File - Heather.Chrisler
Transcription
File - Heather.Chrisler
CHICAGO ARTS JOURNAL Issue #10 Spring 2016 Fr e e to a good home Chers lecteurs— We hope you have by now advanced your non-networked timepieces (if you still keep those, you Luddite) by the sum of one hour, and extend a warm welcome to the tenth issue of the Chicago Arts Journal. We are, owing variously to illness, seasonal affective-slump, and the pesky tendency of time to march just a bit faster than our laboring hearts, a bit late in delivering this document, but surely you must, by now, be accustomed to that trend. In this edition, we chronicle many of the sights, delights, and head-scratchers we saw at the Curious Theatre Branch’s Rhinoceros Theater Festival, which this year focused on the work of Eugène Ionesco, and particularly his strange chef d’oeuvre, Rhinoceros. And, just to keep things lively, we open the issue with two reviews of theater pieces a bit father back in the catalogue, works that didn’t pass by our notice but did fail to fit neatly into a prior issue: Curious Theatre Branch’s Playing God and Ibsen’s Ghosts at Mary-Arrchie. Moving past these into the Rhino Fest section, you’ll find writing on new works by Mark Chrisler, Barrie Cole, the Billy Goat Theater Experiment, Theatre Y and more, as well as a special treat: an annotated script and notes from Rick Paul on his brief and quixotic Rhino Fest production, The Apocolocyntosis of the Future Peoples Commissar of the Enlightenment. We found much to puzzle and delight over in this piece and the others nested in these pages, and perhaps you will too, whether you made it out into the moderate chill to see this year’s Festival or not. As always, I and mine welcome thoughts, feelings, complaints and suggestions at this address: [email protected]. See you in the future, in the seats. ⎯Johann Blumer In this Issue Page 3 Playing God by the Curious Theatre Branch Response by David Weeks 5 Ibsen’s Ghosts at Mary-Arrchie Response by Lois Regine Demond 8 Rhinoceros by the Curious Theatre Branch Response by Barrie Cole 10 Hippopotamus by the side project Response by Edmund St. Bury 12 Dramaturgy Corner: The Apocolocyntosis of the Future Peoples Commissar of the Enlightenment 18 Endangered by Mark Chrisler Response by Beneven Stanciano 20 Two Takes: The Adventures of BB and Pepe by the Billy Goat Experiment Fatelessness by Theatre Y Responses by Edmund St. Bury 23 Meaning is Tricky by Barrie Cole Response by Carine Loewi 25 Dietrich’s Thoughts Front cover collage photos via rhinofest.com Back cover image by Sue Cargill, from the Curious Theatre Branch production of Rhinoceros Chicago Arts Journal Issue #10 ♦ Spring 2016 Chicago Arts Journal intercession for us. As each player sits down across from God (Beau O’Reilly) for a game of their choosing, the lens through which they view the world, or at least their relationship with God, becomes clear. God’s interest or lack thereof in their chatter becomes evident as well. At the conclusion of the game the players are either ‘raised’ or not by Razor (Ryan Hogan Wright). Jeremy Campbell and Julia Williams take on nearly a dozen roles apiece; the distinction, clarity and simplicity they both convey is a large part of the success and enjoyment of the overall ‘game’ we, as an audience, are enjoying. Some characters are bitter and defensive. Some have found peace. Some are questioning. Some won’t shut the hell up. Some are not willing to go. Some are very much ready. All this happens on Rick Paul’s fabulous set, reminiscent of TV game shows, although a touch more cosmic, sultry and even a little bit mid-century disco. Providing thoughtful tidbits throughout on religion, existence, the history of of Milton Bradley’s and Parker Brothers’ contentious rivalry and games are the delightful duo, Devil (Sidonie Greenberg) and Angel (Zoë Pike). Playing God Response by David Weeks As a kid (the youngest of four) growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s, our favorite family games ⎯ aside from torturing one another ⎯ were cards, Parcheesi, Sorry, and Yahtzee. Trivial Pursuit came along later, as did Atari. If grandma and grandpa were present we mostly played card games. Grandpa always made us ice cream sundaes in between hands of Crazy Eights, Cinch or Kings in the Corners. His sundaes usually had M&Ms and peanuts on top. Oh, and Hershey’s chocolate syrup. Annually, on the eve of a new year, we played Pit. I loved Pit because we got to scream at each other. And drink sparkling apple juice. Once we tried to teach grandma how to play Asteroids but everyone shouting, “Turn up AND SHOOT, GRANDMA!” got to be a bit too much for her and all involved so we stuck with cards. These are some of the best childhood memories. Seated around a kitchen or dining room table. Laughing. Exercising our wit. And remembering our manners. Mostly. Relishing the victory, learning grace in loss. What I experienced over the course of the play is not unlike what I have experienced with religion. Through the first round of games I found myself observing through a very fixed set of beliefs. God is in charge. Everyone will die. When God is playing Battleship he hardly looks up at his opponent, only taking one hit on one of his ships. The player facing God asks if one oughtn’t hurry across a crosswalk when a car is waiting as nearly every strike against his ships is a hit. This portrayal stuck with me because I scurry across crosswalks. I In Matt Rieger’s Playing God, the audience is taken on a fun romp through many such games as we meet, one at a time, an array of characters attempting to find out their fate. Each player is introduced by Gloria (KellyAnn Corcoran), the timekeeper who is sitting at God’s right hand making 3 Chicago Arts Journal try to be good, which is to say I try to SHOW that I am good or that I am at least thinking about appearing to be good. I try to extend a courtesy to those I encounter, when given an opportunity. But why not? Shouldn’t we? It’s a question of