12-24-04
BY VENUS ZARRIS
Brothers, Sisters, Comrades! Throw down your plows and shovels, your cell phones and PC’s, and join the revolution that is Chicago Theatre! Rise up and put on a show to tell the world what is brewing in your souls. Expose the social criminals and demand your rights. Alter the condition of the body politic.
The image that comes to mind for me when someone refers to theatre on the East or West coasts is a high gloss movie poster for a blockbuster film such as Star Wars or James Bond. There is a financial pressure to succeed that limits the scope of what actually gets produced and the intention behind it. That is not to say that New York and L.A. are void of political or experimental theatre. But they cannot compare with the amount and quality of work that is produced here.
When I think of theatre in Chicago, the first image that comes to mind is a propaganda poster from a communist revolution or workers union movement. Theatre here is produced tirelessly on a daily basis by people who are giving of themselves for the sake of the theatre itself. Although a financial success is always welcome, it is often times more icing on the cake than a focused goal. Fame would be nice as well, but there are so many who toil in the theatre companies of Chicago for decades because, more than ‘up in lights,’ they long to be ‘on the boards.’ There is a no-nonsense practical approach, void of the glitz, glamour and networking. The coasts are the pillars of theatrical capitalism, while Chicago is the theatrical bastion of socialism. If you want to be a star, you go to New York or L.A. If you want to be an actor you come to Chicago.
Many theatre companies are sociopolitical simply because of their names or mission statements, or just by existing in the first place. In fact, when I think of Chicago Theatre, I think of efforts made for the love of a greater cause. In a sound bite society where everything has been commodified, to be recognized for theatrical achievement in Chicago is to be recognized for the art you have produced and not the product.
Two thousand and four represented a year of tumultuous, heavy-handed politics and unending political commentary. Theatre in any given year represents a strong, ongoing political and social conversation, sweeping across a broad range of topics. Two thousand and four, being a presidential election year, fired up that dialogue with an even more urgent intensity. But I suggest that theatre in Chicago is by nature a movement in and of itself for political and social reflection and reform. Two thousand and four saw commentary in all forms, be that new work or revivals of old standards.
Early in the year Silk Road Theatre Project produced a play called Tea, a heart-wrenching story of five Japanese women who fall in love with and marry American soldiers shortly after World War II. Their attempted assimilation into American culture was remarkable as they abandoned so much of life as they knew it for a country that never fully accepted them. This was the second production for Silk Road who also had ongoing productions this year of Precious Stones, the story of a Jewish woman and a Palestinian woman who come together to attempt to organize an Arab-Jewish dialogue group here in Chicago. I can’t remember seeing another play that covered so many topics from so many angles so effectively. Silk Road Theatre Project was just named one of a “Dozen Young American Companies You Need To Know” by American Theater Magazine.
About Face Theatre, one of the nation’s leading companies for new work concerning issues of gender and sexual identity, had two brilliant original triumphs this year with Winesburg, Ohio and the year’s most entertaining lesbian camp musical comedy melodrama Pulp. It is ending the year with One Arm, a collaboration with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Tectonic Theater Project. This is a Tennessee Williams’ screenplay that was never produced because of its openly gay characters.
During the heart of the gay marriage firestorm of controversy, Second City Theatricals and GayCo Productions opened the hysterical Weddings of Mass Destruction. This sketch comedy review was a wonderfully clever lightening of the load of anti-gay politicking that filled the media.
Next Theatre Company launched impressive productions. Far Away was an artistically poetic analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe where one must assume ultimate responsibility for her/his acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad. Yellowman was a journey through the world of racism within the black community. It challenged its audiences with these thought-provoking treasures.
As the presidential election approached, there were several productions launched that dealt with our choices at hand. The Second City Outreach produced Papa’s Got a Brand New Baghdad, a sketch comedy dealing with current political figures and situations. In one scene between Colon Powell and his wife, in which she calls him on the carpet for following the Bush party line, she declared, “The man is an idiot. He makes up more words than Jessie Jackson!”
Theater Wit produced W!, a hilarious original parody of our current president using actual quotes from Bush like, “I know how hard it is to put food on your family,” “Our priorities is our faith,” and “The war on terror is a catastrophic success.”
There were simultaneous adaptations of George Orwell’s Animal Farm at Bailiwick Repertory and 1984 at Lookingglass Theatre Company. The doublespeak, political back-pedaling, spinning and Orwellian nomenclatures were on the same caliber had one stayed home and watched the debates on TV or watched them unfold on stage.
The aforementioned productions just scratch the surface of insightful, entertaining and brilliant work produced in 2004 by companies both large and “storefront” small. To encapsulate all of the impressive work and dedicated companies would take up an entire issue of PerformInk. Suffice it to say that this is the town for profound, provocative, proletariat theatre.
Nelson Algren’s early vision of Chicago is renewed in the current state of its vital and organic theatrical climate. As he wrote in his 1951 classic, “Chicago: City on the Make”: “Out of the Twisted Twenties flowered the promise of Chicago as the homeland and heartland of an American renaissance, a place of poets and sculptors to come, of singers and painters, dancers, actors and actresses of golden decades yet to be.”
Venus Zarrris is a writer whose essays and stories have been featured on National Public Radio as well as various venues and universities in Illinois and Michigan. She is a theatre critic and feature writer for Gay Chicago Magazine. She is also a photographer whose work has been seen in national and local exhibits. Recently a photograph and companion essay of Venus’ was included in the “Here Is New York” permanent exhibition in the Library of Congress and the New York Historical Society.
2004 YEAR-IN-REVIEW
Trends in Chicago Theatre in 2004
Annual Report: A Healthy Year in Chicago Theatre
A Year of Scattershot Splendor
Five Reasons to be Optimistic and a Couple, Three More Not to Be
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