Where I've Been

Well, the answer is, not on this blog. To the people who read the blog (and I'm hoping some are left after this three-week absence), I'm sorry to have left for so long. I tend to get very tense when my favorite bloggers don't update daily, so I would judge my own three-week absence as utterly inexcusable.

However, I haven't been completely lazy. Most importantly, I've been moving. My boyfriend Adam and I have finally taken the plunge into domesticity, and have gotten an apartment together in Oak Park. Leaving the city limits initially met with some qualms from me, but Adam's job is in Naperville, and the commute from the north side would have been brutal. Also, seriously, the place is gorgeous, and my commute is virtually the same duration now as it was when I lived in Uptown. And I live right north of the main library and across from a park! Anyhow, as you can imagine, my time and brain have been largely occupied with that. Indeed, I still sometimes burst out with spasms of real-estate speak, despite the fact that we moved into the place on the 15th. It's hard to retrain your mind.

As a side note, one of the bizarre side effects of my lurches into adulthood is that I'm getting excited about things that I never imagined being excited about. The most recent example is cleaning products. It's sad to say, but Mr. Clean Magic Erasers had me almost giddy with joy this weekend. It's like a sponge, but you wet it and rub it on stains on a wall (i.e. from furniture--pretty prevalent at the old apartment) and they DISAPPEAR! It's amazing! And I can rationalize my excitement by the fact that it's not really the cleaning product that excited me so much as not having to scrub. Oy, I'm becoming mature whether I like it or not.

What time I didn't spend moving was occupied with the various theatrical ventures I'm working on, rather than writing about. The biggest time investment was DrekFest, which had three utterly delightful evenings, and presented eight fantastic plays, four of which went on to become semi-finalists. The grand loser was Jake Lindquist's hilarious Man Vs. Carp. The whole event was a whole lot of fun, despite a few mishaps along the way, and I can't wait for next year.

I also spearheaded my first major initiative as Co-Literary Manager at Stage Left: several valiant ensemble members and I slew the dragon that is our pile of script samples. It had grown far beyond the ability of one person to read and sort through them, so a bunch of us took piles of ten and decided which ones merit a further reading. It was huge--and still has to be followed by the huger task of letting the playwrights know if we want to read their plays or not. On into the breach.

Anyhow, more than enough personal nattering has happened. What of the wider world of theatre! Well, August is a pretty quiet time for it. Most of the more established companies are briefly dormant, and as I took the month off from Centerstage, I didn't get to see what the smaller ones were up to. The one show I did see that really stuck out was the remount of Red Noses at Strawdog. Overall, it was really wonderful--a defiant statement in favor of joy and laughter, even when perched on the edge of the abyss. The cast was fantastic and the awesome Matt Hawkins (Is he directing anything in the 2010-2011 season? If not, why not?) staged it with immense creativity and incredible passion and punch. I had some issues with it--there were apparently significant script cuts, and while they did wonders for the running time and sense of pacing, they sometimes left characters and relationships feeling a little sketched-out. But overall I really loved it. After this and The Good Soul of Szechuan, Strawdog is fast getting onto the list of my favorite companies in town. I'm excited to see what they have coming up.

And finally, a small note on the coverage of theatre in Chicago. Chris Jones has managed to make his blog at the Trib into what is probably the most-widely read single source of press coverage on Chicago theatre. It's doubtless where a lot of people turn first, and a rave review from him can seriously alter the fortunes of a show for the better. (Just ask Suicide, Incorporated or Harper Regan.) Some take issues with his critical skills and style, but that's an occupational hazard of the profession. Few would deny that he's one of the fiercest and most public advocates for Chicago theatre. And part of his professional project appears to be a promotion of Chicago theatre as a brand. Someone might reading his articles would probably use adjectives like smart, scrappy, gutsy, intimate, in-your-face, fearless, making up in quality what it sometimes lacks in flash. (Not that he only praises shows with this type of aesthetic, or finds them in shows that don't have them, but he certainly mentions them when they are present and promotes them as Chicagoan.) People could certainly argue over whether such qualities are more present in Chicago's thatre than in other cities'--a question I couldn't even begin to answer. But I still think the promotion of a Chicago brand is a good thing--especially for people whose ideas of theatre are limited to a narrow aesthetic. The coverage promotes Chicago's home-grown shows and hopefully creates interest in everything the city has to offer.