being a good person or not. At the conclusion of each playoff, God is ready to move on and declares his opponent’s fate. He gets bored. So he goes to see his shrink. a religion. I also enjoyed remembering these games in my own life and especially the card games with grandma and grandpa, who taught us good sportsmanlike conduct, but also the importance of enjoying the satisfaction of a win. ♦♦♦ Who knew that God needs a therapist (Kelly Anchors)? But of course he does and hilarity ensues. At which point I began to question my beliefs. After God gets a little pep talk we begin to see things differently. The game changes. Suddenly we have winners where we once had losers. One thing I really enjoyed about Rieger’s script is that none of it is too heavy-handed. This afforded me the opportunity to stay engaged and still be able to ponder at the same time. Are the winners (or losers) being ‘raised’ to their death, or to their birth? If God’s therapist needs and takes some time off, where does that leave God? Where are the contestants actually coming from? Is Gloria Christ? Without Gloria, Razor and the third member of God’s team (T-Roy Martin) would God be able to do anything? Is there really teambuilding in heaven or wherever we are, ‘cause team-building seems like hell. Ultimately we are made to consider a number of possibilities and to experience shifts, which is, after all, a fine strategy in playing ‘the game’, is it not? Life is a game. Everything we’re involved in has some element of sport. I enjoyed the contemplation of religion as a sport ⎯ or sport as Playing God ran at Prop Thtr (3502 N. Elston Avenue) from November 13 through December 20, 2015. It was directed by Stefan Brün and performed by Beau O’Reilly, Julia Williams, T-Roy Martin, KellyAnn Corcoran, Sidonie Greenberg, Zoë Pike, Kelly Anchors, Justin Botz, Ryan Hogan Wright, and Jeremy Campbell. 4 Chicago Arts Journal That portrait was well-lit through the whole damn show, so I knew the guy was important, though he sounded like pretty much a bastard. When Finn and I sat down before the show, one of the young people actors (Catherine Lavoie), playing the French maid character, came around to all the audience people and made small-talk, which was exclusively in French, to the confusion of a lot of audience people, but I thought it was pretty funny. And, sidebar note: you know how when actors yell, you can usually tell what their real accent is? Like, if an American person is playing Cockney, if she has to yell, it’ll usually come out American, because yelling while acting is hard? Well, when the French maid lady yelled, I could tell that she was really French-Canadian, which matters to like 12 people, and doesn’t actually matter at all, but anyway. Ibsen’s Ghosts Response by Lois Regine Demond My brother Finn met me at the airport and completely insisted that we go see this Ibsen show at Mary-Arrchie, which was closing soon (the show, and also the theater, he said). Carolyn Hoerdemann was in it, he said, and also Steve Walker and Kirk Anderson, all of whom I have seen in shows around town before, visiting, and then also some young people were in it, he said (Catherine Lavoie and Gage Wallace), but I didn’t know anything about the young people. I never do. And Greg Allen directed it, he said, the Greg Allen who started the Neo-Futurists, back when, and who directs some stuff nowadays. So okay, I said, let’s go to the damn play, and please also buy me dinner when you stop and think about it. Here’s a neat thing that happened, visually: each character’s first entrance of the play cued a light change, in which they would strike a dramatic stance and freeze under a white spotlight, like they were posing for their very own tarot card. This thing, and the entrance-exit doors, and the overall pace of movement, added up to a snappy style in the piece, which I enjoyed. It all seemed very purposeful, very madefor-the-space. Greg Allen had clearly paid a smart attention to frames and archetypes, and to not letting the audience get bored. The stage in the Mary-Arrchie upstairs place, arranged in the round, is small and neatly defined: one door says “Entrance,” the other says “Exit,” and those rules of movement hold fast during the play. It’s like a cuckoo clock, the people whirling through. A parlor is implied with a silk clawfoot couch on one side and a table and chairs on the other, a lone window hanging above the audience near the couch, and an oil portrait of the Significantly Deceased Father Figure (see title) glowing out on the opposite side. And, okay, I have to admit here that I don’t really enjoy Ibsen. When I think Ibsen, I think of a lot of teeth-gnashing 5 Chicago Arts Journal and long-form agonizing over difficult family situations, and after half an hour I just wish someone would leave the room. But Allen’s cast takes the bones of the play and rattles them stylistically, cracks the skeleton into a smile. The characters are often aware of their presence in a storefront theater, in front of a room full of people, playing out their tortured family drama with their tongues in their cheeks (or sometimes in other peoples’ cheeks, ha ha). The mother character sits at the table in front of a big pile of Ibsen books, flipping through them sometimes and stopping at one point to read a long passage of her lines from one, as if by examining the text she might find a trap door in her life and make it out of the room after all. I was pulling for her, I really was. Carolyn Hoerdemann, as that character, had a great comic timing; she was mostly defeated and world-weary, but not the iron maiden of sadness the script might have her be in another age. rear its head and charge, and it does, as the son character (the other young person actor, Gage Wallace) is overcome by syphilis or whatever disease thing his bastard dead father has passed on to him, and slips gradually into a writhing mass on the couch; this leaves his mother to agonize over whether to kill him quickly or leave