File - Heather.Chrisler

CHICAGO
ARTS
JOURNAL
Issue #10
Spring 2016
Fr e e
to a
good
home
Chers lecteurs—
We hope you have by now advanced your non-networked timepieces (if you still keep those, you
Luddite) by the sum of one hour, and extend a warm welcome to the tenth issue of the Chicago Arts
Journal. We are, owing variously to illness, seasonal affective-slump, and the pesky tendency of time to
march just a bit faster than our laboring hearts, a bit late in delivering this document, but surely you
must, by now, be accustomed to that trend. In this edition, we chronicle many of the sights, delights,
and head-scratchers we saw at the Curious Theatre Branch’s Rhinoceros Theater Festival, which this
year focused on the work of Eugène Ionesco, and particularly his strange chef d’oeuvre, Rhinoceros.
And, just to keep things lively, we open the issue with two reviews of theater pieces a bit father back
in the catalogue, works that didn’t pass by our notice but did fail to fit neatly into a prior issue:
Curious Theatre Branch’s Playing God and Ibsen’s Ghosts at Mary-Arrchie. Moving past these into the
Rhino Fest section, you’ll find writing on new works by Mark Chrisler, Barrie Cole, the Billy Goat
Theater Experiment, Theatre Y and more, as well as a special treat: an annotated script and notes
from Rick Paul on his brief and quixotic Rhino Fest production, The Apocolocyntosis of the Future
Peoples Commissar of the Enlightenment. We found much to puzzle and delight over in this piece and
the others nested in these pages, and perhaps you will too, whether you made it out into the moderate
chill to see this year’s Festival or not.
As always, I and mine welcome thoughts, feelings, complaints and suggestions at this address:
johann.artsjournal@gmail.com. See you in the future, in the seats.
⎯Johann Blumer
In this Issue
Page 3
Playing God by the Curious Theatre Branch
Response by David Weeks
5
Ibsen’s Ghosts at Mary-Arrchie
Response by Lois Regine Demond
8
Rhinoceros by the Curious Theatre Branch
Response by Barrie Cole
10
Hippopotamus by the side project
Response by Edmund St. Bury
12
Dramaturgy Corner: The Apocolocyntosis of
the Future Peoples Commissar of the Enlightenment
18
Endangered by Mark Chrisler
Response by Beneven Stanciano
20
Two Takes: The Adventures of BB and Pepe
by the Billy Goat Experiment
Fatelessness by Theatre Y
Responses by Edmund St. Bury
23
Meaning is Tricky by Barrie Cole
Response by Carine Loewi
25
Dietrich’s Thoughts
Front cover collage photos via rhinofest.com
Back cover image by Sue Cargill, from the Curious Theatre
Branch production of Rhinoceros
Chicago Arts Journal
Issue #10
♦
Spring 2016
Chicago Arts Journal
intercession for us. As each player sits down across from God
(Beau O’Reilly) for a game of their choosing, the lens
through which they view the world, or at least their
relationship with God, becomes clear. God’s interest or lack
thereof in their chatter becomes evident as well. At the
conclusion of the game the players are either ‘raised’ or not by
Razor (Ryan Hogan Wright). Jeremy Campbell and Julia
Williams take on nearly a dozen roles apiece; the distinction,
clarity and simplicity they both convey is a large part of the
success and enjoyment of the overall ‘game’ we, as an
audience, are enjoying. Some characters are bitter and
defensive. Some have found peace. Some are questioning.
Some won’t shut the hell up. Some are not willing to go.
Some are very much ready. All this happens on Rick Paul’s
fabulous set, reminiscent of TV game shows, although a
touch more cosmic, sultry and even a little bit mid-century
disco. Providing thoughtful tidbits throughout on religion,
existence, the history of of Milton Bradley’s and Parker
Brothers’ contentious rivalry and games are the delightful
duo, Devil (Sidonie Greenberg) and Angel (Zoë Pike).
Playing God
Response by David Weeks
As a kid (the youngest of four) growing up in the 1970s
and ‘80s, our favorite family games ⎯ aside from torturing
one another ⎯ were cards, Parcheesi, Sorry, and Yahtzee.
Trivial Pursuit came along later, as did Atari. If grandma and
grandpa were present we mostly played card games. Grandpa
always made us ice cream sundaes in between hands of Crazy
Eights, Cinch or Kings in the Corners. His sundaes usually
had M&Ms and peanuts on top. Oh, and Hershey’s
chocolate syrup. Annually, on the eve of a new year, we
played Pit. I loved Pit because we got to scream at each other.
And drink sparkling apple juice. Once we tried to teach
grandma how to play Asteroids but everyone shouting, “Turn
up AND SHOOT, GRANDMA!” got to be a bit too much
for her and all involved so we stuck with cards. These are
some of the best childhood memories. Seated around a
kitchen or dining room table. Laughing. Exercising our wit.
And remembering our manners. Mostly. Relishing the
victory, learning grace in loss.
What I experienced over the course of the play is not unlike
what I have experienced with religion. Through the first
round of games I found myself observing through a very fixed
set of beliefs. God is in charge. Everyone will die. When God
is playing Battleship he hardly looks up at his opponent, only
taking one hit on one of his ships. The player facing God
asks if one oughtn’t hurry across a crosswalk when a car is
waiting as nearly every strike against his ships is a hit. This
portrayal stuck with me because I scurry across crosswalks. I
In Matt Rieger’s Playing God, the audience is taken on a
fun romp through many such games as we meet, one at a
time, an array of characters attempting to find out their fate.
