Wandering Through Chicago's Arts and Culture

Spring Awakening

2012-01-08T14:55:00.000-06:00

Spring Awakening

One Hundred Years of the Same Old Same Old

The Musical

What I saw this past weekend at Griffin Theatre Company’s production of the Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik Broadway show was in every sense of the word a modern rock musical, replete with over-amplified, ear-splitting and word-obfuscating sounds masquerading as musical expression. In fact, most sources describe Spring Awakening as an alternative rock musical. Unfortunately, there is no particular agreement on what alternative rock is except loud with lots of twanging guitars and an outgrowth of punk rock.

Despite all of this, Spring Awakening is a provocative and moving experience. The musical follows the plotline of the original Frank Wedekind play rather faithfully and this is probably the great strength of the Broadway version; they started with a compelling story and dropped some songs and dancing into the works to arrive at a more or less winning musical.

Time and Place

As is my custom when I know nothing about a piece I refrain from doing any research or reading about it preferring instead to allow my own reactions guide my original judgments. My original thoughts ran along the lines of dating the piece as being written in the 70s or 80s with a lot of attention paid to teen-aged angst, coming of age issues and the rebellion of youth. The short gay episode struck me as being something tacked on by the current director trying to take advantage of the current fad of having a couple of gay or lesbian characters in a production just to keep everybody happy.

This is wrong from a number of perspectives. Only after I started reading about the musical and the play that is its basis did I come to realize just how far ahead of its time this particular plotline was. The original play was the product of Frank Wedekind, a German playwright noted for his criticism of bourgeois attitudes, especially towards sex. Astonishingly, he wrote the play sometime around 1890 or 1891. Further, all of the parts we might consider “modern” theatrical perversions—masturbation, homosexuality, sadomasochism between teenagers, sexual abuse of children, abortion, rape and suicide—are a part of Wedekind’s original version.

As controversial as Wedekind was during his lifetime his contribution to theater is unquestioned. He anticipated expressionism and made a major contribution to epic theater. At one point he served a nine-month jail term for lèse-majesté (insulting a reigning head of state) brought about by the publication of some of his satirical poems. Wedekind’s two-play Erdgeist (Earth-spirit) was the basis for Alban Berg’s Lulu, one of the twentieth-centuries great operatic masterpieces.

Now that I have the time and place of the original story firmly in mind (late nineteenth century Germany) much of the action of the musical makes a great deal more sense. Izumi Inaba’s marvelous costume designs easily convey both the time and place of the action as well as firmly delineating the differences between the boys and girls that dominate the action and the elder characters who act as foils against which the youthful actors push. The industrial flavor of the set reminds us that at this time in world history the Western nations were seriously pursuing their courses toward industrialization; the age of machines was upon mankind with a vengeance.

Against this backdrop of severely repressed sexuality, the German traditions of pflict und arbeit (duty and work), the rebellious nature of all youth and the grim realities that often invade our everyday existence, the musical proceeds to unwind its tale of tragedy and hope.

The Music

Wedekind’s magical story provides a firm and unshakable underpinning for Spring Awakening. What could have made a truly great Broadway production out of this raw material is unfortunately missing. There are really no memorable songs or musical numbers in the over two-hour production. While it is true there is lots of “music,” and a great deal of energetic stomping (Nicole Pellegrino’s efforts at choreography seemed to consist of a great deal of foot stamping, twisting and leaping) what was missing was the feeling that music was making a significant contribution to an already praise-worthy plotline.

Add to this the entirely confusing sound design by Rick Sims and Josh Horvath and one wonders if the original Wedekind play in an English translation wouldn’t have been just as satisfying. For openers, there was way too much amplification of the band. The thundering sounds emanating from the instrumental musicians more than drowned the vocals of most of the singers. To counter this, singers were miked either by passing wireless hand-held instruments around or by wearing wireless transmitters whose outlines were visible under clothing. It’s not clear that all singers were always miked; some appeared to sing without the benefit of any audio assist and these were moments of absolute musical ecstasy. The rest of the time, using amplified singers to overcome the excessive levels of the instrumentalists, words became a jumble of meaningless mumblings that absolutely defied decryption or comprehension.

Some of the best vocal parts occurred as in the final anthem The Song of Purple Summer that found the entire company singing as an ensemble, without any audio assist, so far as I was able to determine. This is what real music is about and should have been used (while suitably subduing the instrumental output) for the entire show.

The room is small, seating only about 100 patrons, so it’s not like filling the Lyric Opera and doesn’t take that kind of voice training. The few times singers did seem to sing against the instrumental accompaniment sans microphone the effect was both pleasing and had plenty of power.

There may be two reasons for using the strange combination of partial audio assist: first, two performances were typically scheduled for Saturday and that alone may have necessitated some help for the youthful singers whose voices are simply not accustomed to that kind of non-stop abuse over an extended period in a single day and second, not all singers are created equal and I’m thinking here specifically of Josh Salt the charismatic Melchior Gabor who ultimately survives to move on with life. The role of Melchior is large and Salt was called upon to sing major portions of about half of all the musical numbers. