Chicago Arts Journal

8/10/2019 Chicago Arts Journal

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CHICAGO

ARTS

JOURNALWINTER 2015

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Chicago Arts Journal ! Winter 2015

Dear Readers,

Have you ever had the sort of postal correspondence with a

faraway loved one in which long stretches of time pass

during which notes are taken on various subjects, with the

intent to convey the texture of ones life and time but the

card itself languishes in a drawer unsent? Thats something of

how we feel lately. In the past few months, weve seen a bunch

of shows, weve had a bunch of ideas, weve laughed and

thought of you and now were at a backlog. Its been too

long, readers. But what better time, then, than this horrendous

cold snap to send you our fondly-scribbled notes in the form of

a new issue? Do you have a fireplace to sit by? If not, put somebeans on the stove and pull up a chair. We need to catch up.

In looking over the various reviews, stories, arguments and

conversations in this issue, we have gotten to thinking about

tradition and continuity. In the theater reports department, we

find several local stagings of Samuel Becketts works, providing

fruitful thoughts on the man and his current interpreters,

stretching or ignoring the canon; we recall Carl Sandburgs

Rootabaga style of folk tales and their mythologizedMidwestern landscapes, a form riffed upon in these pages by

Mark Leach; we ponder the long-running festival atmosphere

encountered for one weekend each summer at Mary-Arrchies

Abbie Hoffman Died for Our Sins; and we steep in the

communal, semi-fictional theatrical neighborhoods of Beau

OReilly, co-author of Curious Theatre BranchsMarch!, here

observed by Ira Murfin. Contributor Margaret Murray

furnishes us with a quietly thoughtful personal essay on a long

and sporadic friendship with a friend now gone to live in New

Orleans, a city that can feel both ever-changing and eternal. To

conclude the issue, we conducted interviews with local art-

makers Sherry Antonini and Robert Metrick, who told us

about their past projects and also their future works, hopes,

and ideas which include, for each, a show in the Rhinoceros

Theater Festival, an event now nipping at our heels. On that

subject, keep your eyes peeled for our Rhino Fest Flash Issue,

in which we recap and reflect on various events from the

venerable fringe fest put up by Curious each winter. Were glad

to be back in touch, and we hope this letter finds you well. Iftheres anything youd like to say to us, please dont hesitate to

write.

Johann Blumer

for the Editors

johann.art sjournal@gmail .com


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Table of Contents

Page 3 Endgame

By Right Brain Theatre Project

Reviewed by Arlene Engel

6 Happy Days

By Theatre Y


9 Abbie Hoffman Died for Our Sins XXVII

By Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co. et al.

Reviewed by Carine Loewi

11 In the Absence of a Road, You Could Float Up

Essay by Margaret Murray

14 March!

By Curious Theatre Branch

Reviewed by Ira S. Murfin

18 How Tweezle Seed Prompted the Three-D Sistersand the Beefalo Brothers to Do as the Rootabaga Lizards Do

Story by Mark Leach


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EndgameBy Right Brain Theatre Project


Confession: I am not a Beckett-head. I hold nothing against theman, on a personal or an artistic level, but I havent seen much of his

work, even while it seems to darken doorways all over town lately.

When my benevolent editor friend Johann asked a few months ago if

Id watch Right Brain Projects treatment of Endgame by most

estimations, one of the Beckett Big Three and write down my

thoughts, I had never seen the play before, nor did I have any idea of

the plot. The endgame is the last part of a chess match, right? How

it all plays out in the last moves?, I asked him. He looked at me

with a bald-faced glee and said, Perfect. Dont change a thing.

The building at 4001 North Ravenswood is where Right Brain

works, and also Zoo Studios, and in that neighborhood are several

other theater spaces in other refurbished industrial lofts. Mostly this

results in performances staged in long, windowless rooms that make

you feel like youre watching a play inside a shipping container.

(Remember how in Top of the Lake, the women on the commune

spent their days hanging out and meditating on an expansive plain,

each in her own private shipping container? This is the opposite ofthat shipping container experience.) Ive been to a handful of shows

in these spaces lately, and have marveled at both the depth of field

made possible by the dimensions of the rooms, and at the

claustrophobia that comes with these dimensions. This Endgamewas

the first production I saw that used the space in the round (or

round, more like), with audience seats creeping from one short end

of the room down the long walls, making it about halfway toward

the character Hamm, seated on an armchair atop a dolly at center

stage. (Had there been seats all the way around, I think nobody

would have wanted to get much closer.)

The antechamber of the Right Brain performance space is a close

and dimly lit hallway, offering no escape for the lone theatergoerinto a cushy chair or a hidden corner. I was glad to take a break from

leaning on the wall and re-reading my program to observe a man

shuffling oddly between the theater and the hallway, gesturing

invitingly with a wine bottle to those of us waiting for the show.

Initially, the meaning of this apparition was lost on me I

wondered if he were an eccentric concessions man but it turned

out to be Clov, played by Bries Vannon, loosening the boundaries of

the Beckett world by asking us in for a drink before the show.

Eventually, Clov got us all to come into the space, whether we

wanted wine or not, so that we could better observe his puttering

about and eventual entrance into the room proper, revealed behind

hanging slabs of thick, fogged plastic sheeting. Here was the start of

the play, unbeknownst to me: Clov setting the scene, looking out

high windows, following his set paths with a pained meticulousness.

I liked all this, and found myself rapt by the progress from space to

space and the characters manner, but as stagecraft it had a notable

flaw: with all the audience crowding around, looking through thebreak in the plastic to observe where Clov was going, what he was

doing some twenty feet away inside the room, it was not possible for

most of us to really see anything. Those few who elbowed to the

front might have been edified, but I had to make some guesses and

ask others later for a recapitulation of what Beckett clearly wanted

his audience to view unhindered.


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Not knowing the play, I took Vannons Clov to be a compulsive

savant. His gait, tipped forward in constant, poking steps, looked

like a controlled fall. No use of his joints whatsoever. This was

interesting and unsettling, as was his attire: loose pants and a short-

sleeved shirt buttoned full up, all in wheat-colored linens, and wornover a long, gaunt body, the same blonde color of his clothes (except

for in moments of intensity, when his face became very red). Because

of Clovs silent entrance into the plays world as he offered us wine

in the hall, I was genuinely surprised when he finally started to

speak, and proved to be quite articulate.

I think Right Brains conceit in this staging was that this day was

the day Hamm would finally die, and that Clov knew it, and had

invited us all in to watch. The set was done up in apocalyptic

hoarder fashion: dingy newspapers covering the walls, sacks of

something mysterious populating the corners, and crude chalk

drawings here and there depicting bombs falling, the devastated

landscape alluded to sketchily in Becketts text. I thought, Why

didnt anybody tell me this was an apocalypse play? And the answer

is probably that its not, not explicitly, but thats a valid reading of it,

and one Im still considering. Do I need the world to have ended

outside to feel the desolation of living endlessly with the one person I

cant escape? Not necessarily, but its an approach.

I had a lot of questions when the play was over. Such as, Who

were those puppets? Is the actor supposed to be looking right at me

like that? Why wouldnt a name spelled Clov be pronounced

Clahv? I asked around. It turns out that my friends, even the

engineers, read a surprising amount of Beckett, and a number of

them filled in some mysteries for me.

Most of the people I talked to about the show told me things

about other productions, different choices that could have been

taken. I got to thinking: do I have to have seen the show already to

see the show the right way? I hope not. I want the thing I encounter

in the shipping container to be a self-contained thing, a version thatdoes not need references to other versions in order to exist.

But my conversations with these friends did point out a few odd or

interesting (depending on your mood) moves Right Brain made in

this staging. Let me tell you about a rather large one: puppets.

Puppets! Nell and Nagg, Hamms elderly parents in their ash bins off

to the side, were not two elderly or even middle-aged actors but two

flour-sack puppets in emptied tomato cans. Clov would make soft

footsteps to fool Hamm that he was leaving the room, and then play

out the parental dialogues on his own, in different voices; Hamm

was none the wiser, or at least he pretended so. I am guessing that

this strays pretty far from Becketts intentions, but it did favorably

add to the sense of complete isolation in the play, the post-

civilization nothingness that stretches on forever. The two men, in

this rendering, are so desperately alone that one of them spends long

stretches of the day doing voices, recounting the anecdotes of people

who are now long dead, if they ever were alive. (I look back at my

program to discover that the Right Brain production sneakily hid

this device by listing red-herring actor names for the parts of Nell

and Nagg: Lena Bloom and Ralph Knowlson, who on further

inspection seem to be noms de thtre referring coyly to James Joyce

and a Beckett biographer, respectively. Ha ha, Right Brain.)