Each player is introduced by Gloria (KellyAnn Corcoran),
the timekeeper who is sitting at God’s right hand making
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try to be good, which is to say I try to SHOW that I am
good or that I am at least thinking about appearing to be
good. I try to extend a courtesy to those I encounter, when
given an opportunity. But why not? Shouldn’t we? It’s a
question of being a good person or not. At the conclusion of
each playoff, God is ready to move on and declares his
opponent’s fate. He gets bored. So he goes to see his shrink.
a religion. I also enjoyed remembering these games in my
own life and especially the card games with grandma and
grandpa, who taught us good sportsmanlike conduct, but also
the importance of enjoying the satisfaction of a win.
♦♦♦
Who knew that God needs a therapist (Kelly Anchors)?
But of course he does and hilarity ensues. At which point I
began to question my beliefs. After God gets a little pep talk
we begin to see things differently. The game changes.
Suddenly we have winners where we once had losers. One
thing I really enjoyed about Rieger’s script is that none of it is
too heavy-handed. This afforded me the opportunity to stay
engaged and still be able to ponder at the same time. Are the
winners (or losers) being ‘raised’ to their death, or to their
birth? If God’s therapist needs and takes some time off,
where does that leave God? Where are the contestants
actually coming from? Is Gloria Christ? Without Gloria,
Razor and the third member of God’s team (T-Roy Martin)
would God be able to do anything? Is there really teambuilding in heaven or wherever we are, ‘cause team-building
seems like hell.
Ultimately we are made to consider a number of
possibilities and to experience shifts, which is, after all, a fine
strategy in playing ‘the game’, is it not? Life is a game.
Everything we’re involved in has some element of sport. I
enjoyed the contemplation of religion as a sport ⎯ or sport as
Playing God ran at Prop Thtr (3502 N. Elston Avenue) from
November 13 through December 20, 2015. It was directed by Stefan
Brün and performed by Beau O’Reilly, Julia Williams, T-Roy Martin,
KellyAnn Corcoran, Sidonie Greenberg, Zoë Pike, Kelly Anchors,
Justin Botz, Ryan Hogan Wright, and Jeremy Campbell.
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That portrait was well-lit through the whole damn show, so I
knew the guy was important, though he sounded like pretty
much a bastard. When Finn and I sat down before the show,
one of the young people actors (Catherine Lavoie), playing
the French maid character, came around to all the audience
people and made small-talk, which was exclusively in French,
to the confusion of a lot of audience people, but I thought it
was pretty funny. And, sidebar note: you know how when
actors yell, you can usually tell what their real accent is? Like,
if an American person is playing Cockney, if she has to yell,
it’ll usually come out American, because yelling while acting
is hard? Well, when the French maid lady yelled, I could tell
that she was really French-Canadian, which matters to like
12 people, and doesn’t actually matter at all, but anyway.
Ibsen’s Ghosts
Response by Lois Regine Demond
My brother Finn met me at the airport and completely
insisted that we go see this Ibsen show at Mary-Arrchie,
which was closing soon (the show, and also the theater, he
said). Carolyn Hoerdemann was in it, he said, and also Steve
Walker and Kirk Anderson, all of whom I have seen in shows
around town before, visiting, and then also some young
people were in it, he said (Catherine Lavoie and Gage
Wallace), but I didn’t know anything about the young
people. I never do. And Greg Allen directed it, he said, the
Greg Allen who started the Neo-Futurists, back when, and
who directs some stuff nowadays. So okay, I said, let’s go to
the damn play, and please also buy me dinner when you stop
and think about it.
Here’s a neat thing that happened, visually: each
character’s first entrance of the play cued a light change, in
which they would strike a dramatic stance and freeze under a
white spotlight, like they were posing for their very own tarot
card. This thing, and the entrance-exit doors, and the overall
pace of movement, added up to a snappy style in the piece,
which I enjoyed. It all seemed very purposeful, very madefor-the-space. Greg Allen had clearly paid a smart attention
to frames and archetypes, and to not letting the audience get
bored.
The stage in the Mary-Arrchie upstairs place, arranged in
the round, is small and neatly defined: one door says
“Entrance,” the other says “Exit,” and those rules of
movement hold fast during the play. It’s like a cuckoo clock,
the people whirling through. A parlor is implied with a silk
clawfoot couch on one side and a table and chairs on the
other, a lone window hanging above the audience near the
couch, and an oil portrait of the Significantly Deceased
Father Figure (see title) glowing out on the opposite side.
And, okay, I have to admit here that I don’t really enjoy
Ibsen. When I think Ibsen, I think of a lot of teeth-gnashing
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and long-form agonizing over difficult family situations, and
after half an hour I just wish someone would leave the room.
But Allen’s cast takes the bones of the play and rattles them
stylistically, cracks the skeleton into a smile. The characters
are often aware of their presence in a storefront theater, in
front of a room full of people, playing out their tortured
family drama with their tongues in their cheeks (or
sometimes in other peoples’ cheeks, ha ha). The mother
character sits at the table in front of a big pile of Ibsen books,
flipping through them sometimes and stopping at one point
to read a long passage of her lines from one, as if by
examining the text she might find a trap door in her life and
make it out of the room after all. I was pulling for her, I really
was. Carolyn Hoerdemann, as that character, had a great
comic timing; she was mostly defeated and world-weary, but
not the iron maiden of sadness the script might have her be
in another age.
rear its head and charge, and it does, as the son character (the
other young person actor, Gage Wallace) is overcome by
syphilis or whatever disease thing his bastard dead father has
passed on to him, and slips gradually into a writhing mass on
the couch; this leaves his mother to agonize over whether to
kill him quickly or leave him in a puddle for the rest of his
life. Now, that’s kind of a hard ending to crack jokes over, so
I don’t expect miracles, but the play just became so earnest in
these last moments. It felt like a cheat. We’ve been laughing
at these people and their contrived, impossible situation and
their pitiable drama for an hour, and now I’m going to tear
up because the chickens have come home? Now’s the
sentiment time? Nah. Direction-wise, the meta technique
continued its through-line, as the mother helplessly offered
the murder weapon around the room to the audience, hoping
that someone would do the act for her; so, that made sense
enough, but it’s the sudden tonal shift that doesn’t do it for
me, and feels like it sells out the rest of the show’s efforts.
The theater technique of smirking self-awareness can
rankle, for me, can melt into mere cleverness and cheap
fourth-wall-breaking laffs when left on the stove too long,
but overall, it let just enough air into the play for me to
remain interested.
But I know what you’re saying. Lois, what do you want?
Stop complaining about somebody’s thing they made,
somebody’s perfectly good thing, just because it doesn’t fit
the set of expectations you brought into it, and/or the set of
rules it set up for itself during its runtime! To which I say,
well, fine. Grain of salt. I enjoy watching shows in that
Mary-Arrchie space ⎯ it’s got a strange, ribald feeling in its
bones, and it always feels like it has dark mystery corners, no
matter how many lights are on. I’m feeling sad that it’s going
The only moment that felt like ripped velcro to me,
something out of step with the work as a whole, was the
play’s end. This being a Great Dramatic Work, I have to
expect a big finish, a Long-Simmering Dramatic Thing to
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away so some yuppies can live in new condos with their shiba
inu puppies or whatever. But there’s nothing to do about that
now, is there. Let’s all gnash our teeth together, and see what
happens.
♦♦♦
Ibsen’s Ghosts ran at Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company (Angel Island,
735 W. Sheridan Road) from November 8 through December 20,
2015. It was directed and adapted by Greg Allen, and performed by
Kirk Anderson, Carolyn Hoerdemann, Catherine Lavoie, Gage
Wallace, and Stephen Walker.
Carolyn Hoerdemann in Ibsen’s Ghosts
Photograph by Joe Mazza/Brave Lux
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two of the characters that begin with the letter “D.” Botard
does not begin with a “D” but ends with a “D,” so that
counts.
Alphabetceros Responseros Rhinocéros
Response by Barrie Cole
E is for exciting. Yes, it is an exciting production on so many
levels and it’s entertaining too. So, those are two of the
adjectives that describe it. I’d add excellent too. Yes, I am
being effusive. So be it.
A is for it is absurd because it is Theatre of the Absurd but
seeing it is not at all absurd because it is so wonderful. I have
seen many Ionesco plays and some I have seen more than one
production of, but I have never seen a production of
Rhinoceros until this one and now I can’t imagine another one
or a better one at all. No, I cannot.
F is for it is fun to be fanatical about good theatre.
G is for if some guy I hardly knew asked me if I thought it
was worth seeing, “I’d say, “Oh, yes, go, definitely go.” G is
for go, not forgo.
B is for Berenger, the main character who is played by T-Roy
Martin and he is a beautiful Berenger throughout the whole
thing of it. There is even an utterly impossible monologue at
the end. It is is very long and lonely and intense and Mr.
Martin performs that perfectly too. I would call it
captivating, I would,
H is for if you have ever thought about cultural hypnosis or
habitual patterns or the peculiarity of humanity then you will
think about these things more deeply when and after you
watch it. H is also for hurdle. There is this hurdle onstage
that is also a kind of window and it is what the humans climb
over when they become rhinoceroses. It is such a smart, great
device and a wonderful, simple way to do it.
C is for the cast. The entire cast is so good. I’m not kidding!
Julie Williams, Vicki Walden, Mitch Salm, and Matt Reiger
are phenomenal! So are Marlana Carlson, Janet Sayre, Kate
O’Reilly and Charlotte Hamilton. It is not easy to be a
human and pretend you are a different human other than
yourself and then pretend you are rhinoceroses too. It is quite
a feat. It is, it is.
I is for Ionesco. I is for imagine if your last name was
Ionesco. If my mother’s last name was Ionesco, her full name
would be Marilee Ellen Ionesco. I is for imagination.
J is Jean, the name of another character in the play, played so
well by Matt Rieger. Julie Williams does not play Jean, but
D is for Dudard, one of the characters’ names, and it begins
and ends with the letter “D.” There is Daisy too. Those are
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plays The Logician. I could listen to her recite absurd
syllogisms daily. I’m certain I would love that!
S is for sides. Ionesco wrote, “Truth has only two sides, but
it’s the third side that’s best.”
K is for I know someone named Kevin Kampf. He is not
involved with the play, but he has a good name and is
involved in numerous other projects. When someone agrees
to something he’s asked them to do, they might say, “Okay,
Kevin Kampf.” That’s quite a bit of alliteration.
T is for I think that’s true!
U it is undeniably good. It is at the Prop Thtr, but only a
giant would be able to use a whole theatre as a prop.
V is for in school, the teachers always said not to use the
word “very”, so now I make sure I always do. I use it lavishly.
