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The Amish Project at American Theatre Co.
By Devlyn Camp
Sadieh Rifai leads the one-woman show The Amish Project as seven different characters.
She enters in a side door, the outside light streaming ac
ross the blackened stage. She slides her apron on, ties her bonnet, and sets to work on the floor with a large piece of chalk. She’s a little girl drawing and explain her friends and family, the soon-to-be-traumatized victims of a non-fictional schoolhouse shooting from which the play is based. Her chalk childhood is juxtaposed against other characters’ adult issues.
Rifai changes characters so quickly and fluidly with assistance only from beautiful lighting changes. Her monologues are powerful and touching, even rather funny at parts. Various perspectives on the shooting that killed five girls open problems to Amish families that seem to wonder if secluding themselves could ever actually help avoid problems. The characters battle each other over their opinions of how to feel about the man that followed his urges, but also murdered the Amish girls.
Creepy and twisted, yet somehow spiritual, American Theatre Company’s production gets intellectual gears turning.
THE AMISH PROJECT
American Theatre Company
Now through October 23rd
Tickets $35, available at www.atcweb.org
Contact critic at devlynmc@yahoo.com
Inaside and Cirqua Rivera unite for a night of “Constant Motion”
Dynamic dance collaboration by two groups to keep on your radar
Constant Motion
Inaside Chicago Dance and Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre
Harris Theater, Chicago
September 24, 2011
Recommended
Review by Darcy Rose Coussens
Two different companies. Two mission statements. Two acts. One satisfying and heartening night of dancing at the Harris Theater. This weekend, Inaside Chicago Dance and Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre had the opportunity to collaborate and perform at the Harris Theatre near Millennium Park in Chicago. Recognized as one of Chicago’s finest venues for dance performance, this space is usually out of the budget for these professional, not-for-profit companies. However, the MetLife Foundation has awarded a grant to Dance/USA to support New Stages for Dance pilot programs in Chicago, San Francisco, and for the third year in Philadelphia. Through these programs, the cost of venues such as the Harris is subsidized, allowing these companies more exposure.
The performance was a success, especially in that it promoted two companies with a lot to offer. The first act was made up of several different pieces by Inaside. The jazz dance company opened with an exciting swing number full of seamless partnering that will make you want to head out to the Green Mill and try some yourself. I didn’t feel a blast from the past, though– the four-part piece had a contemporary feel that Inaside maintained throughout the entire act. Their pieces varied in style, and they also allowed their youth ensemble to perform. I believe my younger self would have been motivated by both the company and the youth ensemble, because their styles were familiar enough to be accessible, while still experimental and artistic.
Inaside left me with an impression of sunshine between their bright dresses and music that could have been the soundtrack to a romantic comedy. Most importantly, they all smile! I found it extremely refreshing to see dancers enjoy themselves instead of being serious artists, and it certainly helped the audience enjoy them, as well. At times the choreography felt more fit for TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance” than the Harris, but I mostly found it to creatively make use of space and explore partnership.
The second act was Cerqua Rivera’s, and their first number snapped me to attention. Eddy Ocampo choreographed a riveting, political piece juxtaposing the concept of home with that of war. This included projections of children’s drawings of houses and photographs of child soldiers all over the world. These were accompanied by gunshots over the music and the dancers’ disturbing but impressive interpretation of play and self-exploration in a frightening setting.
Their opening number set a very high standard that took the show to an entirely new level, and they definitely lived up to it in all following pieces. A collaboration between acclaimed musician and composer Joe Cerqua and Artistic Director/choreographer Wilfredo Rivera, this company features an excellent nine-piece band with additional vocalists. The live music infused the performance with energy and a quality of style for each piece, and several fantastic soloists were featured. The company truly accomplishes the diversity and representation of different cultures they declare in their mission statement while allowing for beautiful choreography. In each number, however different the style, they establish a vocabulary of movement, which is important in creating the world of each piece. This is a company I would jump at the chance to see again.
Dance/USA’s New Stages for Dance programs are clearly a wonderful idea, and it is fortunate for Chicago that the MetLife Foundation is funding the exposure of groups like these. The numbers were somewhat brief, which allowed both companies to show off many styles of their repertoire and the audience to digest and really appreciate what they saw. It also gave the musicians of the second act their own moments, as they played interludes between each piece. The finale was comprised of both companies and included selected repetition from different numbers, which tied the show together nicely. Inaside and Cerqua Rivera are very different types of companies, but both made a great impression. Although perhaps not entirely polished, Inaside Dance Chicago’s budding youth and blossoming company achieved a delightful performance of varied jazz styles. Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre is a company in full bloom, with outstanding dancers, choreographers, and musicians. This really was a night of constant motion, but it was also a night of beauty, humor, and a celebration of music and dance in all its styles.
