CUTTING TO THE QUICK

REVIEW: Cut To The Quick

Cut To The Quick: Splayed Verbiage
Written and
Directed by Various Artists
Presented by The Side Project

Through Dec 21st 2008

For ticket information and performance times click HERE

19 Plays. 3 Programs. 1 Theme.


Cut To The Quick is a festival of short works presented by the Rogers Park company The Side Project at their extremely intimate Jarvis theater. Artistic Director Adam Webster states in the program that this series has been a great opportunity to work with many new writers, actors, crew and directors. It's also a fairly quick and easy way to put up a production. That's not a slam. It's brilliant. You'll see more companies doing this. A small team of a writer, director and a few actors can get a ten-minute play together on rather short notice and on their own schedule. The trick is making sure they're all there for performances.

The Side Project has broken down their festival into three programs; Splayed Verbiage, Splinters and Shrapnel and Static/Cling. Each one, apparently, devoted to a theme. I saw Splayed Verbiage. I have no idea what the theme was. I also don't think that's important. What is important is that it is a strong evening of theater.

Splayed starts off with emerging birth-like sounds that erupt in a woman simply dragging herself out of the bed she shares with her husband. 78, by Laurel Haines and directed by Gina LoPiccolo quickly runs the couple, portrayed by Kelley Minneci and the physically deft Daniel Howard through the stages of life. It was a good choice for kicking off the evening. It reminded me that this wasn't an evening of bloated comedy sketches. This is theater. If there's a gimmicky concept, it's there for a purpose and mined for insight rather than laughs.

The rest of the evening chugs up and down through monologues, two-person scenes and a few slightly larger pieces. The styles range from straightforward to downright bizarre. Splayed is most successful in its two-person scenes. The New Lonely, by Andrew Hinderaker and directed by Vance Smith, is driven by Mike Harvey's recount of a one-night stand to a friend that tears through the seams of a tale of conquest to show us the loneliness and hunger underneath. It ends on a joke that undermines the intelligence of Mike's character, but it's forgivable, especially when handled so expertly by Joshua Toups. Black and White, by Mark Young, directed by Anna C. Bahow, pits a young sailor on a Chicago day trip against an art school chick on an El platform. What could have been a Neil Simon-y odd couple cute-meet goes beyond the surface to show us there's more to people than what we initially make of their appearance. Aaron Carter's O'Dark Thirty was one of my favorite pieces. Two buddies meet in a bar the night before one of them is returning to Iraq. It's played very nicely and puts human faces an that unneccessary war over there. Brett Neveu's Ethnic Cleansing Day, subtly delivered by Bob Wilson and Mike Harvey, again, is a disquieting reminder of how skeletons end up neatly packed into family closets.

Two pieces completely lost me, which, for a festival of 12 works is pretty good! Space, by Laura Jacmin and directed by Megan Shuchman, is so mired in its style that I have no idea what it's about story-wise. Fortunately, it hits you over the head with a hammer-encased message at the end. What keeps that piece entertaining is Cheryl Roy's delightful and energetic performance as Alice. Another piece that just seemed to try too hard to pack too much into a small space was Agony in the Garden by Crystal Skillman. There's one good idea about a friend who steals another friend's ashes. Unfortunately, it gets lost in too many other less interesting ideas. It also has a contrived happy ending.

One thing that I thought was sheer brilliance from a production point of view was the first act closer. It was a piece called Not That (But Something Else) by Brian Golden and directed by Chelsa Marcantel. And it features everyone. Even a few people not in any other piece. It's a great way to sneak in a curtain call and allow the actors from the first half a graceful exit from the proceedings and it also introduces us to the actors coming up.

The show is worth seeing. If you have never been to The Side Project, all the more reason to see this show. It's a strong reminder that when it comes to Chicago theater, good things come in small packages.


YEAH, IT'S FUNNY

THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"To illustrate a loophole in procedures, the NY Daily News stole what?"

54% said "Donald Trump's hair"
- Don't touch the Don's hair. Your fingers will burn.

19% said "The Brooklyn Bridge"

18% said "The Statue of Liberty"
- We're going to give it back to the French. Needs too much upkeep.

9% got it right with "The Empire State Building"

According to The New York Daily News, in one of the biggest heists in American history, the Daily News "stole" the $2 billion Empire State Building.

And it wasn't that hard.