I will use it now: Rhinoceros is a very, very, very very, very,
very, very, very, very worthwhile piece of art to eat. It is better
than most foods.
L is for Love. (I try to remember love in all things.)
M is for the music. There is great, great live marvelous music
in this production of Rhinoceros! I’d describe it as
dissonantmarchingbandoutthererhinocerosmusic. I loved the
music!
W is for Vicki Walden is in it. Yes, I’ve already mentioned
her, but she’s worth mentioning again, because she is one of
the best actors in Chicago.
N is for an “N” looks very much like an “M” when I am not
wearing my glasses and so I will pretend I am not wearing
them and that the “N” is an M and say that the masks are
spectacular and original. Sue Cargill made them and there are
a multitude of them and I have heard a rumor that they
might sell them when the production is over and if that
happens, I’d like one of them to be nine. (Mine, that is.)
X, Y, Z is for everything and everyone else I may have left
out accidentally in this alphabetoceros responseros
rhinocéros. If you discover what that might be and/or where
it is, please tell me at once.
♦♦♦
O is for O’Reilly as in Beau O’Reilly who directed the play. I
love his vision of it. (I am wearing my glasses now and so my
vision of his vision is working perfectly and so I can see his
perfect vision. It is enchantingly smart!
Rhinoceros, by Eugène Ionesco, was directed by Beau O’Reilly and
performed by T-Roy Martin, Matt Rieger, Vicki Walden, Julia
Williams, Mitch Salm, Kate O’Reilly, Janet Sayre, Marlana Carlson,
and Charlotte Hamilton.
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followed by Improvisation, in which the aforementioned
Bartholomeuses (I, II, and III) argue the fine points of
language and theater with the droopy and confused Ionesco.
Hippopotamus
Response by Edmund St. Bury
The piece moves quickly, with its three plays braided into
each other; scenes from each work bump into the next, which
provides pleasant comic effect. The text, being Ionesco doing
comedy, bounces and plays light on its absurd feet, not
bogging down to explain itself or sort out loose strands. And
I enjoyed the character of the playwright Ionesco, swimming
in this strange soup. The actors in Hippopotamus (several of
them playing multiple roles) are middling to great. Ted
Hoerl, as Ionesco, stands out, with all his muddled gravity.
Tom McGrath as the announcer drives the Leader section,
vocally powerful and bemused by every turn of description.
The three Bartholomeuses in the play’s final section seem a
little too close to competing for good grades in acting school
(Depaul? Just a guess), but that kind of affect often shakes off
by the end of a show’s run. They are young, energetic, and
pleased to be there, and that counts for something.
Hippopotamus, presented at the Rhino Fest by the side
project and Shift Seven and directed by Adam Webster, is an
amalgam of three short plays by Eugène Ionesco. The
narrative frame is the character of Ionesco himself, seen
briefly at first, asleep at his desk, presumably in a dream.
When he awakes to perform in the last section of the work,
it’s due to the interruption of a pesky interlocutor, and then
another, and then another. The playwright must account for
his late script and explain his characters to three intruding
scientist/scholar/theater producers (a lethal combination), all
named Bartholomeus.
Most of the work’s early text, if not all of it, comes from
The Leader, an energetic piece of agitprop about political hero
worship. Three excited citizens watch a point far beyond our
vision, describing the mysterious leader as he promenades,
poses, drinks soup, pets a hedgehog. In a turn that surely
earns Ionesco his “absurdist” credentials, the leader finally
appears, solemnly crossing the stage in a long coat and,
spoiler alert, he has no head.
Meg Elliott, a veteran of other side project productions,
brings her usual intelligence and sparkle to a number of roles.
The piece is well staged by Adam Webster, making use of
the smallish Prop Thtr space for a number of dynamic
entrances and exits, strong diagonals, and pleasing static
arrangements. This skill is not surprising, since the side
project is one of the most minimal and circumscribed theater
Hippopotamus then presents Maid to Marry, a love tale
featuring several couples who talk philosophy with their
mouths and toss bon mots of longing in every direction;
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spaces this side of Spokane, in close competition with Oracle
Theatre’s postage-stamp storefront on Broadway. (Now,
there’s another company that knows what to do with a
shoebox of a stage. I’d like to see the two groups compete in a
Small Space Act-Off, staging rangy shows in ever-shrinking
rooms, like those cats on the internet who will crawl into a
packing crate, then a fishbowl, then a pint glass, just because
it’s there. But I digress.)
Hippopotamus is a fun show, its characters whizzing by and
puzzling over their predicaments, but never for too long, or
too seriously. This reminds me of Ionesco’s ethos ⎯ if it can
be supposed that he had one, really ⎯ in which the guignol
(a quick and grotesque simplification of characters and
scenarios) is the highest form to aspire to, a diversion that
just might show us some truth inside its jokes.
♦♦♦
Hippopotamus was adapted and directed by Adam Webster, and
performed by Meg Elliott, Ted Hoerl, Alex Hovi, Rob Koon, Aaron
Lockman, Tom McGrath, Miriam Reuter, and Zachary Weil.