The other thing that made my learned friends go Huh? What?

was when I described the very end of the play, which I puzzled over.

Let me remember it for you, if I can. It looks like Clov is leaving, has


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decided to leave. Hamm asks him to say something, some parting

words, and he does, describing a prison-like past that seemed like

eternal captivity, from which he one day discovers he can simply

walk away. Listening to them talk of endings, of the absolute

nothing to be found out of doors, I wondered if Clov was going tosmother Hamm or what. Then Clov went behind Hamm and

opened a door in the wall, which seemed to be a closet but wait!

Inside the door in the wall were garlands of flowers, leis, tiki

decorations, warm-colored lights. I think it said something, in those

party-decoration letters that hang in a string over doorways, but I

cant remember now what the words were. Happy Birthday?Never

mind. A glow came from that strange corner, and from a hook Clov

took a flowered shirt, which he put on over the one he was wearing,

and then a straw hat, which he placed on his head. All this happenedwhile the scene continued, Hamm thinking Clov was gone from the

room (a theme established by those puppets). Clov picked up his

bag, a few more words went back and forth, and he walked from the

room. Hamm finished his patchy soliloquy, replaced the

handkerchief over his sightless eyes, and fell silent. End of play.

Enough people made screwed-up faces when I asked them about

this Hawaiian shirt scene that I realized something might be very

different from the stage picture as usually interpreted. I consulted the

text.

Of Clovs preparation before the plays close, Becketts stage

instruction says: Enter Clov, dressed for the road. Panama hat,

tweed coat, raincoat over his arm, umbrella, bag. He halts by the

door and stands there, impassive and motionless, his eyes fixed on

Hamm, till the end. I find here evidence of the Hawaiian shirt as a

stylistic choice not original to the work (and perhaps a broad

interpretation of Panama hat), but more significantly I notice that

Clov is never intended to actually leave. Its the final moment, the

break-up of whatever this is, and in Becketts play, even when the

moment of ending seems to arrive, it doesnt end. What a striking

choice, then, to have an exit actually occur. I leave the Right Brainscene with questions and peccadilloes but more fruitfully, I think,

with a blooming interest in Becketts texts and his intentions, which

I hope are still of importance to makers of theater today.

In revisiting the show in my mind, I am reminded too of the

subtle power of Vincent Lonergan as Hamm, the blind man on the

wheeled chair. I have said much about the design and direction

around Clov, but Lonergans Hamm felt like the plays root, not

only because he was physically stuck in the room but because his

character felt so fully conceived, even in the more elusive dialogues

of the play. Hamm is obviously a grandiose shut-in and a bossy

father figure to Clov, but here he is also revealed as a man of vivid

lyrical recall and strange humor. To hear Becketts words cast so ably

into the room by these actors, even amidst some strange turns in the

plays staging, put me in a mood to investigate more of the writers

work, a mood gladly received.

Endgameby Samuel Beckett ran at the Right Brain Project (4001 N. Ravenswood)from September 4 October 4, 2014. It was directed by Aaron Snook, andperformed by Bries Vannon and Vincent Lonergan.


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Happy Days

By Theatre YReviewed by Arlene Engel

It was only a few weeks after I saw Endgamethat Johann rang up

again and asked if I wouldnt mind accompanying him to a

production of Becketts Happy Days, put on by Theatre Y in the loft

of St. Lukes Church in Logan Square. Sure, I said. Whats this

one about? He laughed but wouldnt say, so I asked the Internet,

who told me its about a lady buried up to the waist in the ground,

going about her daily business. Well, of course it is.

I asked my friend Paul (not an engineer, but a Beckett fan) to tell

me something about Happy Days ahead of my seeing it, and he toldme, Only women with beautiful teeth ever play Winnie. This was

a strange enough utterance, just on the dividing line between sexism

and straight-talk, that I didnt speak to Paul again for several weeks.

When I saw the play, I understood what he meant. Becketts Winnie

smiles as punctuation, color, thesis, and declarative statement; an

effortless, capacious mouth of white teeth seems imperative to the

project. Nobody I know has that kind of equipment to her credit,

but Theatre Ys Melissa Lorraine sure does, and her Winnie was

stunningly capable.

I think and Im sometimes wrong about these things on the

face of it, heres a play about a woman going about her mundane life

in what is clearly a less than ideal circumstance. The stuff shes

buried in is dirt and grass in Becketts instruction, I later learned; in

Theatre Ys set, designed by Peter Szabo, its a vast mound of

television and computer parts, screens blinkering static as the

audience enters and then dead by the time the play begins. (Im

guessing the technology junk heap styling is a thing people do to

this play with some regularity now? Highly relevant, yes. Although

now I think of it the dirt seems a less obvious and maybe more

interesting choice in this day and age. Technological refuse is a literal

thing were all aware of, as our phones break and become obsoleteand we send them on a barge to China to corrode peoples lungs as

their contents degrade; but what would it really signify to be buried

in earth halfway, and still alive? I digress.)

Winnie is not quite a society lady, but she has airs: routines and

mannerisms that feel very middle-class British, and also very of-a-

time. Hearing her phrases, I remembered how Id laugh whenever

Clov in Endgame said It wont act, speaking of Hamms

medication. It was a funny little way to put it I knew what he

meant, but probably nobodys said it that way for eighty years. Much

of the Beckett Ive heard so far feels purposefully antiquated, as if

nobody really used these phrases even when Beckett was writing

them, but he was choosing the older language for effect. Is that true?

Im speculating wildly.

Johann wanted me to tell you that he was very taken with the

space in which the play was performed (and so was I). My mother

used to do contra dancing in the basement of St. Lukes, but the play

took place in a part of the building Id somehow never noticedbefore. Rather than industrial concrete hallways and small gathering

rooms, the alley door of Theatre Y opened onto a foyer of old wood,

painted in various peeling shades of blue, with high ceilings and a

winding staircase leading up to the performance space. Beautiful,

crusty, and somehow completely eerie. At the top of the stairs, a

bank of audience risers faced the junk pile in a massive room under a

gently-pitched gable roof, all black inside except for a striking red


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stripe off-center on the upstage wall. Here Winnie rested, head on

outstretched milk-white arms, as the crowd shuffled in.

Lorraines performance as Winnie was truly impressive: careful,

well-paced, virtuosic. Clearly, this was not her first time at the rodeo.

I hear this is one of the more stage direction-heavy Beckett pieces (orare they all like that?), with highly specific motions at exact times in

relation to the lines, and where that precision might feel mechanical,

Lorraine found a natural rhythm in it. The graceful swoops and

flicks of her arms were as important to my grasp of the character as

were her immaculately sculpted eyebrows. I understood Winnie as a

woman very invested in keeping up appearances and in keeping tabs

on her environment, though certain salient facts and objects she

chose not to investigate further. (I think of the handgun that

appeared from her shopping bag, and rested heavy in myimagination for the remainder of the play.)

An arresting choice, and one I found very effective, was Winnies

entry into the plays second act. The horrible buzzer which

demarcated the characters sleeping and waking hours went off, and

as the lights went up Lorraine was revealed to be now neck-deep in

the pile. From this position, unable to move anything but eyes and

mouth, she delivered a large portion of Act Two in a rapid

monotone, with only cursory pauses to indicate shifts of grammarand intent. This flat speech was punctuated by increasingly desperate

cries of Willie! when Winnie beseeched her husband to appear and

comfort her. I cant say if this delivery was true to Becketts initial

intention, but to me as audience it was alarming in a way that

tightened my throat. Because, Im thinking, Winnie might become a

joke about middle-class mores, right? A ridiculous, shallow woman

focusing on ridiculous things? Like Endgames Hamm and Clov

worrying over the minutiae of their shared space, Winnie spends an

awful lot of time trying to read the inscription on her toothbrush.

But the simultaneous resoluteness and terror evident in Winnies

disposition, especially in the second act, gripped me with an

impossible worry over the character.Similarly harrowing was Evan Hills performance as Willie, only

half-visible for most of the play, his back to us as he investigated a

tall, stiff newspaper. From time to time hed gingerly remove his

straw hat, and then a bloody handkerchief laid under it, to reveal

some kind of nasty head wound among his voluminous white hair.