The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property.

The massive ripoff illustrates a gaping loophole in the city's system for recording deeds, mortgages and other transactions.

The loophole: The system - run by the office of the city register - doesn't require clerks to verify the information.

Less than 90 minutes after the bogus documents were submitted on Monday, the agency rubber-stamped the transfer from Empire State Land Associates to Nelots Properties LLC. Nelots is "stolen" spelled backward.

Better return it. Don't want to piss off the previous owner.

I Believe...

...that satirists struggling with how to make fun of Barack Obama is a good problem to have. An even better problem is how Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left deal with their approaches to news reporting. Admittedly, Keith Olbermann seems to have less punch and the sails seem to have gone out of Bill O'Reily's wind. But this, again, is a good thing. Bush is/was a polarizer. Now, I can find out about Britney and Madonna and not feel guilty about it.

...that the story of whirlwind romantic comedies makes for nice whirlwind romantic comedies. In life, I'll take a slow and steady relationship with many moments of mutual hoo-ha excitement any day.

...that after years of resisting, I am now a fan of Facebook. It's a great way to stay in touch with people and reconnect with people I haven't seen in years. Just, please don't poke me.

...that we need new euphemisms for masturbation. Submitted for your approval: tickling the turtle, strapping on the jet pack, logging on to blogger.

...that the current economic climate is going to make corporations rethink outrageous executive pay packages. The reason the big three automaker CEOs are talking about only working for a dollar this year is because it won't affect them a bit. They still have a ton of perks. And, if they end up canned, they will float on their multi-million dollar golden parachutes.

THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"The Pentagon plans to deploy 20,000 uniformed troops by 2011 to where?"

22% said "Afghanistan"
- Someone has to protect those poppy fields!

Wishful thinkers ignored "Iraq" and "Iran"

78% got it right with "United States"

According to the The Washington Post, the U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

Many people are worried that an increase of military presence in our cities may lead to an expansion of the executive branch of government or will keep peace via an oppressive presence.

Sending in the boys in green is a typical knee-jerk American response for making us "safe." What we really need is to divert all the robots seeking careers as actors and get them stationed across the land.

I'd love to see this guy at all the Chicago El stops.

REVIEW: A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Tim Supple
A Dash Arts Production
at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Through Dec 7th 2008

For ticket information and performance times click HERE

This impressive production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was two years in the making in India and is currently on a North American tour. I saw it on the day news was breaking about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. While no one was speaking about that, on stage or off, it was certainly in the air. How could it not be? A few of the actor's bios reference Mumbai as their home.

In a way, it made being a part of the show as an audience member particularly special. I know I personally felt more welcoming and wanted them to feel safe. It also made me more appreciative of the cultural gifts they were about to share. The cast should certainly be heralded for performing their show with great glee and gusto in the face of such turmoil. That act alone strikes at the heart of what theater is all about.

This Dash Arts production shows us how Shakespeare can be interpreted when embraced by another culture. Refreshing not to see a spin on Shakespeare that's different just for the sake of being different. If any playwright can bring multiple cultures together, it's the Bard. It is spoken in eight different languages, one of them English!

Sadly, this show is a mixed bag. It's a combination of Bollywood (without the sexual constraints), Cirque Du Soleil and community theater. It's a brilliant experiment weighed down by some just gosh awful acting. Where Shakespeare's story telling is universal, so is wooden one-note acting. The four lovers at the core of Midsummer's tale just don't have the chops to make us care about them. Their acting is so without nuance of emotion, that one really, really needs to be familiar with the story to be able to figure out what is going on.

Counter to them, though, there's some exceptional acting being done by a few others. Nick Bottom, played by Aporup Acharya, is an expert comic portrayal. Physical, concise and full of life and energy. Aporup, by the way, is one of the actors from Mumbai. His performance alone makes the show worth seeing. He and his company of rag-tag actors from the streets of Athens brighten up the stage every time they enter. Each characterization is clear, you get who they are and you know what they want. And they're delightful.

The duke and queen, played by P R Jijoy and Archana Ramaswamy, who double as the king and queen of the fairies, bring a lot of excitement and energy to the play. They are strongly masculine and feminine and provide an emotional anchor for the show. And Puck, as Puck should be, is a riot. Played by Ajay Kumar, he evokes a 1970's Ringo Starr in a red diaper.