An Inspirational Meeting at American Blues
By Devlyn Camp
Now through October 2nd
Thursdays & Fridays at 8 PM
Saturdays at 5 and 8 PM
Sundays at 2:30 PM
Ticket info call (773) 871-3000
or visit americanbluestheater.com
American Blues Theater is jumpstarting their new season with a punching Depression-era one act that speaks volumes for the working class underdog. Clifford Odets’ play Waiting For Lefty is a fictional take on 40-day taxi strike of the mid-30s. Today’s younger generation knows very little about the importance of a strike. In fact, the only recent strike that comes to mind is the 2007-2008 Writers Guild strike, during which the biggest problem for many outside the fight meant the delay of a movie or losing a handful of episodes from their television lineup. In our days of reality programming and closer-to-reality sitcoms, our generation’s strike story is only a flickering light next to 1935’s gunfire and mobbing chaos.
Lefty is a one hour union meeting in which the attendees wait for their leader to arrive to take the next steps. In this hour, each person’s story is told before the crowd in a series of vignettes. The focus is on family. How can a father provide? How far can a mother’s morals be pushed to put change in her pocket? How can a woman grow to start her own family? Gwendolyn Whiteside’s performance catalyzes the audience’s emotional understanding of the time as she makes her financially responsible decision whether to leave her fiance while they dance together to her record player. They fantasize in their cute, lovable way about dressing up and being in the glamorous movies. The song ends and the record bumps as she sits to cry in her chair. It thuds along in the silence like a heartbeat. It becomes clear that this is what the stories are about: the heart. What the heart wants romantically and parentally, and what the
heart needs physically to survive.
In a time when real life is far from “just like in the movies,” jobs are lost, families starve, and it seems shaking a fist at God is the only thing one can afford to do. Cheryl Graeff, playing Dr. Benjamin, sends the potential strike into a stir when her job is threatened and her medical skills are overlooked because she is Jewish. Kimberly Senior presents the story in a way of saying that this isn’t just a period piece, it’s a story for today, too. To reach for your rights is human, and everyone should hold up their fist when it becomes necessary. By the end of the act, the American workers don’t have to imagine how to live in the movies because the fight they start will become the stories told on the stage. They didn’t need to wait for Lefty all along. They had the strength among them the entire time. Senior’s presentation is proof that education is at its most powerful when in the theatre.
Remy Bumppo welcomes Timothy Douglas
In with the new: Remy Bumppo’s new artistic director, new season
7/12/11
By Kaylee Holt
July 1st marked the first day on the job for Remy Bumppo’s new artistic director, Timothy Douglas. Douglas is replacing James Bohnen, the company founder, who announced that he was stepping down in 2009. Douglas has worked as a stage director, actor, and educator at a variety of prestigious theaters, and recently wrapped up a season of directing projects all across the country, including work with Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Studio Theatre Company in D.C. The decision to hire Douglas was unanimous among the theater’s artistic associates, board, and administrative staff. Douglas says that he cares about representing ethnically diverse playwrights, as well as diverse casting. This is evidenced by the theme of his inaugural season: “The American Evolution: from Civil War to Civil Rights to Civil Disobedience.” Douglas will be directing all three plays this season: Eugene O’Neill’s Morning Becomes Electra, Marivaux’s Changes of Heart, and Lee Blessing’s Chesapeake.
Morning Becomes Electra is a tragedy based on The Oresteia, in which a young woman takes a lover and murders her husband, leaving her daughter committed to revenge. Douglas says the revision, set at the end of the Civil War, cuts down on the chorus aspect of the original and fills the story with more action. It opens September 26th.
Changes of Heart, set to open November 28th, is a complex comedy about love between the classes. The play was written in pre-revolutionary France, when class divisions were viewed as much more significant than they are today. As such, Douglas was afraid that the audience might not have the same visceral reaction to what’s happening as audiences in Marivaux’s time. In an attempt to remedy this, Douglas is setting the play in Chicago during the 1960’s and playing up the tensions between the North and South sides in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. Still, though, he insists the story isn’t about race: “I just want to do justice to Marivaux’s play.”
Finally is Chesapeake, a one-man comedy about a performance artist who’s had his funding cut; he attempts a dog-napping in a plot to reveal the injustices of funding in the town. “It’s a play about redemption,” says Douglas. He also says some people may be able to relate to the political side of the story, the troubles of getting funding. Chesapeake opens April 2nd.
Tickets for Remy Bumppo’s productions can be purchased at www.remybumppo.org or by calling the Greenhouse Theater Center’s box office at (773) 404-7336.
Lookingglass wins Tony
Congratulations to the Lookingglass Theatre Company on the 2011 Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre.
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