But, as with many concepts, this Chicago brand can be over-used. Another issue is the fact that the nebulous concept of the Chicago brand is often evoked with a simple phrase: "Chicago-Style." And that's unfortunate. I love theatre in this town, but when I read the phrase "Chicago-Style," I think of pizza. And hot dogs. And when you put "Chicago-Style" in both the headline and the final sentence of a review, it's awfully difficult to concentrate on Frost/Nixon and keep the mind off of Lou Malnati's.

I understand that space is at a premium and punchy phrases are hugely useful to getting across ideas, and I certainly am in favor of Chris Jones' work in helping to promote the brand of theatre in Chicago. It's a wonderful thing and I hope he continues. I just think this particular phrase doesn't quite work.

Thoughts?

Tony Kushner at Symphony Center

Tony Kushner, playwright of Angels in America, Caroline, or Change, Homebody/Kabul and others (though not nearly enough), won the Chicago Tribune Literary Prize, given out as part of this year's Chicago Humanities Festival. (Incidentally, he's the third playwright to receive the prize in its 20 years of being awarded, after Arthur Miller and August Wilson.) The presentation of this award took the form of an hour-long conversation between Kushner and Chris Jones, theatre critic at the Trib, at Symphony Center. (Jones' feature on Kushner which ran last week is here, and it's definitely worth a read. Their recap of the event can be found here)

Kushner is high on my list of favorite living playwrights (hell, he's high on my list of favorite paywrights, period), so I jumped at the chance to see him speak. Here are some thoughts from the speech.

1) An hour is not nearly enough time. As anyone who has seen one of his plays knows, he is not a spare writer--words cascade from the mouths of his characters, and the man himself is even more voluble. With such a short time, his responses seemed constrained. I would have loved to see him go on even bigger tangents.

2) Which is not to say he didn't have some great lines. At the start he mentioned his joy whenever "anything I've done succeeds in butch Chicago," especially as he's an "effete New Yorker." He was also capable of being much more serious, describing how in our interconnected world, "no part of the world isn't worth our attention"--and whenever we decide some country is, we're liable to regret it keenly. (The subject was Afghanistan, but the application is quite wide.)

3) Kushner definitely seems to have mellowed a bit. (By the way, how did he get to be 53? He's somehow become an elder statesman.) Perhaps married life agrees with him, but he didn't show quite the same appetite to offend that he used to have. However, Kushner still collowed his own advice from A Bright Room Called Day: "Overstatement is your friend. Use it." Anyone with even the slightest sympathy for the Republican Party would not enjoy his characterization of it today--essentially, that it has been reduced to a repository for "cranks...and Sarah Palin."

4) He also threw plenty of red meat to the left--in addition to his jabs at the Republican Party, he referred to the many morasses that President Obama received from "President Morass" and spoke of those who funded Prop 8 as "Pseudo-religious organizations like the Mormons and the Catholic Church." In addition to the humor, there was plenty of stirring rhetoric: again discussing Prop 8 and Question 1 in Maine, he reminded us that "it is unconstitutional to make a minority group earn its rights." That is to say--gays have the right to marry already, and it is the job of the government to recognize it. It may be a little cheap to say so many obvious applause lines to a mostly liberal group, but I don't care. It felt good.

5) He's thoroughly obsessed with Lincoln. He recently finished a screenplay on the last months of Lincoln's life for Steven Spielberg (the film will supposedly star Liam Neeson, filming has not been scheduled), and in addition to the first question being about Lincoln, he kept circling back to him. This may also be a factor in his mellowing--despite maintaining a Marxist ideology, he seems to have lost faith in revolution, and gained a belief that centrist priogressives are the most likely to achieve real progress.

6) He didn't talk much about theatre. Except for some brief advice for young playwrights (actually do the writing, rather than sitting with the play in your head, get work produced however you can, and don't read Shakespeare when you're writing, as it will only make you depressed), he didn't really discuss theatre much, focusing more on politics. Not surprising perhaps--based on the fact that the previous winners were Miller and Wilson, the prize is frequently given to those with a political perspective--but it would have been great to hear more of Kushner's thoughts on the state of theatre today and his own work. Ah well.

So it was short of being a transcendent talk, but hearing Kushner is always worthwhile. I just hope that whenever he comes by next, he'll have more time to do his thing. (And Court, when are you bringing back Caroline, or Change?)