And there's the spectacle of it all, fights and acrobatics, that is well done and if you get lost in the foreign language, well, just kick back and enjoy the fireworks.

Like I said, it is a mixed bag, but certainly worth seeing for the cultural aspects and for Bottom. Just bone up on the storyline beforehand.

THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

" 'Hataraku Watashi,' a play that recently opened to positive reviews in Japan, features two actors that are what?"

22% said "terminally ill"
- If that packs them in, don't tell Don Hall.

21% said "CNN-style holograms"
- Ya know, aside from serving no purpose whatsoever, they weren't really holograms.

7% said "lizards"
- Giant mutated lizards?

50% got it right with "robots"

According to The Sun, a play with a difference has opened in Japan – it's cast is half robot, half human.

The theatrical production stars a pair of Mitsubishi's 'Wakamura' robots alongside two human actors.

The robots play two depressed household servants who work for a young couple.

But the robots grow tired of their mundane lifestyle and long to break free and see the world.

The 20-minute piece titled Hataraku Watashi (I, Worker) was written by Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata and opened this week at Osaka University.

Robot actors. Great. Let me know when the robots start writing.

No one told this woman the actor's golden rule. Never work with animals, children or robots.

Same Shit, Different Planet

I don't know where the title of my post comes from except that it was rolling around in my head when I woke up and it, oddly, sums up my attitude this morning. There's a shoot in Naperville that I have to be at by 8am. When I booked it, I was not informed on where I needed to have my body at 8am on a Monday morning. Naperville is about an hour and a half west of Chicago. To be there by 8am, I need to leave from Fig, in northern Chicago, by 6am. And since I may not be back until 3pm and I teach tonight, I have to be prepared for the day. So, I'm up at 4am. Boo-hoo.

I feel your empathy, so here's something to cheer you up. A fun, simple music video from The Producers. A British group featuring Trevor Horn (Art of Noise) and Lol Creme (10cc, Godley and Creme). That's Lol on lead vocals. Thanks to Randy Craig, a fellow 10cc fan, for turning me on to them.




THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

On Wednesday of last week, I asked...

"Parents of a Claremont, California kindergarten are clashing over a Thanksgiving celebration because some of them don't want what?"

41% said "Their kids supporting eating animals."
- Even the parents realize that, historically, there were no vegetarians at Thanksgiving until the discovery of the tofurkey.

35% said "Their kids sharing their food."
- Be thankful for what you got and shiv any student who wants you to share!

5% said "Their kids wearing ugly pilgrim outfits."
- Seriously. Who puts a buckle on a hat?

19% got it right with "Their kids dressed like indians."

According to The LA Times, for decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on last Tuesday, when the youngsters met for their turkey and songs, they weren't wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests.

Parents in this quiet university town are sharply divided over what these construction-paper symbols represent: A simple child's depiction of the traditional (if not wholly accurate) tale of two factions setting aside their differences to give thanks over a shared meal? Or a cartoonish stereotype that would never be allowed of other racial, ethnic or religious groups?

"It's demeaning," Michelle Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, wrote to her daughter's teacher. "I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history."

Great. Now we have a war on Thanksgiving! I think the kids should be allowed to dress up like pilgrims and indians. Just as long as the pilgrims tell the indians where to sit and it's nowhere near the pilgrims. Or the food.

My Thoughtful, Inspiring Thanksgiving Day Post

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful I live in a world where pictures like this are possible and can be shared with friends.

I Believe...

...that Dada is art come alive. And just like encountering another human being. Dada is full of mystery, complexity, pain and beauty. And, like the stories we tell ourselves, only means what we say it means.

...that there's something off in America about work and holidays. I no longer look at the holidays as a time for reflection and spiritual fine-tuning. It is time off. A chance to get caught up on that thing I've been writing and cleaning the bath tub. Or, more likely, get caught up on the shows on my DVR or in my Netflix queue.

...that president-elect Obama has already had more press conferences before taking office than Bush has had in eight years. This is a different kind of president and it's going to make the status quo deregulation corporate tool morons who are happy with our ship heading towards an iceberg very unhappy. Of course, thanks to the status quo deregulation corporate tool morons, that ice berg will probably melt by the time we get there.