him in a puddle for the rest of his life. Now, that’s kind of a hard ending to crack jokes over, so I don’t expect miracles, but the play just became so earnest in these last moments. It felt like a cheat. We’ve been laughing at these people and their contrived, impossible situation and their pitiable drama for an hour, and now I’m going to tear up because the chickens have come home? Now’s the sentiment time? Nah. Direction-wise, the meta technique continued its through-line, as the mother helplessly offered the murder weapon around the room to the audience, hoping that someone would do the act for her; so, that made sense enough, but it’s the sudden tonal shift that doesn’t do it for me, and feels like it sells out the rest of the show’s efforts. The theater technique of smirking self-awareness can rankle, for me, can melt into mere cleverness and cheap fourth-wall-breaking laffs when left on the stove too long, but overall, it let just enough air into the play for me to remain interested. But I know what you’re saying. Lois, what do you want? Stop complaining about somebody’s thing they made, somebody’s perfectly good thing, just because it doesn’t fit the set of expectations you brought into it, and/or the set of rules it set up for itself during its runtime! To which I say, well, fine. Grain of salt. I enjoy watching shows in that Mary-Arrchie space ⎯ it’s got a strange, ribald feeling in its bones, and it always feels like it has dark mystery corners, no matter how many lights are on. I’m feeling sad that it’s going The only moment that felt like ripped velcro to me, something out of step with the work as a whole, was the play’s end. This being a Great Dramatic Work, I have to expect a big finish, a Long-Simmering Dramatic Thing to 6 Chicago Arts Journal away so some yuppies can live in new condos with their shiba inu puppies or whatever. But there’s nothing to do about that now, is there. Let’s all gnash our teeth together, and see what happens. ♦♦♦ Ibsen’s Ghosts ran at Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company (Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan Road) from November 8 through December 20, 2015. It was directed and adapted by Greg Allen, and performed by Kirk Anderson, Carolyn Hoerdemann, Catherine Lavoie, Gage Wallace, and Stephen Walker. Carolyn Hoerdemann in Ibsen’s Ghosts Photograph by Joe Mazza/Brave Lux 7 Chicago Arts Journal two of the characters that begin with the letter “D.” Botard does not begin with a “D” but ends with a “D,” so that counts. Alphabetceros Responseros Rhinocéros Response by Barrie Cole E is for exciting. Yes, it is an exciting production on so many levels and it’s entertaining too. So, those are two of the adjectives that describe it. I’d add excellent too. Yes, I am being effusive. So be it. A is for it is absurd because it is Theatre of the Absurd but seeing it is not at all absurd because it is so wonderful. I have seen many Ionesco plays and some I have seen more than one production of, but I have never seen a production of Rhinoceros until this one and now I can’t imagine another one or a better one at all. No, I cannot. F is for it is fun to be fanatical about good theatre. G is for if some guy I hardly knew asked me if I thought it was worth seeing, “I’d say, “Oh, yes, go, definitely go.” G is for go, not forgo. B is for Berenger, the main character who is played by T-Roy Martin and he is a beautiful Berenger throughout the whole thing of it. There is even an utterly impossible monologue at the end. It is is very long and lonely and intense and Mr. Martin performs that perfectly too. I would call it captivating, I would, H is for if you have ever thought about cultural hypnosis or habitual patterns or the peculiarity of humanity then you will think about these things more deeply when and after you watch it. H is also for hurdle. There is this hurdle onstage that is also a kind of window and it is what the humans climb over when they become rhinoceroses. It is such a smart, great device and a wonderful, simple way to do it. C is for the cast. The entire cast is so good. I’m not kidding! Julie Williams, Vicki Walden, Mitch Salm, and Matt Reiger are phenomenal! So are Marlana Carlson, Janet Sayre, Kate O’Reilly and Charlotte Hamilton. It is not easy to be a human and pretend you are a different human other than yourself and then pretend you are rhinoceroses too. It is quite a feat. It is, it is. I is for Ionesco. I is for imagine if your last name was Ionesco. If my mother’s last name was Ionesco, her full name would be Marilee Ellen Ionesco. I is for imagination. J is Jean, the name of another character in the play, played so well by Matt Rieger. Julie Williams does not play Jean, but D is for Dudard, one of the characters’ names, and it begins and ends with the letter “D.” There is Daisy too. Those are 8 Chicago Arts Journal plays The Logician. I could listen to her recite absurd syllogisms daily. I’m certain I would love that! S is for sides. Ionesco wrote, “Truth has only two sides, but it’s the third side that’s best.” K is for I know someone named Kevin Kampf. He is not involved with the play, but he has a good name and is involved in numerous other projects. When someone agrees to something he’s asked them to do, they might say, “Okay, Kevin Kampf.” That’s quite a bit of alliteration. T is for I think that’s true! U it is undeniably good. It is at the Prop Thtr, but only a giant would be able to use a whole theatre as a prop. V is for in school, the teachers always said not to use the word “very”, so now I make sure I always do. I use it lavishly. I will use it now: Rhinoceros is a very, very, very very, very, very, very, very, very worthwhile piece of art to eat. It is better than most foods. L is for Love. (I try to remember love in all things.) M is for the music. There is great, great live marvelous music in this production of Rhinoceros! I’d describe it as dissonantmarchingbandoutthererhinocerosmusic. I loved the music! W