(Bloody handkerchiefs are a theme in Beckett, eh? I guess they were

a much more common sight in the time when people still walked

around in tubercular states, and perhaps theyre still a common sight

in some parts of the world today. I wonder if people perform Beckettin those places.) Willies is a rather small part in the plays action,

but it must be big work for an actor the stiffness, the gravity, the

timing, not to mention good vocal projection while facing upstage!

As with the production of Endgame I saw,my consultation of the

source text turned little questions into large ones. Toward the end of

the first act, the umbrella Winnie holds aloft (and seems unable to

put down) is intended, in Becketts rendering, to catch fire; in

Theatre Ys staging, the interior of the umbrella is filled with LEDlights on strips, which produced a cold, mysterious glow, almost like

a bioluminescent sea creature floating in the massive room. As I

looked into the plays instructions, what had been a wondrous,

buoyant image when I saw it onstage now felt like a diversion of

meaning. Were beauty and wonder the intended resonances of the

umbrella as a prop, or something more like the hidden (and magical)

malice of the mundane? Im not sure. (How anybody ever gets


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anything to catch on fire onstage with accuracy is beyond me, but

thats another question.)

And this brings me to the only part of the play that really baffled

me. (This is to the productions credit, since in different hands it

might be a baffling work throughout.) All this time in the second actWinnie has been going on, periodically calling for Willie, and now

he appears. Hes got on some version of finery, but its old and

dusty, too small. He stands up full behind Winnie, and now we see

his face, which is a good face but punctures the feeling of eeriness its

long absence gave before; and now he takes a waltz pose and sort of

gently spirals from his side of the stage to the other side. Winnie

speaks to him throughout this movement, seeming comforted and

pleased that he has finally got up and wants to be near her. Only: is

he? Is this a dream sequence?, I wondered. In the performances finaltableau, Winnie finishes speaking and the lights go down; the actress

silently dismounts her pile and comes to upstage left to stand with

the actor against the wall; they join hands and she takes up the long

hem of her skirt in her free hand; the two pause in this position,

smiling, as if they are posing for a wedding portrait; then, lights

down. The end.

I didnt know what to make of this as a final gesture, and as I

examine Becketts script I find that its not there, that it signifiessomething to this production but not to the play originally. Is it

perhaps a visual representation of the music-box song Winnie plays,

I love you so? The two in their frozen position under the spotlight

looked like a picture in a locket. Several of my Beckett-loving friends

opined that they wished people (usually of an academic disposition)

wouldnt mess with the works so much, that they would just do

them, whatever that means. I think thats a fair plea, and yet even

given Theatre Ys liberties, I find myself still haunted by their version

of the play. Maybe this is a case in which repeat viewings, seeing

multiple takes and versions of these works new to me, but

canonical in our time will enrich my understanding of them.

Okay, engineers, you were right.

Happy Days by Samuel Beckett ran at Theatre Y (2649 N. Francisco) fromOctober 17 November 23, 2014. It was directed by Andrs Visky, andperformed by Melissa Lorraine and Evan Hill.


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Abbie Hoffman Died for Our Sins XXVIIReviewed by Carine Loewi

Ten bucks, I am thinking, is pretty cheap for a night of theater in

this day and age, and that is what I paid to get into a single evening

of the Abbie Hoffman Fest, or however were abbreviating it. Not to

mention, night of theater is a pretty nebulous concept in this case:

youd pay twice that much for regular admission to a ninety-minute

show among the local fringes, and here for your ten you can stay and

watch various acts drift past until 4 a.m., if you so choose. Even with

a big evening coffee in hand from the next-door Starbucks

(convenient!), I was not prepared to linger until dawn with the

carousingest of the Abbie Festers, but I put in a solid effort untilaround midnight, and saw some things of interest in the process.

I climbed the tall, tall steps to the Mary-Arrchie space and sat

down among a crown of forty or fifty people not a bad draw for a

fringe festival something scattered to various corners of the room

for the in-the-round setup. After a momentous darkness, during

which we all listened to Hendrix playing the Star-Spangleds at full

blast for several beats too long, if you ask me (did you?), there

appeared Mary-Arrchie lifer Richard Cotovsky on a crate at center

stage, doing his Abbie Hoffman bit. Which, institution though itmay be, is not all that exciting, really: free-associative politico-rant

and a little strung out and thats the thing of it. Then the first piece

that really happened as part of the formal theater of the night was

Lets Sleep, an audio work written and recited by Brian Nemtusak

and produced (whatever that means; what does that mean?) by

Found Objects, whose stuff I have enjoyed at times. It was a loooong

monologue, played overhead while the audience sat in the dark and

listened, and for the first few minutes wondered, Is something else

going to happen? Are people going to come out in scary masks?But no.

Even so, it was well-written, in that particular Found Objects way:

knowing how to find the crevice in an idea and slip inside it, to keep

descending until the vessel is miles below the surface and no oneremembers how to get out, but everybody has a good vocabulary for

telling you about the desolation. But also I think, This is an odd way

to begin an all-night theater fest, with a thing that literally instructs us

to sleep, and then sits us in the dark, looking either at our inner eyelids

or the bare room Its something of an energy drop, but the virtue

and the vice of these things, the Abbie Fest things, is that nothing

among them is very long, so be it a soporific or a splendor, itll go by

in a relative blink. And so it is: twenty minutes of sleep or not-sleep,

and heres the next.And then, in perhaps more canny programming sense, came

Wild Dogs, a Mary-Arrchie production. It was a two-hander by

Matt Borczon about a strait-laced guy who hits the rocks with his

lady and goes to stay with his buddy whos a real tough-and-tumbler,

a wildman kind of dude. And it was mostly an exercise in odd-

coupledom: the guy in the tie and the guy in the undershirt.

Probably the best thing about the whole piece was the opening,

when the wild guy (played by Cotovsky, natch) ran circles around

the onstage furniture, scratching and baying Like a wild dog,youmight say, and youd be right and then shook a Twinkie from the

wrapper with his teeth and knelt down on all fours to eat it off the

floor. That one bit was so simultaneously gross and deeply erotic

that I hardly needed the rest of the play.

After these and a few further acts I went out to feed the meter and

take a solitude break in the lobby, and so I missed or partly missed a

few things, and I feel fine about that. One of them, heard from a


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short distance away, seemed to be short scenes of arch-cringey absurd

comedy, mostly depending on punchlines with the word pussy for

uproarious laughs, and boy was it getting them. That kind of thing

really brings out the shut the fuck up in me, but luckily I was in the

lobby with the wine bottles, looking out the nice second-floorwindow down at the lively intersection, and the pussy jokes were in

the next room, getting just the reception they had hoped for.

A funny thing that happened in this festival dynamic was the

massive crowd shifts. Youd think as happens at, say, Rhino Fest,

or Chicago Fringe Fest; take your pick that an audience might

show up from across town to see their friends perform a twenty-

minute piece, and then hang around, drink a beer, see what else is

going on. Theater? Oh, great as long as Im here, why not more

theater! Oddly, in this case, a few acts had a giant influx of bodiesbottlenecking through the single, steep entrance point, and then saw

those very same bodies shuffle back out as soon as their pals did. I

found this in slightly poor taste, audience people, but okay. Its not

my planet.

This phenomenon happened around 11 p.m. with the Factory

Theater show, Thirty Days in the Rabbit Hole, which was among

the most entertaining things I saw in my night of Abbie Festering.

The sudden, big crowd and its accompanying big laughs did help the

piece to wheel along, as is usually the case with Factory work but

what a piece it was! It portrayed a spate of girl fairy-tale characters

Cinderella, Little Red, et al. wrenched from their cuddlesome

Disney worlds and tossed into a psychedelic-Tarantino-rave-prison

kind of universe. The end devolved into a jokey fight sequence, as

also happens in Factory work more often than not, but the cast of

mostly women lead by the fantastic Robyn Coffin as an

incarcerated Alice in Wonderland and supported, among others, by

Sara Sevigny as a mute, pyromanic Cinderella made such an odd

and hilarious lot I wouldve watched them do just about anything.

Where are these women of the Factory hiding? In plain sight, really.

You get to see one or two at a time in any given regular-season

production, as the sassy secretary or the sassy pregnant friend, butwhen they get together en masse onstage and play out scenes among

themselves ahem, Bechdel-testing out of the park it is a thing

of wonder. More of this, please.

