9-26-08
Media Mayhem and Long Form Supercolliders
While we all wait breathlessly for the Chicago Tribune redesign to hit the streets next Monday, let’s catch up with a few other changes in the media realm.
First, as many of you have already noticed, I am not Jonathan Abarbanel. My predecessor has given up this column and his assigning theatre editor duties at Windy City Times in order to teach theatre at University of Illinois-Chicago. Scott Morgan is now handling the reviewing requests for Windy City Times.
And WCT contributor Catey Sullivan, who has also contributed regularly to UR Chicago, won’t be seen in the pages of the latter anymore. In fact, there will be no pages. As reported by Lorene Yue in Crain’s Chicago Business on Sept. 5, En Prise Entertainment LLC, the publishers of UR Chicago, are turning the publication into a web-only concern. The mag always focused more on music than on theatre, but it still provided space for reviews and features of the fringe theatre scene, and its print-edition demise is yet another harbinger of changes in the field.
The Tribune shed several staff members through lay-offs and buy-outs in August. Longtime critic and arts writer Sid Smith was among those who opted for the latter. Smith has mostly focused on dance in recent years (and continues to freelance frequently for the Tribune), but for many years in the 1980s and early 1990s, as the second-string theatre critic for Richard Christiansen, Smith played a big role in focusing attention on the smaller companies that define our theatre community. Don’t count on the Tribune hiring a full-time dance critic again—those days are sadly over. Still, we’re glad that Smith will continue to cover the dance community and other arts events.
Onward and outward: Mike Canale, the managing director of Annoyance Theatre, and his wife, Megan Grano, who is beloved by this column for her performances with the all-female sketch troupe Ragdolls, among other things, have decided to try their fortunes in Los Angeles. Tyler Wolff-Ormes steps into Canale’s shoes over at Annoyance.
Former Chicagoan Jessi D. Hill, onetime artistic director for Stage Left, has been awarded the 2008 Denham Fellowship from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation. Hill nabs a $3,000 purse in support of her direction of Angel Eaters, the first part of Johnna Adams’ Angel Eaters Trilogy, going up this fall at Flux Theatre Ensemble in New York. Hill, who left Chicago to earn an MFA in directing at Yale, has been keeping busy in the Big Apple: she served as the director-in-residence and literary manager for Ensemble Studio Theatre and also served a four-month stint as staff repertory director for The Acting Company.
Are you ready to RUM-ble? Chicago Dance Crash returns to the Lakeshore Theatre on Oct. 3 for The KTF (“keeper of the floor”) Championship, a late-night dance competition hosted by Dance Crash artistic director Kyle Terry. The “Dance Crash All-Valley Classic Open Invitational Tournament Showdown Kumite Rumble” is open to any and all participants—don’t let a silly thing like “professional training” (or lack thereof) get in your way. To put your name in competition for the $200 prize and the glory of it all, email info@chicagodancecrash.com.
A new company, National Headquarters, makes its premiere with the physical theatre piece Angelus Novus on Oct. 2 at AV-aerie, 2000 W. Fulton. Conceived and created by Angeline Gragasin and directed by Richard Newman, the piece was inspired from the painting of the same title by Paul Klee, the writings of Walter Benjamin, and the traditions of medieval pageantry, commedia dell’arte, and American historical re-enactments, among other things. Segments will be presented this weekend at Links Hall as part of the LinkUP Residency for Emerging Performing Artists.
Another newbie bows this weekend with a world premiere. The New Colony, headed by Andrew Hobgood (of Love Is Dead: A NecRomantic Musical Comedy fame), kicks off with Amelia Earhart Jungle Princess, written by Love Is Dead co-author James Asmus. The play posits that the missing aviatrix lived out her days as a “semi-amnesiac jungle woman.” Performances are at National Pastime on North Broadway.
Pegasus Players certainly isn’t a new company, but they’re going big and bold with their season opener, David Edgar’s epic two-part look at American politics, Continental Divide. Pegasus artistic director Alex Levy steers both of the huge casts in repertory as the kick-off for Pegasus’ 30th anniversary season—and of course, just in time for the election. The show runs Oct. 1-Nov. 9.
Leigh Fondakowski’s The People’s Temple is currently playing at American Theatre Company, but an earlier acclaimed effort for this Tectonic Theatre artist, The Laramie Project, returns for one night only, Oct. 6, at Center on Halsted. About Face co-founder Kyle Hall is slated to participate in this event, which benefits About Face Youth Theatre and the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Fondakowski, who spent weeks in Laramie interviewing town residents after Shepard’s murder, and Tectonic company member Kelli Simpkins co-direct the staged reading.
Rogers Park theatre companies cleaned up nicely (in all senses of the phrase) at the non-Equity Jeffs in June. Now four companies in the happening far north side ‘hood (hey, I live there, too!) are joining forces and offering a $50, four-show flex pass, good from now until July 1, 2009. Participating theatres include Bohemian Theatre Ensemble (only good for shows at Heartland Studio, so their Theatre Building production of La Cage aux Folles next May is out, sorry); Lifeline Theatre; Side Project; and Theo Ubique at No Exit Cafe. The pass is available at each company’s box office and at www.thesideproject.net/tickets.php.
Finally, we’re delighted that not only did the world NOT end with a bang (or a whimper) on Sept. 10 when scientists switched on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, but that our very own Charna Halpern of iO was involved in the lead-up to this momentous event. As reported by Alexandra Alter in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 4, Halpern was brought in by particle physicist and fellow Chicagoan Bob Stanek to help coach the scientists on how to think on their feet and communicate clearly with each other. Though if things went badly, I suspect “yes, and” might go out the window. To steal a line from Bill Cosby, if I realize that I’ve just thrown the switch that creates a black hole big enough to suck in the entire planet, “First I’m gonna say it, then I’m gonna do it.”
Watch out for colliding particles, and send news of imminent planetary destruction to kerryreid@comcast.net.