is for Vicki Walden is in it. Yes, I’ve already mentioned her, but she’s worth mentioning again, because she is one of the best actors in Chicago. N is for an “N” looks very much like an “M” when I am not wearing my glasses and so I will pretend I am not wearing them and that the “N” is an M and say that the masks are spectacular and original. Sue Cargill made them and there are a multitude of them and I have heard a rumor that they might sell them when the production is over and if that happens, I’d like one of them to be nine. (Mine, that is.) X, Y, Z is for everything and everyone else I may have left out accidentally in this alphabetoceros responseros rhinocéros. If you discover what that might be and/or where it is, please tell me at once. ♦♦♦ O is for O’Reilly as in Beau O’Reilly who directed the play. I love his vision of it. (I am wearing my glasses now and so my vision of his vision is working perfectly and so I can see his perfect vision. It is enchantingly smart! Rhinoceros, by Eugène Ionesco, was directed by Beau O’Reilly and performed by T-Roy Martin, Matt Rieger, Vicki Walden, Julia Williams, Mitch Salm, Kate O’Reilly, Janet Sayre, Marlana Carlson, and Charlotte Hamilton. 9 Chicago Arts Journal followed by Improvisation, in which the aforementioned Bartholomeuses (I, II, and III) argue the fine points of language and theater with the droopy and confused Ionesco. Hippopotamus Response by Edmund St. Bury The piece moves quickly, with its three plays braided into each other; scenes from each work bump into the next, which provides pleasant comic effect. The text, being Ionesco doing comedy, bounces and plays light on its absurd feet, not bogging down to explain itself or sort out loose strands. And I enjoyed the character of the playwright Ionesco, swimming in this strange soup. The actors in Hippopotamus (several of them playing multiple roles) are middling to great. Ted Hoerl, as Ionesco, stands out, with all his muddled gravity. Tom McGrath as the announcer drives the Leader section, vocally powerful and bemused by every turn of description. The three Bartholomeuses in the play’s final section seem a little too close to competing for good grades in acting school (Depaul? Just a guess), but that kind of affect often shakes off by the end of a show’s run. They are young, energetic, and pleased to be there, and that counts for something. Hippopotamus, presented at the Rhino Fest by the side project and Shift Seven and directed by Adam Webster, is an amalgam of three short plays by Eugène Ionesco. The narrative frame is the character of Ionesco himself, seen briefly at first, asleep at his desk, presumably in a dream. When he awakes to perform in the last section of the work, it’s due to the interruption of a pesky interlocutor, and then another, and then another. The playwright must account for his late script and explain his characters to three intruding scientist/scholar/theater producers (a lethal combination), all named Bartholomeus. Most of the work’s early text, if not all of it, comes from The Leader, an energetic piece of agitprop about political hero worship. Three excited citizens watch a point far beyond our vision, describing the mysterious leader as he promenades, poses, drinks soup, pets a hedgehog. In a turn that surely earns Ionesco his “absurdist” credentials, the leader finally appears, solemnly crossing the stage in a long coat and, spoiler alert, he has no head. Meg Elliott, a veteran of other side project productions, brings her usual intelligence and sparkle to a number of roles. The piece is well staged by Adam Webster, making use of the smallish Prop Thtr space for a number of dynamic entrances and exits, strong diagonals, and pleasing static arrangements. This skill is not surprising, since the side project is one of the most minimal and circumscribed theater Hippopotamus then presents Maid to Marry, a love tale featuring several couples who talk philosophy with their mouths and toss bon mots of longing in every direction; 10 Chicago Arts Journal spaces this side of Spokane, in close competition with Oracle Theatre’s postage-stamp storefront on Broadway. (Now, there’s another company that knows what to do with a shoebox of a stage. I’d like to see the two groups compete in a Small Space Act-Off, staging rangy shows in ever-shrinking rooms, like those cats on the internet who will crawl into a packing crate, then a fishbowl, then a pint glass, just because it’s there. But I digress.) Hippopotamus is a fun show, its characters whizzing by and puzzling over their predicaments, but never for too long, or too seriously. This reminds me of Ionesco’s ethos ⎯ if it can be supposed that he had one, really ⎯ in which the guignol (a quick and grotesque simplification of characters and scenarios) is the highest form to aspire to, a diversion that just might show us some truth inside its jokes. ♦♦♦ Hippopotamus was adapted and directed by Adam Webster, and performed by Meg Elliott, Ted Hoerl, Alex Hovi, Rob Koon, Aaron Lockman, Tom McGrath, Miriam Reuter, and Zachary Weil. 11 Chicago Arts Journal Dramaturgy Corner: The Apocolocyntosis of the Future Peoples Commissar of the Enlightenment The theater designer, teacher, and director Rick Paul is something of a fan favorite in the offices of Chicago Arts Journal, as much for his candor about theater life in Chicago (in which he has participated, among other places, for several decades) as for his sharp eye for stage design; his looks are by turns minimalist, mod, and baroque. After seeing his show in this year’s Rhino Fest, The Apocolocyntosis of the Future Peoples Commissar of the Enlightenment, we at CAJ asked Rick if he might share the piece’s script with us. The document he delivered, an annotated text mixing Ionesco’s framings with scientific, philosophical and political quotes, was too interesting to keep to ourselves. We reprint it here as a document of dramaturgical interest. Quotes on a scrim from Cocteau, Nietzsche, and Ionesco: the