I saw two other really interesting things during that fateful night

at the Abbie Hoffman Variety Special. One of them was The Good

Glitter by Jessica Wright Buha. It was a dystopic science fiction

kind of thing, two young women panning for gold in a sewer,

referring conversationally to a strictly segregated above-ground

society and bickering. The piece was dark and smartly written, nevergiving too much away, never looking for too much flash in the pan,

and featured two actors Id happily watch again. (If, that is, I could

figure out who they were from any sort of program.)

The other interesting late-night thing was a long one-guy-on-stage

piece, a monologue by somebody credited as King Berry. (Who are

you, King Berry?) The piece was a long meditation on relationships

and isolation, delivered in multiple voices but by one essential

character: a handsome, broad-shouldered and white-tee-shirted

young man, just slightly too tired to come off as slick. It was called

Cure My Melancholy, and indeed, it left a deep shiver of sadness,

even though I suppose it might have been a comic piece. That was

around 11:30, just before I tapped out for the night, and it was a

quiet wonder to end on, exemplary of what the festival format can

do: lure you in for your friends early-evening tap dance, and let you

stick around, milling the lobby as needed, until you see something

surprising, something you might never have stepped in on otherwise.


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11

In the Absence of a Road, You Could Float Up

By Margaret Murray

If you come correct.

If, when you enter the conversation, youve read all that camebeforehand and you keep your piece on exactly what youre sure of,then you will. Honor the rules. I didnt know that then but therewas something in the sound of it.

We in the mud now.

I want to talk about New Orleans. I was there before Katrina a fewtimes, and have been post-Katrina a few times. I almost moved therebecause I thought Id learn a thing or two in the humidity. Its a citywhere everything that lives or moves is caught in a partial state ofdecay. There isnt a clear line between being hard, solid, in thepresent, and faded, a step behind. Life in New Orleans could be, ormight have happened, and did not happen all at the same time.

When I was last there, I saw Jake again. I try to see him every fiveyears or so since the first time I met him. That could have been

twenty-five years ago. He was fifteen? Or sixteen? Or a hundred. Iwasnt much older. His own parents didnt know his age, they forgotit and he had to be sixteen for two years in a row. I remembered himwhen I met him at fifteen, or no, I committed him to memory. Idropped a marker at that moment to rest on, to come back to. Ididnt see him again for years.

Ay happy birthday. You are a year closer to death, beloved.

That next time I saw Jake was at a party on a hot summer night inChicago, after his second sixteenth year. Time spread both forwardand backward as I talked to him, I knew him before I met him andwould know him well after Id forgotten him, I am sure. What I amtrying to say is that there wasnt a structure to knowing him, we

worked in dream time. If I took a step toward him, Id break theskin barrier like it was mist and my arm or leg would blend part waythrough his like overlapping shadows, looking like one but doubledin opacity where it was both of us. I could breathe the breath out ofhis lungs, we were partially melted against each other. He could havebeen my brother, he could have been the voice in my head. If Idbeen older, confusion might have overruled my awe at thestrangeness and I might have turned away. My full adult mind mighthave let this first note fade slowly to silence.

I feel some type of way.

I can, to this day, remember looking at him when I left that party. Iwas in a friends car and wanted him to leave with me. He stoodoutside the car while I hung over the opened car door window. Theparty rustled like rain in the background, the air was wet with spilleddrinks.

I cant go, my Dads getting married tomorrow and I have to be

there. He told me this and as those words settled, I looked awayfrom him and toward a massive muscled man who appeared at hisside. The mans arms were folded and he was completely silent,powerful and precise.

Dad hired Andre and Junk to make sure I get there. And Jakewalked away with the silent, astonishing man. I took the last swallowof his face and sent it straight to sky, threw it up and out to store itbeyond reason. Watching his smooth back get smaller carried on the


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slow roll of his walk, I could feel his presence stretch and break pieceby piece. First the flutes and clarinets, high and crisp, dropped away,leaving me lower, blurred notes of warm brass. I closed my moutharound one lone strand of oboe.

Now Jake lives in New Orleans and years have passed. Hes older.When I see him, I have to look at him for ten minutes in silence tosee everything thats gone by since Ive known him. I watch his blueeyes go to green, then gray and then crescent moons when he smiles.New Orleans is a city version of him, Im half sunk every time I setfoot in that place.

I had reason to go there recently and we arranged to see each other.

I walked around the block when I first arrived, to reacquaint myselfwith the citys stooped grace. A doorman at a nearby hotel watchedme try to tie up my hair in a hairband, gathering courage.

Just let it go, baby. Youre in New Orleans.

New Orleans compresses the time to intimacy like this, in a half-conscious way. Its not thoughtless, its an invitation forsubconscious thought to rise up. New Orleans time runs on its ownsolipsistic path and now Im going to spend some length of it with

someone who I dont consciously know from day to day interaction.Ive never washed dishes with him, I dont exactly know how he payshis bills. I dont have an understanding of him that doesnt feel like adream.

Ive been stupid since day one, get familiar.

Jake and I walked around his neighborhood. The air was rich withsmells of human existence; barbecued meat, garbage, beer,

excrement, layered with green, green leaves and grass. People yelledacross the street at each other. Car doors banged. Sound carriesbetter in the humid air, with something to hang on to. Images carrybetter too, and the whole feel of it is closer to blood level.Absorption. In that walk, in every rich inhaled breath, heavy with

life ripened to the point of corruption, I knew Jake couldnt surviveNew Orleans.

He told me this, what I already knew, after wed walked some timeto get with the rhythm of the streets.

I cant stay here.Why not?Cant you see them, sitting on the porches? All the ghosts? I cant

be somewhere like this with the temptation.

All the houses as you pass have friendly front stoops and porcheswith chairs that must have been owned and sat on forever. You cansmell them like ice broken out of trays, dropped into tea offered to aguest, layered with the after breath of a refrigerator door closed.Ghost smells.

I understood perfectly. The humidity makes New Orleans slidebetween past and present because it holds the echoes of people who

may have passed by five minutes ago or fifty years ago. Crescendosfollowed by decrescendos make it liquid, and as liquid it submergesand rises to a slow beat And takes its people with it.

If you naturally go to dreams in your blood and youre in rhythmwith a sympathetic city, it can be impossible to stay. The yearningfor a cool iced drink offered can be too hard to fight.

A drug hold can be broken, not forgotten. Jake knows this.


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Its one price to pay.

For dispensing with the standard structure of time and letting thescore of unrelated conversations be absorbed into lapping waves.

But on second thought, Im low-key interested.

The humidity conjures a hands caress. Austere air slops over intodroplets of touch to awaken skin. The slow rise and fall of a cityschest lulls me into stepping off and spreading into nothing, into sky.Why would you want to leave here for a life of linear twitching, onestep following the next? I would rather follow these unrelated soundsspun up into a music more vast than the original, individually

contained intent. So every time I hear a sound or see a movementwith no context, the porch ghosts will appear and I can live innothing for a moment, because there are voices with no knownlanguage and the understanding of them passes through eachphysical sense like electrical current carried on mist. It tastes roundand acidic, smells like hot metal or sidewalks in the first minutes ofrain.

I want to, I always search for this, New Orleans, Jake, the formdoesnt matter. Maybe Ill walk sideways some and stay awhile. I

dont know if Ill see Jake again but at the same time I can see himeverywhere.


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March!By Curious Theatre BranchReviewed by Ira S. Murfin

A taxonomy of Beau OReilly plays, such as might be found in

some invitingly idiosyncratic museum of experimental oeuvres,

would surely include, alongside the rooms devoted to various sub-

categories of dramatic and autobiographical monologue and post-

Beckettian vaudevilles, a whole wing dedicated to the community

play. Not community theatre, that is, but community astheatre and

vice versa. In these works, the fictional reality of the dramatic world

is laid palimpsestically atop histories, relationships, and geographies

shared amongst collaborators. In recent years these notional,emergent communities have included the sprawling theatrical family

of The Madelyn Trilogy and the eclectic, eccentric residents of a

fictionalized Rogers Park in Evanston, Which Is Over There. That

some critical mass of the audience no doubt knows that OReilly

himself comes from a sprawling theatrical family and has long made

his home in the environs of Rogers Park is less a signal that some

slippage might reveal real life facts onstage than it is about the ways

in which theatrical reality is perpetually adjunct to a deeply felt and

shared lived experience.

