4-13-07
A Month in Romania
Trap Door Theatre’s trip to Romania, reported in this column two weeks ago, has grown into quite a month-long odyssey for the troupe, which will present work at theatre festivals in Bucharest, Arad and Sibiu, May 11-June 11. In addition to their previously announced production of Old Clown Wanted, Trap Door now also will present Michael Garvey in his one-person show, Letters to the President, plus Trap Door’s interpretation of The Crazy Locomotive, by the Polish writer Stanislaw Witkiewicz. All three shows have been seen at Trap Door here in Chicago. The addition of Locomotive is a result of an invitation and funding from the Polish Institute in Bucharest. Trap Door artistic director Beata Pilch reports that it will be cast, in part, with Romanian actors once the troupe arrives in Bucharest.
At many international festivals, the hospitality is considerable once a theatre troupe arrives, but the traveling players must pay their own way over, and so it is with the Romanian fests. Concerned about travel costs, Trap Door initially planned to take six people. Then they scored a lucky one-two funding punch. They secured a TCG travel grant, and also learned that the American embassy in Bucharest has funds specifically earmarked for American cultural programs in Romania. Between the Polish Institute, the TCG and your tax payers’ dollars at work, Trap Door covered all its travel expenses and was able to add four more people and two more productions to its plans.
In additional news with an international angle, Silk Road Theatre Project will host the first National Conference of South Asian Theatre Artists, July 19-22. Underwritten by the Ford Foundation, the conference will fly in 17 theatre artists from around the country, and add to that number with local participants by invitation. The conference is expected to discuss not only professional issues, but also issues that arise within a traditional South Asian family when an individual decides to pursue a career in theatre. Silk Road Theatre Project executive director Malik Gillani is of South Asian heritage.
We were delighted to see John Mahoney in full color gracing the cover of the March 22-28 issue of Back Stage. He looks thinner and a bit older after his lengthy bout with pancreatitis last year, but all signs indicate that he’s in fine acting fettle. He’s returned to Broadway for the first time in 20 years in Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss (Roundabout Theatre, through April 29), directed by Daniel Sullivan, and the reviews have been good. Back Stage critic Leonard Jacobs cites Mahoney’s “invention, gusto and enveloping warmth” as the old man in Lucas’ work of magic realism. For the first time in far too long – he bowed out of several local productions due to his illness – Mahoney returns to a Chicago stage June 3-July 1, directing and acting in Talking Heads at Steppenwolf. Mahoney directed the Alan Bennett play in 1994, but always has wanted to appear in it.
So far, no one has caught me out on an error in my last column, in which I said that Jeffrey Carlson, who played Hamlet at Chicago Shakespeare Theater last season, would play Hamlet again at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Of course, Chicago Shakes’ melancholy Dane was not Jeffrey Carlson, but Ben Carlson.
We are correct, however, in relating that Mary Zimmerman will direct her own Argonautika for D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre as part of the 2007-2008 season, Jan.15-March 2. Indeed, as Zimmerman has done before with previous productions, she’s taking Argonautika on the road in something less official than a tour, but more organized than random productions. Her work about Jason and the Argonauts will dock at the Berkeley Rep, Nov. 1-Dec. 16, as part of that company’s 40th anniversary season. Overlapping Argonautika, Berkeley Rep also is bringing in the busy Frank Galati to stage his adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s after the quake, first seen last season at Steppenwolf. It also will stop at the La Jolla Playhouse.
Not to be outdone, Washington D.C.’s Wooly Mammoth Theatre also has scheduled some Chicago fare. Playwright Bruce Norris’ The Unmentionables will be staged at Woolly to open the 2007-2008 season, Aug. 27-Sept. 23, before which the long-tusked troupe also will present the touring unit of the Neo-Futurists’ Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It’s not to be confused with the gay favorite, Too Much Disco Makes My Baby Go Blond.
The latest show at the Soapbox Theatre in Elgin is The Mystery at Twicknam Vicarage, April 13-29, featuring short one-act plays and sketches by playwright David Ives and eminent actress Emma Thompson. This is the first legitimate stage presentation of Thompson’s sketches, originally written by her for her 1988 British (and PBS) TV series, “Thompson.” So, how does an unknown little suburban troupe score TV material by an Oscar-nominated celebrity? You ask. And you don’t ask her agent, you ask her.
That, at any rate, is what director Craig Gustafson did, and he did it quite a while ago, in 2001, in fact. The plan was to use the Thompson material in an evening of short works by the Davids – Ives and Mamet – and by Thompson. In December of 2001, Gustafson reports he received a hand-written reply:
“Dear Mr. Gustafson: How DARE you write and request my sketches for use in – what – some shoddy little complex in Ohio – and then suggest I don’t charge you? Are you mad, or w – -?” But the paragraph then was crossed out and followed by, “Thank you for your delightful letter.” Thompson granted permission to stage the sketches, confirmed that they hadn’t yet been performed on stage and congratulated Gustafson on his “sexual conquests” (Gustafson had noted that he met his wife while staging a private reading of the sketches). Thompson added a postscript: “Anyone who enjoyed this series is, as far as I’m concerned, family. We’ll get your room fixed up as soon as possible.”
For various reasons, the 2001 production never happened, but the Thompson material remained available, and here it is. The Mystery at Twicknam Vicarage features six short Ives plays and five Thompson sketches.
Jane Alexander, actor and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (1993-1997), will give a talk April 26 as part of the Conversations in the Arts: Up Close With… series at Columbia College Chicago. Passionate, intelligent, quick and outspoken, Alexander always is worth a listen. (This writer was an NEA Theatre Program site reporter during Ms. Alexander’s chairmanship.) At $50 a ticket, however, it’s rather pricey. The event is at the Getz Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Call 312/344-6600 for tickets.
The life of remarkable dance critic, archivist, historian and personality Ann Barzel will be celebrated April 23, 5 p.m., at the Chicago Sinai Congregation (15 W. Delaware) with Richard Christiansen, Gerald Arpino (Joffrey Ballet artistic director), Lou Conte (founder of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago), Joel Hall (founder of the Joel Hall Dancers) and Cultural Commissioner Lois Weisberg among the line-up of speakers paying tribute. A toast to Barzel will follow at the Newberry Library, which houses her vast collection of photos, film, papers, articles and objets d’art. Barzel died in Feb. at 101. Attendance is by reservation only: 312/255-3778.