I don't spend a lot of time at what I think of as Chicago's "Big theaters", your Good Men, your Stepen Wolves, I am a humble man of the streets and I mostly patronize the storefronts. (Exception: Chicago Shakespeare because of the great parties) However, a friend had a ticket to Stepenwolf's production of Tracy Letts' Bug  that she wasn't using and I decided to check it out. Letts' drama, originally written in 1996, is pretty well known, was the basis for a 2006 feature film starring famous Chicagoan Michael Shannon but this was my first time seeing it. Our heroine is the very relatable Agnes. (a lovable and charming performance by the playwright's real life wife Carrie Coon) Agnes is a down on her luck service worker living in a motel room in Oklahoma, very well rendered by scenic designer Takeshi Kata. Paradoxically, this is a pretty common situation for working class folks unable to scrape together a security deposit. Being poor is expensive. Ag...

Funerals are plays. Most organized rituals are. There is pageantry, a purpose, a prescribed order of events. I went to a lot of them when I lived with my grandparents for much of my youth. When you're old, funerals are a pretty major social activity. I appreciate the way Incomplete Conversations  by writer/director Nell Voss, produced by Silent Theatre captures the backstage drama of the funeral ritual. The show centers around the funeral of a beloved young pastor, James Edward Klein played by Victor Holstein, who may or may not have been murdered. Klein's ghost is watching his own funeral, and flashing back to various events of his life, and the often tumultuous relationships with his family and colleagues. The show is immersive and site specific, taking place in the various different rooms of the Tapestry Church on Irving Park. I've seen site specific shows before, I recall a fine production of Hamlet  I watched in a mansion on a north side beach once several years ag...

Jack the Ripper. Everyone knows the name, most know the story of the never identified serial killer who murdered five streetwalkers in 1880s London. I remember when I first heard the name. I was about six or seven years old on a foggy night in Evanston walking with my dad and as dads do, he noted it was the kind of night Jack the Ripper would have done his work. The character is now an infamous antihero starring in plays, books, movies etc. The other night I got to see the first reading of a brand new play Women of Whitechapel by Kate Black-Spence and Chris Brickhouse that asks the question, why does this anonymous, masturbating psychopath get more attention than the human beings he viciously butchered? The play simply presents the five women: Catherine Eddowes (played in the reading by Lisa Herceg) Annie Chapman (Courtney Jones) Mary Anne "Polly" Nichols (Song Marshall) Mary Anne Kelly (Jess Ervin) and Elizabeth Stride (Jess Maynard) sitting together in the afterlife finally...

Jacob Juntunen From 2014 to 2017,   I was fortunate to study at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Department of Theater under Dr. Jacob Juntunen who helped mold and strengthen whatever modest powers I have as a playwright. In the fall of 2018, I performed in the SIU production of his play In The Shadow Of His Language.  His other play , Hath Taken Away,  will be performed at Ball State University in Indiana from October 15-20th. Jacob will appear at a talkback on the 19th. I decided it would be fun to interview Jacob about his current production for this here blog. RORY: So Jacob, tell us a bit about Hath Taken Away . JACOB: Hath Taken Away is about Dorothea, a 20-year-old Evangelical Christian in the Midwest who is recently married. Her faith is tested by a health crisis that threatens her life, marriage and child to be. It's told in a spiral structure with poetic, lyrical language. RORY: So where did the inspiration for this play come from? JACO...

I started this blog partially to revisit old favorite places in the Chicago storefront theatre scene and one of those is definitely City Lit, a modest little theater located in a beautiful church in the Edgewater neighborhood not far from where I grew up. City Lit, now celebrating its 40th season, specializes in literary adaptation, one of its most frequent sources being the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They kick off their season with a revival of their production of The Hound of the Baskervilles , perhaps the most famous of the Holmes novels, adapted and directed by Artistic Director Terry McCabe. The indefatigable and uncannily brilliant crimefighter whose adventures are assisted and dryly chronicled by his best friend and sidekick (and audience stand in) Dr. John Watson, has been a staple of popular culture for over a century, enjoying a recent TV and film renaissance, it's always great to see him on stage as well. The story begins when Holmes (Jame...

In this post which I will not call a “review” for obvious reasons, I will abandon all pretense to “objectivity” which is an overrated concept anyway. One of the reasons I haven’t tried to attach my current theatre writing to an existing website or publication this time, even though I could use the money, is that I want complete freedom to express whatever thoughts I have. I’ve played both sides of the fence over the years, both as a theatre creator and as a reviewer, but above all as an enthusiastic audience member. I love watching plays, which is why my current subject is calibrated to hit me in precisely every feel. The Artistic Home’s current production Vanya On the Plains is a play which I have watched grow from its infancy. I was one of the first people to read it. Its author, Jason Hedrick was a friend and colleague of mine at Southern Illinois University Carbondale where we took the same playwriting classes with Dr. Jacob Juntunen. There were a lot of talented people...

Love And Information By Caryl Churchill Directed by Kim McKean Trap Door Theatre If you ask me, and by clicking on this post I suppose you are, Caryl Churchill is one of the world's greatest living playwrights. Top Girls , The Skriker , and Mad Forest  are just my fav orites among the many plays of her half century spanning career. Her 2012 play Love and Information  it must be admitted, is a tricky beast. Less a play than a series of minute to two minute long vignettes strung together to full length, Love and Information  has no overarching characters or storylines. What it does have is some very good writing about fascinating themes, one of which is whether it's better to know things or not know them, along with the various ways technology is reshaping the human experience. Some of the standout scenes for me included one about a person experiencing hallucinations and refusing to take her medication because she thinks of the hallucinations as "informati...