The cast of what I am calling a community play is frequently large

enough for the contours of its collective concerns and negotiations,

in and beyond the space of the theatre, to be felt if not actually

articulated; and the duration of the play is usually long enough for a

brief shared history to be forged right there in the small room where

the act of collective theatre is taking place. These plays, in other

words, make real the co-presence so frequently touted as theatres

most distinctive element, but which proves elusive in work that does

not at least threaten to overflow its spatial, temporal, and narrative

containers. The cast lives together, in some sense, there onstage, and

for a little while the audience lives with them, too. The audiences,

then, who know the work and often know the people in the work,must fit these communal configurations and the dynamic worlds

they fragmentarily imply, of which the plays themselves are but a

sliver, into the multi-chambered spaces of a sprawling, unlikely, but

nonetheless coherent whole, made up, by turns, of fictional, meta-

fictional, and apparently real imaginaries.

To the idiosyncratic and fantastic architectures brought into being

by these plays we can now add the labyrinthine edifice at the center

ofMarch! an impossibly extensive small-town museum devoted to

cataloguing the ordinary and the extraordinary alike. For those who

know OReilly, the plays co-author, the fact that his day job has him

teaching writing in a school adjacent to a real museum once again

weaves in and out of our consciousness as we acquaint ourselves with

a new and as yet unfamiliar place with real world corollaries.

However, connections aside, this is not a Beau OReilly play, but a

play co-authored by OReilly and Curious regular Julia Williams.

From the very start, then, March! springs from a shared process,

from the collective rather than the individual mind, and from thesorts of tensions, disjunctures, and patchworks that come of making

something large and complicated from an eclectic and disparate

range of sources.

Just as the museums many fictional spaces and displays exceed the

practical or topographical arrangement such an institution would

require or be able to sustain, the plays script exceeds the narrative

functions of a single dramatic work or a single authorial


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consciousness, heading in many directions at once and finding ways

to fit things together, whether or not they match or make sense. I am

not familiar enough with Williams dramatic output to fit March!

into a cross-career retrospective alongside OReilly, but the very fact

of their co-authorship is yet more evidence of the interlockingsignificance of community as generative process and thematic topic.

It is at once a communal exercise and a collective statement about

community.

Indeed, the dual authorship may even be visible in the two

enigmatic characters at the center of the play, the museums

proprietors, both named Charlie, and played by Lynn Marie and

Brook Celeste. Bound together by a single purple scarf, the two

Charlies run the museum in tandem, asserting some quasi-

authoritative sway over the profuse and illogical goings on there.

They are either inseparable business and life partners or they are two

aspects of a single Charlie, playing out internal divisions externally.

Either way, their story provides one of the more traceable and

emotionally effecting through-lines of the play. Charlie #1 is

dying of cancer, or so she says, Charlie #2 is having a hard time

believing her, and it remains unclear if #2 is in denial or if #1 is

simply employing a self-mythologizing excuse for her coming

departure. In any event, she expects to be leaving the differencebetween mortality and some place outside of the museum becomes

somewhat arbitrary in this context, anyhow and she is filling a

sack with things she wants to bring with her.

Other storylines include frequent museum visitor Warren

Casablanca and his friend Katrin (Matt Rieger and Briavael

OReilly), who tries to help Warren get over the sense of obligation

he claims to feel toward the women in his life, though the evidence

of this amounts only to Warrens own claims one suspects he may

simply be a garden-variety misanthrope. And there is Marya

(Williams), who has recently transferred to the caf, where she seems

to be an object of desire for many of the museums denizens,

including both Warren and Katrin, as well as the maintenance man,Peet (Ryan Wright), who quietly permeates every nook of the

building. Maryas rebuke of Peet toward the end of the play for

projecting his unwelcome romantic ideas onto her effectively scolds

the oft-idealized quotidian male gaze, along with a raft of

longstanding romantic tropes in which mis-delivered letters drive

apart and then bring together young lovers. Strangely, though,

Marya follows up her principled stand with the offhand suggestion

that Peet turn his attention to Alma in the gift shop (also played by

Williams), leaving it unclear whether Williams is nailing mopeyromantic male ideals about unrequited love or poking at the

artificiality inherent in understanding one actor as two characters,

with distinct agencies, on the same stage. Or maybe, probably, both.

The celebration of community that defines this play is always cast

into contrast with that other most familiar brand of interpersonal co-

presence, couplehood. Communal belonging trumps coupling every

time in this universe. The shows view of romantic entanglements

ranges from philosophically resigned to quite dim (though the happyfirst blush of love does crop up around the edges). For the most part

romantic interest is either unwanted or over-wanted, and established

partnerships are bound to end, the only question seems to be

whether or not they are bound to end elegantly. What is left is the

structure of the museum, the locus of imagination and belonging, a

place where it is possible, perhaps even necessary, to be single

without ever being alone. Unlike the world outside the museum,

where the communal is eyed with suspicion and the couple


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venerated, here the couple finds itself out of synch with the

environment, exposed and interrupted. The museum itself

discomfits coupledom. Meanwhile Jenny Magnus and Vicki

Walden, having the most fun of anyone in the show as a pair of

candy eating, fluidly gendered, vaudevillian clowns, remain asharmonious and uncomplicated a pair as any imaginable in their

mischievous creative partnership.

Most of the rest of March! is taken up with the museums living,

and lifelike, exhibits. These constitute a series of robots embodying

different professions concerned with collecting and interpreting data

a census taker, a Jungian therapist, a naturalist and live

performers giving public interpretations of historical figures who, it

became clear in discussion with the playwrights after the show, each

have some significant intersection with the date March the first,

otherwise obscurely foregrounded by the title. The performers put

on their shows within the show at the impetus of a coin deposited

into a slot outside a small theatrical closet labeled Archive of

Feelings. The figures on display include Charlie Chaplin, Joseph

Stalin, Johnny Cash, and Tallulah Bankhead (mostly Brian Collins,

with Lynn Maries Charlie stepping in for Bankhead). Each opens

up about their inner feelings in context of outer dramas in ways that

mirror, and eventually bleed into, the emotional lives of the

museums patrons and workers, much in the way that we imagine

theatre to both reflect and transform our emotional states.

These characters, human and otherwise, all seem to not so much

work at the museum as inhabit it, receiving mail and bedding down

in its various warrens, of which there are always more, unseen and

unknown. The far reaches of the museum are spoken of as vaguely

and as wistfully as continents to which one will probably never

travel. Little seems to be known about the limits of the museum

except that there is an edge out there, somewhere. The museum goes

on forever, yet it is finite, and enclosed. Structured on the

networked, contingent logic of the internet, or of dreams, everything

locks together into a tautologically absurd chain of places and spaceswith no end, and no outside, but one paradoxically characterized by

its enclosure. The museum posits no division between public and

private life and no narrative or interpersonal hierarchies

everything is equally meaningful and equally connected to

everything else.

I am not sure that I can make sense ofMarch!or its museum, but I

am not so sure there is sense there to be made beyond what one can

glean by just being there. A convivial co-presence, like a night spent

voluntarily locked in a vast museum or castle or shopping mall with

a dozen or so of your best friends, pervades the atmosphere, as does

the sense of exuberance that comes of the license that attends such

situations to sing, to be silly, to be honest, to hook up, to confess,

and so on. Where we might expect a tightly structured dramatic arc,

we find instead a community engaged in play with a sense of

freedom and mutual agreement. Whether that community consists

of the fictional denizens of the museum or the real theatre artists of

Curious Theatre Branch actually seems somewhat beside the point.

From this perspective it is not individual narratives that matter,

but the ecologies of interdependence and contingency within which

all meaning is suspended. So long as we, the audience, or we, the

museums visitors, are engaged with the interplay between the

possibly infinite chambers of this imaginary structure, everything

that happens there will be deeply meaningful and richly layered; but

once outside of the fictional museums physical spaces (or the


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fictional space of the museum), that swelling sense of co-presence, of

love, dissipates to incomprehensibility. Try to index it, or evaluate it,

from a historical or critical position and you will find that the

museum, and the materialized life of the community which

constitutes it, evaporates and disappears.Like other enclosed infinities dream worlds, theatrical

representations, the internet, all of which the play explicitly or

implicitly evokes March! is at every moment highly meaningful

and yet still ultimately ambiguous, even ambivalent, about meaning.

Not, I would suggest, just about particular meanings, but about the

very purpose of meaning itself, apart from experience, that is. The

processes of sensation, mutuality, and collectivity are immersive and

ongoing; meaning implies something has ended, that you have

stepped outside and are now looking back at what you have

separated yourself from. Which is why I feel like I can hardly

interpret March! here, beyond recalling having been there to see it

for myself.