opening image of The Apocolocyntosis of the Future Peoples Commissar of the Enlightenment Photo by Dietrich 12 Chicago Arts Journal has unexplainably transformed into a rhinoceros, and creates a literal path of destruction everywhere he goes. But Chrisler finds new life in the metaphor by shifting focus away from the outmoded trends of fascism to the unfortunate present issues plaguing gender roles, especially among young adults. Lillian Mountweasel (an electric Heather Chrisler), Dave’s onetime boyhood crush, agrees to work with the government in an attempt to curb Dave’s violent tendencies. The more she humors his romantic advances, the longer he puts off the kind of rampages that have literally killed people. Her placation saves lives, but is of course at the expense of her almost exclusively. Throughout the course of the play, Lillian has to endure all the painfully awkward wooing that Dave can muster. A forceful open-mouth kiss is only the first layer of snow that rolls into a ball of an unannounced apartment entry, misguided shaming of female rom-com archetypes, and the dependably manipulative high school parlor game of Truth or Dare. There’s hardly a moment where Lillian (or the audience for that matter) feels especially won over by Dave’s affable put upon advances. Still, Jeremy Campbell’s dopey FBI agent assures her time and time again that is for the greater good. Endangered Response by Beneven Stanciano Writers of the Oulipo movement like Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec proved time and time again that form can inspire content as effectively as, say, temporal events or contemporary social issues. This is not to say that immediate relevancy or personal expression go by the wayside necessarily. If anything, working with constraints is much like the hindrance of actual literal physical constraints. The effort made to break through from them actually seems to provoke even more fervent emotional immediacy. The theme of this year’s 27th annual Rhinoceros Theater Festival is for once a titular one. The festival is appropriately mounting Eugène Ionesco’s classic absurdist allegory Rhinoceros while asking all adjacent programming to be new work inspired by this very enduring piece of theatre. Ionesco used the metaphor of people transforming into rhinoceroses to address the inexplicable yet evident mass fascist uprising during the second World War. Its impact endures because Ionesco presented these transformations as more primeval than logical, more instinctual than pragmatic. The transformations, misguided though they were, seemed to be out of an inherent need to survive and to find a sense of freedom in a society of stringent regulations. Appropriately enough, the themes in Chrisler’s work seem to echo the sentiments of Kenya’s former director of Wildlife Richard Leakey when discussing the hunting of the Black Rhino in continental Africa. Conservationists and hunters alike claim that large amounts of money spent to hunt big game animals were crucial in removing older problem animals, as well as funding large scale conservation projects. According to the WNYC program Radiolab episode “The Rhino Endangered, Mark Chrisler’s bold response to Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, is a seemingly literal one at first glance. Dave (Brendan Balfe), a standard, run-of-the-mill American schlub, 18 Chicago Arts Journal Hunter,” Leakey, on the other hand, equated this mindset with a father selling his daughter to be raped to pay her school fees. For the greater “good,” maybe, but at the expense of some very serious personal rights. Chrisler addresses this idea deftly over the course of 90 minutes, showing glimpses of Dave’s animalistic rage that could turn sinister at any given moment. His large stature, protruding horn, and sometimes disturbing attitude toward women remind the audience that no matter how often he references Blockbuster Video, Lillian is still stuck in a small room with a wild animal. However, it’s Heather Chrisler’s performance as Lillian that truly carries the day. Her expressive face puts discomfort on full display, but more importantly, so are her attempts to hide such discomfort. For all the humoring and dulcet tones she attempts to yield, a gore may be in her future with a mere slip of the tongue. each other makes their arguments even more palpable. Credit should also be given to director Shannon Evans, whose staging reflects an effective faux claustrophobia that does not inhibit the actors. She even impressively stages some hilarious physical comedy with Campbell’s FBI agent as he attempts to survey the otherwise all-too-private moments between Dave and Lillian. The current relevant barometer of feminist narrative portrayals is the Bechdel Test, which states that at least two female characters must speak to each other at some point without talking about another male character. While Chrisler’s play “fails” in that respect, he still makes an important statement about gender politics in the 21st century that could really only be explored in a confrontation between the sexes. Though the “civilized” world is decades removed from presuffragette subservience, more subversive subservience is still omnipresent in the crude jungle of chauvinism, full of all the angry rhinos eager to thwart progress. Endangered may not be a play written for the greater good, per se, but it certainly gets the conversation rolling. The play stands tall on a soapbox by the end, and suddenly themes that were addressed through behavior and subtext transition into oblique, long-winded monologues from both characters, breaking through the fourth wall like a bulldozer. Though seemingly a jarring transition, it feels incredibly earned, largely due to the work of both actors. Balfe’s third act spotlight seems to be the character’s turning point to finally gain some empathy. However, just as the audience is ready to give their hearts out to Dave, Chrisler (both Heather and Mark) knock them straight onto the ceiling, pulling off an even more impressive bait and switch calling out who the real victims are. The grandstanding could have easily been exclusively for the audience (at times it even seems like that is the intention), but Balfe and Chrisler’s attention to listen to ♦♦♦ Endangered, by Mark Chrisler, was directed by Shannon Evans and performed by Brendan Balfe, Heather Chrisler, and Jeremy Campbell. 