show discussion. The portrait painted of Del was of a mad journeyman and genius - a hyper-literate, larger-than-life drug-abuser who intimidated and inspired awe from everyone he encountered. One of the members of Baron's Barracudas, the first Harold-team he ever directed, returned to i.O. and offered a story about being a wide-eyed youth meeting Monty Python's Graham Chapman when he was in Chicago, who asked to be taken to meet Del. When they arrived at Del's roach-infested apartment, he found Del already sitting there with Bill Murray. Seeing the rapt attention that Chapman and Murray gave to everything that Del said, the young improviser realized that Del Close was more than just a local teacher, but instead a kind of guru to the entire comedy world.

A point they emphasized was the importance Del put in "playing smart." Though notoriously brash and outspoken with his students, being stupid was really the only thing he would not tolerate. It doesn't have to be funny, as long as you are playing to the top of your intelligence. This elicited a quickly glossed-over moment of contention as Joe Bill interjected that, if the product you are selling is billed as "comedy," then it ought to be funny.

And there, I think, is the great tension that causes a lot of problems, and ultimately prevents many smart, funny people from exploring the world of improv. Really, it's a matter of marketing that trickles down to the content itself. There's a tension between Improv Olympic presenting itself as part of a larger narrative of innovative, experimental theatre and presenting itself as COMEDY! - a fun thing-to-do in the evenings for tourists and Wrigleyville barhoppers. i.O. attempts to do both, I think, perhaps necessarily so for survival, but I wish it could veer more toward the former. Hearing the veteran improvisers speak last night, I think they do too.

The global perspective on improv is, I think, that it's full of yukks and that's about it - a fairly brainless and harmless form of light entertainment. The story of improvised theatre in Chicago, though, is a story of intellectuals. It was born on the campus of the University of Chicago in the 1950s, with brilliant minds like Paul Sills, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May coming together at places like Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap to create a new approach to theatre as the Compass Players, which would eventually morph into Second City. Del Close was a book fiend and a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. His ideas, as last night's performers implied, were inspired as much by quantum physics and Chaucer as Laurel and Hardy.

The Compass Players in Chicago, 1956

It's this approach that I like most in the improv I see. I'm not trying to be elitist and claim that all improvisers must hold advanced degrees and make exclusively referential humor. But I appreciate it when I see it. Maybe the most revered improv act in town, TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi, manage to perfectly blend universality and literacy - they even feature as a frequent guest Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts. They play characters that everyone knows and has encountered in life, yet also infuse their dialog with pieces of literature and science that imply that they actually read - a lot. You sense the same thing seeing Noah Gregoropoulos perform, and The Reckoning, and others. These are people who experiment with form, who will often not be "funny" for 20 minutes, yet suddenly deliver an amazing payoff.

What's particularly astounding with Del Close's brand of long-form improv is that it is group theatre. If you pay attention to a good show by any Harold team, you can see stunning improvisational pyrotechnics at work - an element introduced at the beginning will return, inverted and reimagined to amazing effect, and all done with the performers arriving magically at the same destination. With only minimal elements of form pre-planned, the shows end up with better structure than, well...this rambling blog entry, for example.

So, I think the key for long-form improv to be taken seriously as an art form is for the community to take itself seriously. I wish it could rid itself of the word "comedy" sometimes, as the label is both helpful and toxic. As proud as I am of its Chicago roots, I wish it were not such a local phenomenon, but could be reproduced globally at the same caliber. Frankly, it's a subject that ought to be studied academically. It's not that the story hasn't been told - Jeff Griggs and Kim "Howard" Johnson, for example, have both published books in recent years about Del Close's life and death. It's just that the stories haven't been heard outside a very specialized audience.

I don't know what it would take - a biopic? A This American Life episode? But I think that the same people who revere Ian Curtis and Charlie Parker in music, or Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka in literature, or Orson Welles in film, would hold Del Close in the same regard as a tragic icon of improvisational theatre, if only they knew the story.