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Dramaturgy Corner:
The Apocolocyntosis of the Future Peoples
Commissar of the Enlightenment
The theater designer, teacher, and director Rick Paul is
something of a fan favorite in the offices of Chicago Arts
Journal, as much for his candor about theater life in Chicago
(in which he has participated, among other places, for several
decades) as for his sharp eye for stage design; his looks are by
turns minimalist, mod, and baroque. After seeing his show in
this year’s Rhino Fest, The Apocolocyntosis of the Future Peoples
Commissar of the Enlightenment, we at CAJ asked Rick if he
might share the piece’s script with us. The document he
delivered, an annotated text mixing Ionesco’s framings with
scientific, philosophical and political quotes, was too
interesting to keep to ourselves. We reprint it here as a
document of dramaturgical interest.
Quotes on a scrim from Cocteau, Nietzsche, and Ionesco:
the opening image of The Apocolocyntosis of the Future
Peoples Commissar of the Enlightenment
Photo by Dietrich
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has unexplainably transformed into a rhinoceros, and creates a
literal path of destruction everywhere he goes. But Chrisler
finds new life in the metaphor by shifting focus away from the
outmoded trends of fascism to the unfortunate present issues
plaguing gender roles, especially among young adults. Lillian
Mountweasel (an electric Heather Chrisler), Dave’s onetime
boyhood crush, agrees to work with the government in an
attempt to curb Dave’s violent tendencies. The more she
humors his romantic advances, the longer he puts off the kind
of rampages that have literally killed people. Her placation
saves lives, but is of course at the expense of her almost
exclusively. Throughout the course of the play, Lillian has to
endure all the painfully awkward wooing that Dave can
muster. A forceful open-mouth kiss is only the first layer of
snow that rolls into a ball of an unannounced apartment entry,
misguided shaming of female rom-com archetypes, and the
dependably manipulative high school parlor game of Truth or
Dare. There’s hardly a moment where Lillian (or the audience
for that matter) feels especially won over by Dave’s affable put
upon advances. Still, Jeremy Campbell’s dopey FBI agent
assures her time and time again that is for the greater good.
Endangered
Response by Beneven Stanciano
Writers of the Oulipo movement like Raymond Queneau
and Georges Perec proved time and time again that form can
inspire content as effectively as, say, temporal events or
contemporary social issues. This is not to say that immediate
relevancy or personal expression go by the wayside necessarily.
If anything, working with constraints is much like the
hindrance of actual literal physical constraints. The effort
made to break through from them actually seems to provoke
even more fervent emotional immediacy. The theme of this
year’s 27th annual Rhinoceros Theater Festival is for once a
titular one. The festival is appropriately mounting Eugène
Ionesco’s classic absurdist allegory Rhinoceros while asking all
adjacent programming to be new work inspired by this very
enduring piece of theatre. Ionesco used the metaphor of people
transforming into rhinoceroses to address the inexplicable yet
evident mass fascist uprising during the second World War.
Its impact endures because Ionesco presented these
transformations as more primeval than logical, more
instinctual than pragmatic. The transformations, misguided
though they were, seemed to be out of an inherent need to
survive and to find a sense of freedom in a society of stringent
regulations.
Appropriately enough, the themes in Chrisler’s work seem
to echo the sentiments of Kenya’s former director of Wildlife
Richard Leakey when discussing the hunting of the Black
Rhino in continental Africa. Conservationists and hunters
alike claim that large amounts of money spent to hunt big
game animals were crucial in removing older problem animals,
as well as funding large scale conservation projects. According
to the WNYC program Radiolab episode “The Rhino
Endangered, Mark Chrisler’s bold response to Ionesco’s
Rhinoceros, is a seemingly literal one at first glance. Dave
(Brendan Balfe), a standard, run-of-the-mill American schlub,
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Hunter,” Leakey, on the other hand, equated this mindset
with a father selling his daughter to be raped to pay her school
fees. For the greater “good,” maybe, but at the expense of some
very serious personal rights. Chrisler addresses this idea deftly
over the course of 90 minutes, showing glimpses of Dave’s
animalistic rage that could turn sinister at any given moment.
His large stature, protruding horn, and sometimes disturbing
attitude toward women remind the audience that no matter
how often he references Blockbuster Video, Lillian is still stuck
in a small room with a wild animal. However, it’s Heather
Chrisler’s performance as Lillian that truly carries the day. Her
expressive face puts discomfort on full display, but more
importantly, so are her attempts to hide such discomfort. For
all the humoring and dulcet tones she attempts to yield, a gore
may be in her future with a mere slip of the tongue.
each other makes their arguments even more palpable. Credit
should also be given to director Shannon Evans, whose staging
reflects an effective faux claustrophobia that does not inhibit
the actors. She even impressively stages some hilarious physical
comedy with Campbell’s FBI agent as he attempts to survey
the otherwise all-too-private moments between Dave and
Lillian.
The current relevant barometer of feminist narrative
portrayals is the Bechdel Test, which states that at least two
female characters must speak to each other at some point
without talking about another male character. While Chrisler’s
play “fails” in that respect, he still makes an important
statement about gender politics in the 21st century that could
really only be explored in a confrontation between the sexes.
Though the “civilized” world is decades removed from presuffragette subservience, more subversive subservience is still
omnipresent in the crude jungle of chauvinism, full of all the
angry rhinos eager to thwart progress. Endangered may not be
a play written for the greater good, per se, but it certainly gets
the conversation rolling.
The play stands tall on a soapbox by the end, and suddenly
themes that were addressed through behavior and subtext
transition into oblique, long-winded monologues from both
characters, breaking through the fourth wall like a bulldozer.