In Los Angeles there is a place called the Museum of Jurassic

Technology, which is in many respects a museum about what it

means to be a museum. Its chief purpose and pleasure lie in

provoking curiosity and wonder while at the same time causing the

visitor to doubt their own experience and ask if the knowledge theyhave acquired is real, and if it matters. Something similar is

happening withMarch! and its museum, but rather than encounters

with truth, it is the slippery nature of the communal that is both

evoked and scrutinized. It is difficult not to imagine something of

Curiouss enviable and long-standing community ethos more

directly represented a few years back by Jenny Magnuss Still in Play

in the museums ongoing shenanigans. And indeed, it is

worthwhile to wonder if it matters whether it is a real or a fictional

community we have made contact with, and if it could possibly be

both. But at the same time there is some mournful sense that

community is something felt singly, something that requires exit and

separation to best be appreciated. An experience of community is tonotice that you are a part of one while in the midst of others, to go

away from the place you are in to look back at it. It is felt in its most

all-encompassing state in some private dream world where divisions

between individuals, between work and leisure, between the lived

experience of the present and the remembered traces of the past are

all erased, and everything is equally intertwined and imminent,

uncomplicated by the need for separation or privacy. This is a

subjective and individual experience of community, one felt alone. It

is only from the vantage of OReilly and Williams play, and its ilk,that the imagined and the lived community can encounter, crowd

one another and, fleetingly, converge.

March! ran at the side project (1439 W. Jarvis) from November 7 December 7,2014. It was written and directed by Beau OReilly and Julia Williams, andperformed by Brook Celeste, Brian Collins, Jenny Magnus, Lynn Marie, BeauOReilly, Briavael OReilly, Matt Rieger, Vicki Walden, Julia Williams, and RyanWright.


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How Tweezle Seed Prompted the Three-D Sistersand the Beefalo Brothers to Do as the RootabagaLizards Do

A story in the Rootabaga style by Mark Leach

Trip, Triang, and Delt walked and sang, delighted that their

mother had sent her three daughters to the co-op store to buy a sack

of tweezle seed.

Burgerbreath, Flimsy, and Pants-Too-Tight walked and shouted,

all mixed up inside because they knew they should be angry that

their mother was dispatching her three sons to the co-op store to buy

a sack of tweezle seed, but it was too fine a spring morning to be

angry.

As they walked, Trip, Triang, and Delt sang about Pee-Baby birds

and laughed, holding hands.

As they walked, Burgerbreath, Flimsy, and Pants-Too-Tight

shouted at worms, shouted at frogs, and shouted at nothing-at-all.

Trip, Triang, and Delt and Burgerbreath, Flimsy, and Pants-Too-

Tight arrived at the same moment at the stores shelf of tweezle seed.

The girls stopped singing. The boys stopped shouting, all mixed up

inside because they wanted to shout at the girls so really bad that

they had no air in them to shout with.

Each group took a sack of tweezle seed, paid the cashier, and went

outside. Burgerbreath, Flimsy, and Pants-Too-Tight started shouting

at nothing-at-all. Trip, Triang, and Delt looked at the boys and

began laughing a pure, happy, case-of-the-giggles laugh.

Burgerbreath, Flimsy, and Pants-Too-Tight looked at the girls and

started laughing too, honest as a dewy morning haw-haw-haws. All

were laughing so hard that Delt and Pants-Too-Tight lost their grips

on the sacks of tweezle seed.

The sacks hit the concrete sidewalk and split their sides. Two

clouds arose, dusting everyone with tweezle seeds. They each lookedaround at all the others, and laughed harder. Each time they laughed

they ungrew a little shorter, until they were no larger than Pee-Baby

birds.

On previous occasions, it had been difficult enough to stop

laughing, even with their parents telling them to Stop that this

instant! Stopping now was much more difficult. Triang deplored,

Stop laughing right now! And they all laughed harder. Flimsy said

in a grownup voice, Dis aint dat funny. Which started them

laughing harder. All the time they were getting smaller. Thinking

quickly, Burgerbreath shouted, Hold your breath and count to ten!

That did it. They stopped laughing and stopped ungrowing, which

was fortunate, because they were now the size of Pee-Baby eggs.

What are we going to do? they all asked at once. Flimsy said,

My Uncle Hansom Ransom always said, If youre the size of a Pee-

Baby egg, youve got to do as the rootabaga lizards do. The nearest

rootabaga field was just behind the store, so thats where they went.

Each young rootabaga plant proudly held a few tender leaves,

forming long rows curving down the slope and curving up the next

slope. Trip, Triang, and Delt walked hand-in-hand, singing the Pee-

Baby Song. Burgerbreath, Flimsy, and Pants-Too-Tight were

walking down the next row over, shouting at spiders, shouting at

baby grasshoppers, shouting at nothing-at-all. They hadnt gone far

when a lizard appeared, saying, Goodness gracious. I was worried

youd be late. We must hurry. The lizard added more politely as he


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turned and scrambled ahead, And of course all of us in Rootabaga

Country are over-the-moon with gratitude that you are here to

help.

The children, still the size of Pee-Baby eggs, struggled to keep pace

with the lizard. Fortunately, they hadnt far to go. The race of thepillbox beetles has already started, said the lizard. But theres still

plenty of time to stop them. They all watched as thousands of

pillbox beetles sped around and around a great sinuous course that

wound among the rootabagas. The racing beetles thundered past,

filling the air with stinky farts, which Pants-Too-Tight later

described as, Like when you go in the fridge and open a yogurt

container and find last months tacos which nobody ate because they

were made with smelly socks, fish guts, and nail polish salsa.

Flimsy explained, Uncle Hansom Ransom told me about this.

Every spring an urge overcomes the pillbox beetles to race around

and around, roaring and farting. Once they get the urge, they wont

stop. Every one of them would die of tired-outness. Not one would

be left to eat the rootabaga mites, and the mites would eat all the

rootabaga, and the rootabaga lizards would have to move.

Just then, a particularly large lizard blew a whistle. Soon the lizards

and the children were grabbing pillbox beetles as they raced past.

When they seized one, they wrestled it over on its back, its six legsstill racing in the air.

The sun was directly overhead when Delt rolled over the last

racing pillbox beetle. Excellent job! and Superlative! shouted the

lizards, obviously much pleased, and catching their breaths. A lizard

with a clipboard said, Not bad. A few beetles broke their necks

running off the track. There was a huge pileup on curve three, but

not as many fatalities as two years ago. Only a few raced to death

before we could flip them. Not bad at all. The racing fever should

break by sunset. We can start putting them feet-side down after

supper.

The large lizard with the whistle still around her neck said to the

children, It is our tradition to provide gifts to our helpers. Sheproduced two tiny sacks of tweezle seeds, handing one to Triang and

one to Pants-Too-Tight. The children quickly grew to their normal

height, perhaps a wee bit taller. The sacks of tweezle seeds enlarged

too.

On their way home, Trip, Triang, and Delt sang about Pee-Baby

birds and laughed about creatures that would race themselves to

death. On their way home, Burgerbreath, Flimsy, and Pants-Too-

Tight shouted at trees, shouted at cars, and shouted at nothing-at-all,

but mostly they thought silently about creatures so mixed up inside

that they race themselves to death.


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Hellish Half-Light: Shorter Plays of Samuel BeckettBy Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.

Reviewed by Edmund St. Bury and Carine Loewi

For this issues conversation feature between our two intrepidtheatergoers, we had hoped to send Edmund and Carine to seeMary-Arrchies production of six short works by SamuelBeckett and record their attending talk over late-night dinerfare, as usual. But, as it happens, the two couldnt see the showtogether, and so they took their rehash to the annals of email,in fits and starts over the weeks that followed. Here are theirreflections.

One thing, to begin: I enjoyed the in-the-round setup they used,with three main banks of seats around the room and a few single-

seater perches scattered between. The stage manager told me that a

crate against the back wall was the best place to be, so I sat there for

a while and boy, was it weird! In Rough for Theatre II, which

was probably my favorite piece in the show, I kept looking up at the

poor young man (Rudy Galvan) who had to stand there in that

tremulous posture canted slightly forward at the waist, head

down and contemplate jumping from a bricked-up window for

20 minutes! But this vantage exemplifies something I like aboutMary-Arrchie's ethos: the acting and the stage business are polished

and sorted out, but there's still a little shagginess to the audience

experience. It felt strange, improper to be over there, but there I was.