19 Chicago Arts Journal drunk and all cheeky. Rereading the play recently, I am convinced that is the best way to experience it still: half drunk, and at least as cheeky. Two Takes Thoughts & responses by Edmund St. Bury The play is argumentative and fantastic, fascist and anarchistic at the same time, full of farcical fear and real terror, and I really want to see it again. Anyway, back in 1966 I got cast as the office manager Papillion, and if you know the play— This has been an odd year for me, Rhino Fest-wise. Despite my best intentions, I have struggled to get to enough shows. Kidney stones, two funerals, two bouts of the flu, my dog Claude got sick, an old lover called (who shouldn’t have)… You get the idea. I had expressed interest to my people at CAJ in reviewing something, but the ones that held special interest (Barrie Cole’s Meaning is Tricky and Mark Chrisler’s Endangered had piqued me) were spoken for before I got around to throwing in my lot. My Saturdays have been occupied with assorted life crises, so I didn’t get to see Ionesco’s granddaddy of absurdist theater, Rhinoceros, put up by the Curious Theatre Branch, until the very end of its run. But wait, I am veering away from this production, which is not mine to spew over anyway. The polite folks who helm this fine rag will never tell me to button my lip, no matter how asinine and personal my reviews get, but that is not an acceptable excuse for the random goings-on that most of my peers in the critical realm indulge in. More to the point: What did I see this year in the Rhino Fest? How was it done? What did I feel, think, know, when I wandered home in the wan street light after seeing it? But I was glad to see it, eventually. Rhinoceros was a big influence in my late teens, oddly enough; I was flunking out of Northwestern at the time (pre-med, if you must know), and my latent theatrical ambitions were about to be realized. In the course of a drunken afternoon at Jimmy’s (a Hyde Park watering hole were the beer was cheap and you could always get a liverwurst on rye at the bar, even if you were likely to puke it up twenty minutes later, and I was), I was invited to audition for the play. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had done debate and speech in high school, so I figured heyho, and breezed through the audition the next morning, half Well… all right. ♦♦♦ The Adventures of BB and Pepe: Funoceros Runoceros The Billy Goat Experiment is a funny company. I mean, they make me laugh. BB and Pepe is a live radio play, mostly written by company member Todd Zaruba, in which we are invited to join the “Battle against Banality.” Seven actors perform a variety of characters, moving in and out of voices 20 Chicago Arts Journal with zest and a lot of pleasure in the doing, making foley sounds with a tableful of tools in spare moments. The plot: the power-mad Whimsy Twins, joined at the cranium, are a horrid duo closing swiftly on their goal of world domination (lately by a plot to brainwash local citizens and steal their energy, using complicated headgear). dance sort of rhinos, lumbering robotically to the front of the stage, everybody talking at once, striking enchanted poses. These jarring interludes are the most deliberate takes on Ionesco in the piece. There are also political commercials, filled with hideous people running campaigns against other hideous people, and playful pokes at a few fringe theater characters from the real world, and a pirate radio station that keeps going on and off the airwaves. Cat Jarboe throws her considerable comic moxie into every role she plays, making big choices that land like M-80s. Through it all, the plot skips cheerfully along, like a high school talent show crossed with a Frank Zappa Easter brunch, and makes just enough sense. Everything is fun, even (and especially) the bad guys; and nobody gets hurt along the way. BB and Pepe live to ride another day, and I heard something about a SoundCloud page with archived episodes, which I will surely investigate with the canine Claude by my side in my next free interval. Bravo, Billly Goat Experiment. You cheered up this grizzled head. BB is a little girl, played by Lynn Marie, who is smarter and more chipper even than many girl characters who precede her in these sorts of tales (Little Orphan Annie, say, or Dorothy Gale); and Pepe is a little dog, played with tail-wagging charm by David Weeks. Weeks takes a great transformation, man to dog, simply by opening his mouth and showing his teeth, panting throughout, and jangling keys by the microphone to approximate the pup’s collar tags. BB and Pepe are determined to figure out what those malevolent Whimsys are up to. They go to the town’s theater, even though they know the play will be horrible, and there they meet old friends ⎯ notably Rocky, the dumb dog counterpart to Pepe’s whipsmart canine, played by Stephen Oleksiak, who accomplishes his dog transformation by sticking out his voluminous tongue and keeping it out. ♦♦♦ Fatelessness Lots of stuff happens along the way, including a neighborhood meeting attended by factions of yuppies, punks, and garbage men (the punks, played as addled cockneys by TRoy Martin and Tod Zaruba, are particularly funny). Periodically, T-Roy Martin picks up a trombone and starts blatting, and the others transform into rhinos, or modern- From Theatre Y, Fatelessness is an oddly disturbing mixedmedia piece. The show’s separate pieces are pretty simple, and achieve most of their power by not mixing. The text, adapted from a novel by Imre Kertész and performed (as pre-recorded audio) by