...that I am strangely unaffected by the current economy. I'm paying my bills. Barely covering my ass. Just like always. All the news programs are recommending ways to tighten our belts. Hey, elite media! Stop flaunting your high falutin' belts in my face. Let me know when you have something to say that we, the beltless of America, can relate to!


$500 REWARD

So, I got a reward for $500. In my dreams. Not sure who it was from. Possibly an airport, except we were all outside standing in a line. Like some converted small town main street. I found a bank deposit bag full of something. I tried to hand it to someone who worked there, and he pushed it back. He thought I was trying to shove more work on him. When I finally got to the counter, the lady was very happy to see it and told me I would get a reward amounting to 18% of whatever is in the bag. That turned out to be $500 exactly (even in my dreams, I can't do math).

The lesson, of course, is look in the bag before you turn it in.


THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"According to a study done by the City University of New York, napping can boost your what?"

15% said "libido"
- Maybe. I don't get nap boners. You?

14% said "energy"
- I don't think they needed to do a study to figure that one out.

No one said "drooling"

71% got it right with "memory"

According to The Huffington Post, "Not only do we need to remember to sleep, but most certainly we sleep to remember," is how Dr. William Fishbein, a cognitive neuroscientist at the City University of New York, put it at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last week.

Particularly important is "slow-wave sleep," a period of very deep sleep that comes earlier than better-known REM sleep, or dreaming time.

Fishbein suspected a more active role for the slow-wave sleep that can emerge even in a power nap. Maybe our brains keep working during that time to solve problems and come up with new ideas. So he and graduate student Hiuyan Lau devised a simple test: documenting relational memory, where the brain puts together separately learned facts in new ways.

First, they taught 20 English-speaking college students lists of Chinese words spelled with two characters _ such as sister, mother, maid. Then half the students took a nap, being monitored to be sure they didn't move from slow-wave sleep into the REM stage.

Upon awakening, they took a multiple-choice test of Chinese words they'd never seen before. The nappers did much better at automatically learning that the first of the two-pair characters in the words they'd memorized earlier always meant the same thing _ female, for example. So they also were more likely than non-nappers to choose that a new word containing that character meant "princess" and not "ape."

So, there you go. When you see me hunched over my backpack on the El train, I'm working on my next blog post. Shove off.

The Captain's Room

Being a grown-up and all, you should be able to do whatever you damn well please when it comes to furnishing your apartment. As much as I would love for my apartment to look like the Nautilus submarine and my bedroom to look like Captain Nemo's quarters, it's just not feasible. For one, it costs a lot to do it right and I won't settle for less than authenticity. Two, women look at you funny when you ask them to pretend they have just been saved from a giant squid and it would really go better with the apartment if you put on this corset, oh, please. Don't make the captain beg.

So, I found some tasteful big boy furniture that I really do like. It's a platform bed and I got a matching nightstand. It's like living in a hotel. And I won't have to grow a beard or wear a sea captain's uniform to get the full effect. Cats sold separately.




HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEN ELLISON!

Hope you don't have a crappy Tuesday. Here she is as Dada Dabo about to bite Dada Mondo Yippeeeeeee's head on the streets of Chicago.




THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"Judge Paul Sacco of Colorado makes noise ordinance violators do what?"

10% said "take meditation classes"
- He did, but that loud "ohm" sound was pissing off the neighbors.

No one said "buy ear plugs for their neighbors" or "whisper"

90% got it right with "listen to Barry Manilow"

According to the Associated Press, Fort Lupton Municipal Judge Paul Sacco says his novel punishment of forcing noise violators to listen to music they don't like for one hour has cut down on the number of repeat offenders in this northwestern Colorado prairie town. About four times a year, those guilty of noise ordinance violations are required to sit in a room and listen to music from the likes of Manilow, Barney the Dinosaur, and The Platters' crooning "Only You."

Sacco began the program years ago when he noticed that many of the repeat offenders simply showed up at his courtroom to pay their fine with cash.

"Most kids don't want to hear somebody like Glenn Close trying to sing opera," he said.

...Okay. Good idea. I don't think The Platters belong on the list, but if I were a teenager playing my gothemometal music too loud, I could see where "Only You" might be like taking medicine. But it is good for you.

And, FYI, let's clear up the magnificent Glenn Close's reputation here. She does not sing opera. She once did a forgettable movie called Meeting Venus in which she played a diva opera singer. Her voice was dubbed. You can watch the trailer HERE.