Carine

Playing these works in the round felt bold to me, but at some

serious points it was really a problem concerning Becketts intention.

Play and Come and Go are both so much about communication

between three people: Come and Go as gossip; Play as rueful,

post-coital bitterness told and retold through eternity. I needed a

proscenium setup to follow the back and forth. I moved to sit on one

of the trunks on the left side of the room, and that solved Comeand Go for me, but there was no solving Play. In the first part, I

could see the faces of the man and one of the women; in part two,

they rotated and I saw the two women. One wants to see all the faces

at once, and that is what Beckett wanted as well. These frustrations

reminded me of the power of the proscenium. Play is a massive

short piece, half an hour at its full length, and dense with text.

Really, it should be done alone in a program. The breakneck pace of

this performance, coming at the end of the evening, felt like

gibberish, and wrong. Its a good acting exercise emotionally raw,but also English and cold, less about aging than about failing at

sexual gambits. Come and Go I found to be the most satisfying

piece of the evening. But more on that later. I also note that I saw

the show late in the run, by which time the actor Steve Walker had

been replaced by Bob Fisher, so you and I may have witnessed

different evenings altogether. More later. Edmund

I agree about the problem inherent in this staging of Play. Being

in the round didnt help it (I never got to see one performers face at

all), and neither did the speed with which the actors were instructed

to deliver the text, which made it seem to be a grueling vocal warm-

up rather than a theater work with something to communicate to an

audience. I did find the set piece of the three adjoining urns

attractive; it was obviously not a grand and expensive thing, but it

had a good, Victorian curve on it, and was painted in ordinary matte

grey, just distressed enough to look drab and vaguely funerary. (All


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of which sent me into a daydream in which Edward Gorey forgot

about Eliot and illustrated Becketts work instead, to everyones

delight and artistic betterment.)

The staging choice for Come and Goalso felt difficult to me. I

could see fine from my vantage, but it would be a different pieceentirely if one were sitting right next to it, in that bank of seats near

to the entrance. Youre right about the proscenium. On a different

note: the hand-holding choreography at the end of that piece made

such a lovely shape. I admit Ive never seen nor read Come and Go

before, but I imagine Beckett wrote instructions for that movement?

As with the urns in Play, the dark and vaguely historical dress of

the three women in Come and Go (Molly Fisher, Lauren

Guglielmello, and Kathrynne Wolf)did some of the work of creating

a setting, giving the characters a milieu and a gravity before theyeven did anything. I often get a sometime in recent history feeling

from Becketts works, a feeling of catenary suspension between 1880

and 1945. By contrast, was What Where in some kind of science

fiction universe, with the jumpsuits? A space station? Waste

processing plant? An apocalypse? I didnt track that one well, but I

did enjoy all the door-slamming.

And then I perhaps shouldnt say this in our final version, but

Im revisiting some of these texts now, after having seen them staged

and I find so many directorial changes! Why do people futz with

Becketts highly specific stage directions so much? Gestures,

placements, costumes... There is a difference between not being able

to do something (the author calls for a prohibitively expensive

costume piece, say) and just not wanting to do it (No, I prefer him

to stand). I can understand it when companies make dress updates

to Shakespeare they put Lear in a business suit, give Tybalt a gun

instead of a sword because that guy did not insist on exactitudes

of dress and movement in his texts; they were written and performed

in the style of their time, and so the styles of other times dont tend

to rankle too much (unless they do; and theres another kettle!).

Beckett, on the other hand, is more or less referring to our own time,

and hes precise. About everything! In Catastrophe, the director

asks for a light and the assistant lights his cigar she does not bring

him a pen light so he can look at his notes! The fact that he is

holding notes at all the fact that he is standing, even changes

the action and the character. (The Mamet film version does this as

well, annoyingly, though Pinter is still a marvel as the Director.)

Why do they do it? My kingdom for some Germans! (Who do what

theyre told, as Beckett once joked, instead of giving a text their own

spin. The man spun plenty there to begin with.) But forgive me;

Im on a tear. Carine

I often think age has something to do with Beckett being done

well. Burgess Meredith, Burt Lahr, Pinter, Buster Keaton these

are people who got Becketts ancient-old-man humor and sensibility.

The aches of the body, the angst of the mind. Edmund

I think youre right experience, in life and onstage, helps but

lets not confuse a grumpy-old-man stereotype with a careful,

thoughtful actor. I think Beckett gets reductively read as dour too

much. (My college roommate was once reading a collected works

and one morning burst out of the bathroom, towel only, and

exclaimed, What is this? Everybody acts like Beckett is so dark, but

theres a fucking banana peel joke here! She must have just then

gotten to Krapps Last Tape.) Sure, hes not always cheerful, but what

I think is important in doing his work is not a deep sense of ennui or

of suffering but an ordinary patience. And maybe young actors, and


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some over-eager older ones, dont always have that. Becketts

characters pause, a lot,in thought or because they are mistrustful or

flummoxed by something. And maybe some actors get eager to show

they can say all the words and say them right, the result being that

they roadrunner through pieces that need a lot of pause. But I feel

like Ive drifted off course. What else? Carine

[A stretch of time passes. They revisit the subject.]

Its been a while now since I saw this production, and lately Ive

realized that the best of Becketts short works really hang around in

my consciousness. Play, which I mentioned before, is huge, as are

the Rough for Theatre works. I contend that Rough for Theatre

II is the miniature version of Godot, which means its great, like acupcake that tastes as good at the original pie. What Where is

really difficult. Mary-Arrchie didnt pull it off, but Ive rarely seen it

pulled off well. Catastrophe is small and slight, and needs to be

played with a lightness of touch.

So what does all this mean for this production were talking about?

I think I can say what it means to me. Becketts work currently

hangs in an in-between place: of blue-collar, working-class, fringe-y

theaters; and academics having a lark. And when it works best astheater, its because simplicity meets deep thought. When it falls

apart, its usually because of the schtick of acting too much

posturing, loud voices, big staging moves when small ones are called

for, misunderstanding of the language of comedy steps all over

the intention of the play. Beckett was always very cautious about

leaving directors room to interpret his work, and the more time Ive

spent watching his work, the more I share that caution as an

audience member. If its going to be rough, make sure you know

what youre talking about. The Mary-Arrchies got about half of it

right. And with Beckett, thats not a very good percentage.

Ouch, Edmund! I agree about schtick getting in the way ofintention. Too much bigness, too much look-at-me gets in the way

of subtlety. On the other hand, Stephen Walker was big in a certain

theatrical way, but he was excellent in this work. I think his

grandiosity big voice, big body, big walk was a careful one,

very controlled and with intent. And, where small moves and voices

are called for in other places, I think a space like Mary-Arrchie is

great for this work. Its a small room. I dont want to see Come and

Go, a work about telling secrets or lies or theories while sitting

quietly together, in a giant auditorium where I cant see faces andhand gestures and the details of someones fringed sleeve. Im

interested in your theory about Beckett as a blue-collar act, and I

might want to see more in this vein, but what I am really enjoying in

town lately is Beckett on the fringe circuit in general. The relative

lack of cash most of these groups have to produce plays works into

Becketts scenic austerity. I think the point were arriving at, if we

are arriving at one at all, is: do less. Follow the script, see what

happens, and, as they say on the job-interview coaching circuit, stop

talking once youve answered the question.

Hellish Half-Light: Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett ran at Angel Island (735 W.Sheridan) from July 24 through August 30, 2014. It was directed by JenniferMarkowitz and performed by Molly Fisher, Rudy Galvan, Lauren Guglielmello,Adam Soule, Stephen Walker, Kathrynne Wolf, and Bob Fisher.


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23

Questions for Sherry Antonini

We have lately admired Sherry Antoninis work in musicalperformance, writing, and visual art, and also her influence as a

teaching artist in Chicago. Sherry kindly took some time frompreparations for her upcoming Rhino Fest show to answersome of our questions about forms, definitions, intersections,the past, and the future.

Chicago Arts Journal: We understand that your performance

history includes composing and performing with several rock n roll

bands. Does this music influence your current performance and

installation art?

Sherry Antonini:Most definitely. I have worked with rock players

and classically trained symphonic musicians in bands and other

performance projects for more than two decades. The first

opportunities I had to bring my words and voice into a public,

performance-based realm were supported by being in Fate Saved Us,

a rock band that I co-founded when my two children were just

babies. From the start I considered myself fortunate as a writer to

have support and enthusiasm from some truly excellent andinventive players as I composed melody and sang lead in our

songwriting collaborations. To date, Ive been a part of five bands,

overall, including a country rock band where I had a blast singing

backup. More recently, Ive been working to write, compose music

and sound, sing and perform live, and record as part of finite

collaborative projects involving a wider range of artists, including

choreographers, dancers, video artists, musicians, and a sculptor.