Michael Doonan, is a coming-of-age story unfolding 21 Chicago Arts Journal largely in the Nazi concentration camps, told over the course an hour in real time and four years in narrative time. The narrator pulled me along, first with cocky, stupid innocence; and then, as the story progressed, with his capacity to witness cruelty and still survive; and finally, by his shell-shocked acceptance of freedom. Hatred is what the narrator is left with, hatred for everybody, and that word rang through me as such a terrible form of justice, the only justice the victim of cruelty is left with: “We can hate and hate completely.” This idea felt right in the play ⎯ indeed, it felt essential to the story ⎯ and yet it bothered me. Where is the compassion, the love, the freedom in that word as a resolution to the Holocaust? God damnit, I don’t know. both dancer and speaker were excellent and the direction, by Melissa Lorraine, was careful and unobtrusive. The day I saw the show, several people seemed to be filming the piece. This troubled my viewing of the play, and made me think about something I often think about, when this happens (and it does, with some frequency): Documentation is not theater. It is simply documentation. It is narcissistic, probably; helpful, maybe; but still, just documentation. I like my theater straight at me and in front of me, the live viewer. ♦♦♦ The other part of the piece (happening concurrently) is physical and live, performed by different people during the run. On the occasion I saw it, it was the dancer Jessica Cornish ⎯ bone thin, androgynous, silent. She spent the whole hour cleaning the floor of the theater, first sweeping with her hands as if she were gathering bits of flotsam; then with water and a bucket, on hands and knees; and finally stepping into the bucket, rinsing her whole self in the now-grey water. This cleaning was methodical and obsessively thorough, giving way only briefly to a panicky self-slapping, an uncontrolled moment of movement. I watched her carefully, at first skeptical of the art school tone laid over the real suffering of the story, and then with a kind of hope, a need for her to succeed at whatever she was doing there. The performances by The Adventures of BB and Pepe: Funoceros Runoceros was written by Todd Zaruba and the Billy Goat Experiment Players and performed by Todd Zaruba, Gus Zaruba, Lynn Marie, David Weeks, T-Roy Martin, Stephen Oleksiak, and Cat Jarboe. Fatelessness, adapted from text by Imre Kertész, was directed by Melissa Lorraine and performed by Michael Doonan, Ben Wardell, and Jessica Cornish. 22 Chicago Arts Journal have toward his wife, whom you perhaps also love in yet a third tentative, confusing sort of way. Meaning Is Tricky And so, this Meaning is Tricky reminded me of what I enjoy about Cole’s plays, at their best: that they think about love, care about it as a life force, value it. What is love? How do I get it? What will it feel like? Is bouncing on a trampoline like love? Is a really good conversation? Is sex? Response by Carine Loewi Barrie Cole’s newest play, Meaning is Tricky (excerpted in its pre-production version in this periodical’s Issue #9), is a simple affair, much alike in structure to a few other plays I’ve seen her mount at Rhino Fest in recent years. Two people, in this case a man and a woman, sit in what seems to be a domestic or otherwise cozy space, talking about relationships and love and word games and life. But this time around, thanks to an economical directing job by Jennifer Moniz, there is no pretense of livingroom or waitingroom or elevator or therapy office. There is an empty stage, there are two stools, there are two actors, there is clean white light on their faces ⎯ and by god is it refreshing. I think it works so well because, as in most of the Barrie Cole works I’ve seen (certainly not all of her oeuvre, but a fair handful), text is the primary motivating force of the created world ⎯ not a dance somebody’s doing, nor a beautiful garment an actor is wearing, or even a face someone makes, but the text itself. The plays might as well be poetry readings, sometimes ⎯ and sometimes I think that’s a hardship for a play, being so wordy, but in Meaning is Tricky I found it very functional. Here is a play about dating and coupling and sorting out modern communication, but mostly it’s a play about talking to your roommate, whom you love, but in a way different from the way you love your new romantic partner, if you do, and different again from the feeling you The play’s program cites a line of dialogue Ionesco gives to his character Daisy, near the end of the play Rhinoceros (itself the genesis of the whole year’s festival): “There are many sides to reality. Choose the one that’s best for you.” And so, the questions of the play, as I saw them: What does it mean that Clare, the woman in this text, lives as platonic roommate with Mark, her partner in conversation (and, in many ways, life), though the two have long ago ceased coupling in the romantic sense, so long ago in fact that the play begins with a halting recollection between the two as to whether or not they had sex, way back in those days, and if so, how many times? What will a new romantic prospect think of Clare, learning that she lives with Mark? What does it mean to be forty-something and uncoupled, romantically speaking? Which side of reality will work best, in the sense that narrative frames soothe the nervous mind and assuage the confusions of those around us? I don’t know who this Darren Stephens is, but boy, am I glad to meet him. He plays Mark with a childlike glee, which is both of a piece with what I have seen of Cole’s characters, and a pleasing new take. Because ⎯ how to say this without sounding unkind, which is far from my intent ⎯ Stephens is 23 Chicago Arts Journal wonderfully uncool. He does not appear slick, or callous, or like he really wants to seem cool, and that is a rare thing onstage, even in these fringes we inhabit (whatever those