Though seemingly a jarring transition, it feels incredibly
earned, largely due to the work of both actors. Balfe’s third act
spotlight seems to be the character’s turning point to finally
gain some empathy. However, just as the audience is ready to
give their hearts out to Dave, Chrisler (both Heather and
Mark) knock them straight onto the ceiling, pulling off an
even more impressive bait and switch calling out who the real
victims are. The grandstanding could have easily been
exclusively for the audience (at times it even seems like that is
the intention), but Balfe and Chrisler’s attention to listen to
♦♦♦
Endangered, by Mark Chrisler, was directed by Shannon Evans and
performed by Brendan Balfe, Heather Chrisler, and Jeremy Campbell.
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drunk and all cheeky. Rereading the play recently, I am
convinced that is the best way to experience it still: half drunk,
and at least as cheeky.
Two Takes
Thoughts & responses by Edmund St. Bury
The play is argumentative and fantastic, fascist and
anarchistic at the same time, full of farcical fear and real terror,
and I really want to see it again. Anyway, back in 1966 I got
cast as the office manager Papillion, and if you know the
play—
This has been an odd year for me, Rhino Fest-wise. Despite
my best intentions, I have struggled to get to enough shows.
Kidney stones, two funerals, two bouts of the flu, my dog
Claude got sick, an old lover called (who shouldn’t have)…
You get the idea. I had expressed interest to my people at CAJ
in reviewing something, but the ones that held special interest
(Barrie Cole’s Meaning is Tricky and Mark Chrisler’s
Endangered had piqued me) were spoken for before I got
around to throwing in my lot. My Saturdays have been
occupied with assorted life crises, so I didn’t get to see
Ionesco’s granddaddy of absurdist theater, Rhinoceros, put up
by the Curious Theatre Branch, until the very end of its run.
But wait, I am veering away from this production, which is
not mine to spew over anyway. The polite folks who helm this
fine rag will never tell me to button my lip, no matter how
asinine and personal my reviews get, but that is not an
acceptable excuse for the random goings-on that most of my
peers in the critical realm indulge in. More to the point: What
did I see this year in the Rhino Fest? How was it done? What
did I feel, think, know, when I wandered home in the wan
street light after seeing it?
But I was glad to see it, eventually. Rhinoceros was a big
influence in my late teens, oddly enough; I was flunking out of
Northwestern at the time (pre-med, if you must know), and
my latent theatrical ambitions were about to be realized. In the
course of a drunken afternoon at Jimmy’s (a Hyde Park
watering hole were the beer was cheap and you could always
get a liverwurst on rye at the bar, even if you were likely to
puke it up twenty minutes later, and I was), I was invited to
audition for the play. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I
had done debate and speech in high school, so I figured heyho, and breezed through the audition the next morning, half
Well… all right.
♦♦♦
The Adventures of BB and Pepe: Funoceros Runoceros
The Billy Goat Experiment is a funny company. I mean, they
make me laugh. BB and Pepe is a live radio play, mostly
written by company member Todd Zaruba, in which we are
invited to join the “Battle against Banality.” Seven actors
perform a variety of characters, moving in and out of voices
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with zest and a lot of pleasure in the doing, making foley
sounds with a tableful of tools in spare moments. The plot: the
power-mad Whimsy Twins, joined at the cranium, are a
horrid duo closing swiftly on their goal of world domination
(lately by a plot to brainwash local citizens and steal their
energy, using complicated headgear).
dance sort of rhinos, lumbering robotically to the front of the
stage, everybody talking at once, striking enchanted poses.
These jarring interludes are the most deliberate takes on
Ionesco in the piece. There are also political commercials,
filled with hideous people running campaigns against other
hideous people, and playful pokes at a few fringe theater
characters from the real world, and a pirate radio station that
keeps going on and off the airwaves. Cat Jarboe throws her
considerable comic moxie into every role she plays, making big
choices that land like M-80s. Through it all, the plot skips
cheerfully along, like a high school talent show crossed with a
Frank Zappa Easter brunch, and makes just enough sense.
Everything is fun, even (and especially) the bad guys; and
nobody gets hurt along the way. BB and Pepe live to ride
another day, and I heard something about a SoundCloud page
with archived episodes, which I will surely investigate with the
canine Claude by my side in my next free interval. Bravo, Billly
Goat Experiment. You cheered up this grizzled head.
BB is a little girl, played by Lynn Marie, who is smarter and
more chipper even than many girl characters who precede her
in these sorts of tales (Little Orphan Annie, say, or Dorothy
Gale); and Pepe is a little dog, played with tail-wagging charm
by David Weeks. Weeks takes a great transformation, man to
dog, simply by opening his mouth and showing his teeth,
panting throughout, and jangling keys by the microphone to
approximate the pup’s collar tags. BB and Pepe are determined
to figure out what those malevolent Whimsys are up to. They
go to the town’s theater, even though they know the play will
be horrible, and there they meet old friends ⎯ notably Rocky,
the dumb dog counterpart to Pepe’s whipsmart canine, played
by Stephen Oleksiak, who accomplishes his dog
transformation by sticking out his voluminous tongue and
keeping it out.
♦♦♦
Fatelessness
Lots of stuff happens along the way, including a
neighborhood meeting attended by factions of yuppies, punks,
and garbage men (the punks, played as addled cockneys by TRoy Martin and Tod Zaruba, are particularly funny).
