Konstantine Stanislavski Love art in yourself and not yourself in art.
Harold Clurman The stage is life, music, beautiful girls, legs, breasts, not talk or intellectualism or dried-up academics.
by David Jette
The world premiere of Mutiny at Port Chicago at the Ruskin Group Theatre is a lopsided courtroom drama hybrid that features some very fine performances. Playwright Paul Leaf directs the production himself and draws upon some of the Ruskin Group’s fine company of actors to bring the story of a war-time tragedy and [...]
by David Jette
There was a time when citizens of other industrialized nations looked at the United States as an impoverished, derelict sinkhole where industry ran roughshod over the rights and well being of the everyday man. When Bertolt Brecht adapted his musical Happy End into his signature epic-style drama, he used the stockyards of [...]
by D. Jette
needtheater’s newest offering Mercury Fur is brutal, heartfelt and authentic, and probably the best play I’ve seen this year. The mononymic Chicagoan Dado directs a spectacular young cast in this shocking dissection of the human animal inside of all of us.
The design features a rare treat: a curtain. In this case, a ratty [...]
by D. Jette
Kudos to the Porters of Hell’s Gate who recently finished a solid Richard II at the Whitmore-Lindley. Their simple staging of this under-appreciated history had good performances in the play’s most demanding roles, including a very well grounded Jamey Hecht as John of Gaunt and a sympathetic Thomas Bigley in the title [...]
by D. Jette
Alot of plays are made about the events leading up to the Holocaust, and with good reason. My partner in last Saturday’s viewing of The Accomplices, a rehashed production by The Fountain Theatre, remarked that “If most of my relatives were murdered not fifty-odd years ago, I wouldn’t make plays about anything else.” One of [...]
by D. Jette
Andrew Block, director of Rogue Machine’s newest late night Off-The-Clock adventure, wants artists to look at themselves and laugh. By choosing to direct Bingo with the Indians, Adam Rapp’s short play about penniless thespian grifters who seduce themselves and others with their theatrical pretentions, Block happily invites criticism on both himself and his [...]
by D. Jette
Frank South, the writer-star-subject of Pay Attention: ADHD in Hollywood: On the Rocks with a Twist, is a troubled man working hard to resolve himself. Diagnosed with Attention Defecit Hyperactivity Disorder at the age of 49, and eight-years removed from a nagging alcoholism that was a poor regulator for his disability, he is [...]
by D. Jette
This inaugural production from The REPO Division is a multimedia installation with four short plays clustered around a theme of apocalypse and a future post-human world. The work is clever and displays a giddily perverse attitude toward the end of civilization and man’s return to a primal state. The experience provided by the [...]