are). Late in the play, Mark and Clare talk about a party they both attended, in which Mark did something so socially strange and transgressive that Clare is furious with him, thinking he made the two of them seem odd to a group of people she hoped to impress. Indeed, bursting into a room full of strangers, wearing a homemade hippopotamus costume and dripping wet (for verisimilitude) would seem off-kilter, even among artists, but Stephens’s breathless glee in remembering how he carried off the bit is infectious, delightful. He keeps his hands on his knees through much of the play, a stiff posture that belies the looseness with which he seems to regard reality. Stephens plays well against Diana Slickman, an actor whose wordy intelligence is in full feather onstage ⎯ as usual ⎯ and who finds a contemplative softness in Clare, a tentative happiness in talking to her friend about sex and flirtation and the hope for something new. home, assigning value to these events, plotting one’s next move based on different inputs from various corners, making meaning out of little joys and riffles… Well, that’s where things get complicated. ♦♦♦ In remembering the play, I keep coming back to its title. Meaning Is Tricky. Is it? Life seems tricky; love seems tricky; communication via text message is a goddamn mine field, it would appear. And perhaps in that title is the locus I’m looking for, or sticking to, in taking something from the play: the afternoon sex on someone’s expensive couch, the searching for someone’s wife’s lost keys, the going to a party and playing games with strangers ⎯ all those things are pretty straightforward, eminently doable in a day’s time. But coming Meaning is Tricky by Barrie Cole was directed by Jennifer Moniz and performed by Diana Slickman and Darren Stephens. 24 Chicago Arts Journal right to embrace lethargy, and this was one of those winters. I make an apology, then. Dietrich’s Thoughts But here, from my brain to yours, are my notes on the artists and the theater pieces I should have worked harder to make sure were represented in our humble Journal, this time around: By Dietrich The Chicago Arts Journal’s efforts to cover the 2016 Rhinoceros Theater Festival completely seem to have fallen flat. Not that anyone out there is complaining, but at least one member of our staff was a constant, grumbling presence in our editorial meetings, pushing toward finality, while everyone else voted on the side of calmness, of recognition of our ⎯ that is, Julie Cowden’s powerhouse comic performance as a dominating actress-of-a-certain-age/theater coach, in Derek Van Barham’s one-act shell game of a script, which rifles deftly through Ionesco’s The Lesson and Exit the King, among other things. I hope they’ll reanimate this little gem in the Ruckus’s regular season. I would be happy to see it again. ♦ the Journal’s ⎯ limitations, which I will now stiffly acknowledge. Yea, we are a staff of three or four, mostly with day jobs, several of whom don’t live here in Chicago all of the time. All of us have numbers of interests outside the “fringe theater scene,” and the famous Johann Blumer pockets, often filled with just enough sweet corn to get the issue out on the pavement, were particularly flattened this year. Some people would do well to remember that you never bet against a French chef on a soufflé. Justin Botz’s Shut Up I’m Flying, a multi-media smorgasbord of mashed-up Ionesco interviews and texts. The show, when I saw it, was barely attended, but notably included sections of Botz lecturing the audience in a rubber rhinoceros mask while gesturing in the style of Richard Nixon; and attempting, as some version of Ionesco’s Berenger character, to take flight from a ladder leaned against a brick wall, while conversing with three talking balloons (none of whom believed in him one inch). Strange? Original? Entertaining? Yes! ♦ So, not everything can get done all of the time. That said, there was a list of things growing in my mind that the CAJ didn’t get to covering in Rhino Fest 2016. One might say here, and at least one of my colleagues did say, Who put your writing hand in the deep freeze, Mr. Dietrich? I admit it is a fair question. Sometimes I demand excellence while still holding on to the 25 Chicago Arts Journal The Monday night lecture events, most of which I heard only after the fact, from pirated phone videos taken by a friend too quiet to be noticed (I play tennis on Monday nights). Here, in the work of Amy England, Jenny Magnus, Robin Cline, Stefan Brün, Martha Bayne, Dan Caffrey, Ira Murfin, Matt Test, and, most hilariously, the side-splitting language play and political humor of Mitch Salm and Michael Martin, I discovered some of the smartest and most original work to come out of the Festival in years. Perhaps the brain trust who does the programming will see fit to bring back this format and these performers next year. and some in vivid marker. Cargill’s darkly comic sensibility is always a sight to see, and several of the pieces were on sale for a tuppence. ♦ ♦♦♦ The PinkElephant Performing Troupe’s The Runaways, playing to a highly participatory crowd of small children and their families. The PinkElephant performers, all in their early teen years, had a surprise hit in last year’s fest, and this year they are even better. Lena Brün’s script, funny and wise, was only surpassed by the ear-catching and lyric-driven songs, and by Brün’s own performance as the ostracized contortionist girl who refuses to go away. ♦ Sue Cargill, the most existential of our burg’s cartoonists, had an art show on the walls during the Festival this year: twenty small drawings, pages from original picture books, and triptychs, meticulously drawn in insanely detailed pen and ink, ♦ 26 You have been reading the Chicago Arts Journal Spring Issue 2016 ♦♦♦ We thank you for your attention. ♦♦♦ We invite queries, retorts, and story pitches at: [email protected] Conversation Piece Photos by Dietrich 27 CHICAGO ART S JOURNAL Spring 2016 #10