Words, music and sound have been consistently at the center of my

arts practice. So even the newer work that Im making fiber-

based sculptural pieces for installation often incorporate text and

sound. When you add all that to the fact that Im from Ohio, where

they still rock out heavily to early seventies anthems, it means that

those roots run deep, and there will probably always be a current of

rock running through me and the work I make.

CAJ:You teach courses at Columbia College and SAIC. How does

your teaching life interact with your personal artistic practice?

SA: Ive been an adjunct professor at both schools for seventeen

years. I sincerely love being in the classroom and working with both

undergraduate and graduate-level students. I work hard to bethorough, current, prepared and engaged with my students. I spend

a good amount of time prepping for each class, as well as providing

extensive written feedback on papers. The majority of classes that I

teach, as much as they vary, are writing-centered. So, in an average

semester, where I am teaching 4-5 classes, you can imagine the

amount of reading and out-of-classroom work hours that are

required. Thats where the time pinch can really be felt but the

payoff is tremendous in so many ways, ranging from watching

inexperienced, unsure writers and artists find their artistic voices andbuild confidence, to working with an MFA student as she moves

through final edits on a poetry manuscript or novel for publication.

On my side of it, working with motivated, young, hungry minds

keeps my own level of energy and art-making passion up, alive and

renewed. Former students often become art-making comrades

beyond graduation, and the potential for art-community interaction

and possible collaboration with them is rich.


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The trick is in establishing a balance between all the teaching-

related hours and making time for a consistent art-making

conversation a flow of ideas and the manifestation of those ideas

within my own mind, and then from my own studio. In some

semesters thats easier to do than others. Lately, Ive been being

especially watchful of preserving my own time for writing and

making as Ive got some larger, more long-range projects and plans

in the works.

CAJ: We hear you (and other artists) referred to as both a

multimedia performer and an interdisciplinary artist. Do you

draw a distinction between these terms, and if so, what does that

distinction mean to you?

SA:The terms are often used interchangeably in a more vernacular

way. The distinction between them, as I think of it, is that work that

is interdisciplinary is composed of more than one course of study or

discipline and results in a synthesis of them to create one work a

piece composed of poetry and sound and movement is a good

example. The term multimedia implies a use of several kinds of

digital media and/or mixed art mediums the stuff of those

different disciplines to make a piece come into being, or facilitate

expression from within the work. So I would say that I am both andthat I am both at the same time which seems a right and true

interdisciplinary, multimedia kind of answer.

CAJ:Under the aegis of Creative Push Collective, you and Jenny

Magnus offer intensive art courses outside of an institutional

academic setting. Can you tell us about the origins of this program,

and what you hope to offer in it?

SA:Creative Push Collective is the result of many years of teaching

and many conversations about that on-going experience as shared

between Jenny Magnus and me. Weve co-taught classes each year

for most of our respective teaching careers, and have established a

fine-tuned balance of preparing and giving instruction and feedback

relating to interdisciplinary curriculum. Were different in our

teaching approaches and yet, ultimately, share the same passion and

vision for how to facilitate artistic progress. So students, in working

with us, receive dual aspects and approaches, all in service to

generating ideas, working through them, and final revisions toward

complete projects. In our experience as teaching artists, we came to

see that there are artists who dont choose to be part of an academic

program, but who are looking for a way to continue to work andgrow. We have some participants in CPC who are new to making

work, and so our focus is then to help them find ways to generate

and trust their new ideas, and to recognize their artistic voices. We

also work with former graduate students and artists who have well-

established professional practices. They come to us beyond

graduation or mid-career to realize a particular project, often

bringing in very raw, new ideas and working with us through to a

point of public performance or exhibition or publication.

The work we do in Creative Push Collective is very much parallelto the way we each teach in school. But, then again, the boundaries

can sometimes be pushed even further as we can offer more or

different opportunities for learning experiences inside of a space of

our own policies and practices. Further info on what we offer as

Creative Push Collective can be found on our website,

creativepushcollective.com. Well have new course and workshop

offerings up and scheduled for later this Spring/Summer 2015.


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CAJ:What are you reading or watching or thinking about lately?

Should we be reading or watching or thinking about it too?

SA:Im doing as much research-reading as possible, related to the

book project Im working on so that includes a combination of

Western European medieval history, early American settlement

history, and mid-19thcentury urban American history, with a focus

on the lives of what we now call pioneering feminists. I also am

going back to poetry by some of my all-time faves: Plath, Olds,

Simic, Glck very different poets from one another, but, as a

writer, reading inside of meter, rhythm, structure, and exquisite

word choice keeps me in step with thinking that way as I work

toward lyrical sensibility, which is especially important to me withinthis current project.

Otherwise, Im watching a lot of nature documentaries

especially those having to do with harsh climates and environments

as further research regarding modes of survival. And learning

about methods of psychic meditation from some excellent,

practicing psychics as I investigate religion and spirituality, energy

work and the occult. The list sounds like a real mash-up and it is

although it all is intrinsically linked to what Im up to inside of

my writing project. In a general sense, Im thinking about aspects ofnature and our place as humans in the bigger picture. Aspects of

ecospirituality are interesting me and probably point the way

toward our progression as a worldwide populace. So that would be

my suggestion for something we might all be considering lately.

CAJ:We hear you have a show coming in this years Rhinoceros

Theater Festival. Can you tell us something about it the forms,

themes, ideas it explores?

SA: Im happy and excited to bring ALLEARS, a sonicgatheringto

Rhinofest this year. Ive invited a group of artists and musicians who

make fine-tuned recordings of their work with text, voice, sound,

and song composition in dramatically different ways from one

another. This will be a listening event, with the focus of energy and

audience participation on attentively hearing pieces that each

artist/musician has chosen to present. I have a plan for twisting up

the format of the theater space, taking away the row formation,

among other things, to approximate the experience of hanging at a

friends house, slouching on the sofa, and listening to a completealbum or a particular radio program. Enjoyable, deep listening will

be the central experience ofALL EARS, which is what carefully made

recordings deserve and require for a full sonic ride. Soundscape,

spoken word, art music, and rock songs by Mark Booth, Lucas

Guariglia, Jenny Magnus, Beau OReilly, Valentina Vella, and

myself in collaboration with Basil Abbott will make up the program.

The inspiration for proposing this event was, indeed, looking back to

my earlier days of rock when you arent rehearsing or playing out,

youre listening to the recording sessions with your band. Its thislaid-back, but focused, time that Im looking to create, and Im

excited to see who is there and what they take from the experience.


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Questions for Robert Metrick

For many years, we have been enchanted and piqued by theproductions of Robert Metrick, whose multi-genre, multi-

formal works have variously appeared as opera, text, film,installation, and collaborative visual art projects. Here we askthe artist, preparing for an upcoming Rhino Fest performance,about influences, processes, and what hes up to now.

Chicago Arts Journal:

Can you describe the generative process of

your work? Does it change, from one project to another?

Robert Metrick: My work generates differently from project to

project, although it sometimes feels that I am re-generating the sameproject, using different titles.

Actually, I often begin with a title that comes out of nowhere at

unexpected moments, a state of delirium while riding the train with

a high fever, or while parallel parking, swimming. The titles for

many performances (When I Regain My Foliage, The Secret Life

of Dust, O Klahoma) probably emerged out of those kinds of

moments. I dont know where I would be without them.

Once a title is born, I will collect things fragments of mywriting in journals, texts from whatever I happen to be reading,

melodies playing in my head, pieces of conversation, the news

jigsaw puzzle pieces that I try to connect, within the frame of the

title. I know they are somehow related, but sometimes I do not have

a sense of meaning until long after the performance has been

staged.

As I respond to this question, Ive had this very simple fragment of

a melody playing on an endless loop inside my head all day, and I

cant get rid of it. I know Ill have to use it for something.

I guess if I were to idealize my process, I would say that the essence

of my creative activity is really about being in the right place at theright time, being present enough to allow accidents to happenand

transcribe them into some sort of form. I would be completely happy

as a court transcriptionist.

CAJ: You have made work in Chicago performance circles for

decades now. What changes have you observed in the dynamics and

discourses around art in this town?

RM:My work emerged when the nonprofit

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