Periodically, T-Roy Martin picks up a trombone and starts
blatting, and the others transform into rhinos, or modern-
From Theatre Y, Fatelessness is an oddly disturbing mixedmedia piece. The show’s separate pieces are pretty simple, and
achieve most of their power by not mixing. The text, adapted
from a novel by Imre Kertész and performed (as pre-recorded
audio) by Michael Doonan, is a coming-of-age story unfolding
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largely in the Nazi concentration camps, told over the course
an hour in real time and four years in narrative time. The
narrator pulled me along, first with cocky, stupid innocence;
and then, as the story progressed, with his capacity to witness
cruelty and still survive; and finally, by his shell-shocked
acceptance of freedom. Hatred is what the narrator is left with,
hatred for everybody, and that word rang through me as such
a terrible form of justice, the only justice the victim of cruelty
is left with: “We can hate and hate completely.” This idea felt
right in the play ⎯ indeed, it felt essential to the story ⎯ and
yet it bothered me. Where is the compassion, the love, the
freedom in that word as a resolution to the Holocaust? God
damnit, I don’t know.
both dancer and speaker were excellent and the direction, by
Melissa Lorraine, was careful and unobtrusive.
The day I saw the show, several people seemed to be filming
the piece. This troubled my viewing of the play, and made me
think about something I often think about, when this happens
(and it does, with some frequency): Documentation is not
theater. It is simply documentation. It is narcissistic, probably;
helpful, maybe; but still, just documentation. I like my theater
straight at me and in front of me, the live viewer.
♦♦♦
The other part of the piece (happening concurrently) is
physical and live, performed by different people during the
run. On the occasion I saw it, it was the dancer Jessica Cornish
⎯ bone thin, androgynous, silent. She spent the whole hour
cleaning the floor of the theater, first sweeping with her hands
as if she were gathering bits of flotsam; then with water and a
bucket, on hands and knees; and finally stepping into the
bucket, rinsing her whole self in the now-grey water. This
cleaning was methodical and obsessively thorough, giving way
only briefly to a panicky self-slapping, an uncontrolled
moment of movement. I watched her carefully, at first
skeptical of the art school tone laid over the real suffering of
the story, and then with a kind of hope, a need for her to
succeed at whatever she was doing there. The performances by
The Adventures of BB and Pepe: Funoceros Runoceros was
written by Todd Zaruba and the Billy Goat Experiment
Players and performed by Todd Zaruba, Gus Zaruba, Lynn Marie,
David Weeks, T-Roy Martin, Stephen Oleksiak, and Cat Jarboe.
Fatelessness, adapted from text by Imre Kertész, was directed by
Melissa Lorraine and performed by Michael Doonan, Ben Wardell,
and Jessica Cornish.
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have toward his wife, whom you perhaps also love in yet a third
tentative, confusing sort of way.
Meaning Is Tricky
And so, this Meaning is Tricky reminded me of what I enjoy
about Cole’s plays, at their best: that they think about love,
care about it as a life force, value it. What is love? How do I
get it? What will it feel like? Is bouncing on a trampoline like
love? Is a really good conversation? Is sex?
Response by Carine Loewi
Barrie Cole’s newest play, Meaning is Tricky (excerpted in
its pre-production version in this periodical’s Issue #9), is a
simple affair, much alike in structure to a few other plays I’ve
seen her mount at Rhino Fest in recent years. Two people, in
this case a man and a woman, sit in what seems to be a
domestic or otherwise cozy space, talking about relationships
and love and word games and life. But this time around, thanks
to an economical directing job by Jennifer Moniz, there is no
pretense of livingroom or waitingroom or elevator or therapy
office. There is an empty stage, there are two stools, there are
two actors, there is clean white light on their faces ⎯ and by
god is it refreshing. I think it works so well because, as in most
of the Barrie Cole works I’ve seen (certainly not all of her
oeuvre, but a fair handful), text is the primary motivating force
of the created world ⎯ not a dance somebody’s doing, nor a
beautiful garment an actor is wearing, or even a face someone
makes, but the text itself. The plays might as well be poetry
readings, sometimes ⎯ and sometimes I think that’s a
hardship for a play, being so wordy, but in Meaning is Tricky I
found it very functional. Here is a play about dating and
coupling and sorting out modern communication, but mostly
it’s a play about talking to your roommate, whom you love, but
in a way different from the way you love your new romantic
partner, if you do, and different again from the feeling you
The play’s program cites a line of dialogue Ionesco gives to
his character Daisy, near the end of the play Rhinoceros (itself
the genesis of the whole year’s festival): “There are many sides
to reality. Choose the one that’s best for you.” And so, the
questions of the play, as I saw them: What does it mean that
Clare, the woman in this text, lives as platonic roommate with
Mark, her partner in conversation (and, in many ways, life),
though the two have long ago ceased coupling in the romantic
sense, so long ago in fact that the play begins with a halting
recollection between the two as to whether or not they had sex,
way back in those days, and if so, how many times? What will
a new romantic prospect think of Clare, learning that she lives
with Mark? What does it mean to be forty-something and
uncoupled, romantically speaking? Which side of reality will
work best, in the sense that narrative frames soothe the nervous
mind and assuage the confusions of those around us?
I don’t know who this Darren Stephens is, but boy, am I
glad to meet him. He plays Mark with a childlike glee, which
is both of a piece with what I have seen of Cole’s characters,
and a pleasing new take. Because ⎯ how to say this without
sounding unkind, which is far from my intent ⎯ Stephens is
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wonderfully uncool. He does not appear slick, or callous, or
like he really wants to seem cool, and that is a rare thing
onstage, even in these fringes we inhabit (whatever those are).
Late in the play, Mark and Clare talk about a party they both
attended, in which Mark did something so socially strange and
transgressive that Clare is furious with him, thinking he made
the two of them seem odd to a group of people she hoped to
impress. Indeed, bursting into a room full of strangers, wearing
a homemade hippopotamus costume and dripping wet (for
verisimilitude) would seem off-kilter, even among artists, but
Stephens’s breathless glee in remembering how he carried off
the bit is infectious, delightful. He keeps his hands on his
knees through much of the play, a stiff posture that belies the
looseness with which he seems to regard reality. Stephens plays
well against Diana Slickman, an actor whose wordy
intelligence is in full feather onstage ⎯ as usual ⎯ and who
finds a contemplative softness in Clare, a tentative happiness
in talking to her friend about sex and flirtation and the hope
for something new.
home, assigning value to these events, plotting one’s next move
based on different inputs from various corners, making
meaning out of little joys and riffles… Well, that’s where
things get complicated.
♦♦♦
In remembering the play, I keep coming back to its title.
Meaning Is Tricky. Is it? Life seems tricky; love seems tricky;
communication via text message is a goddamn mine field, it
would appear. And perhaps in that title is the locus I’m looking
for, or sticking to, in taking something from the play: the
afternoon sex on someone’s expensive couch, the searching for
someone’s wife’s lost keys, the going to a party and playing
games with strangers ⎯ all those things are pretty
straightforward, eminently doable in a day’s time. But coming
Meaning is Tricky by Barrie Cole was directed by Jennifer Moniz and
performed by Diana Slickman and Darren Stephens.
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right to embrace lethargy, and this was one of those winters. I
make an apology, then.
Dietrich’s Thoughts
But here, from my brain to yours, are my notes on the artists
and the theater pieces I should have worked harder to make
sure were represented in our humble Journal, this time around:
By Dietrich
The Chicago Arts Journal’s efforts to cover the 2016
Rhinoceros Theater Festival completely seem to have fallen
flat. Not that anyone out there is complaining, but at least one
member of our staff was a constant, grumbling presence in our
editorial meetings, pushing toward finality, while everyone else
voted on the side of calmness, of recognition of our ⎯ that is,
Julie Cowden’s powerhouse comic performance as a
dominating actress-of-a-certain-age/theater coach, in Derek
Van Barham’s one-act shell game of a script, which rifles deftly
through Ionesco’s The Lesson and Exit the King, among other
things. I hope they’ll reanimate this little gem in the Ruckus’s
regular season. I would be happy to see it again.
♦
the Journal’s ⎯ limitations, which I will now stiffly
acknowledge. Yea, we are a staff of three or four, mostly with
day jobs, several of whom don’t live here in Chicago all of the
time. All of us have numbers of interests outside the “fringe
theater scene,” and the famous Johann Blumer pockets, often
filled with just enough sweet corn to get the issue out on the
pavement, were particularly flattened this year. Some people
would do well to remember that you never bet against a French
chef on a soufflé.
Justin Botz’s Shut Up I’m Flying, a multi-media smorgasbord
of mashed-up Ionesco interviews and texts. The show, when I
saw it, was barely attended, but notably included sections of
Botz lecturing the audience in a rubber rhinoceros mask while
gesturing in the style of Richard Nixon; and attempting, as
some version of Ionesco’s Berenger character, to take flight
from a ladder leaned against a brick wall, while conversing
with three talking balloons (none of whom believed in him one
inch). Strange? Original? Entertaining? Yes!
♦
So, not everything can get done all of the time. That said,
there was a list of things growing in my mind that the CAJ
didn’t get to covering in Rhino Fest 2016. One might say here,
and at least one of my colleagues did say, Who put your writing
hand in the deep freeze, Mr. Dietrich? I admit it is a fair question.
Sometimes I demand excellence while still holding on to the
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The Monday night lecture events, most of which I heard
only after the fact, from pirated phone videos taken by a friend
too quiet to be noticed (I play tennis on Monday nights). Here,
in the work of Amy England, Jenny Magnus, Robin Cline,
Stefan Brün, Martha Bayne, Dan Caffrey, Ira Murfin, Matt
Test, and, most hilariously, the side-splitting language play
and political humor of Mitch Salm and Michael Martin, I
discovered some of the smartest and most original work to
come out of the Festival in years. Perhaps the brain trust who
does the programming will see fit to bring back this format
and these performers next year.
and some in vivid marker. Cargill’s darkly comic sensibility is
always a sight to see, and several of the pieces were on sale for
a tuppence.
♦
♦♦♦
The PinkElephant Performing Troupe’s The Runaways,
playing to a highly participatory crowd of small children and
their families. The PinkElephant performers, all in their early
teen years, had a surprise hit in last year’s fest, and this year
they are even better. Lena Brün’s script, funny and wise, was
only surpassed by the ear-catching and lyric-driven songs, and
by Brün’s own performance as the ostracized contortionist girl
who refuses to go away.
♦
Sue Cargill, the most existential of our burg’s cartoonists,
had an art show on the walls during the Festival this year:
twenty small drawings, pages from original picture books, and
triptychs, meticulously drawn in insanely detailed pen and ink,
♦
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You have been reading the
Chicago Arts Journal
Spring Issue 2016
♦♦♦
We thank you for your attention.
♦♦♦
We invite queries, retorts, and story pitches at:
johann.artsjournal@gmail.com
Conversation Piece
Photos by Dietrich
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CHICAGO ART S JOURNAL
Spring 2016
#10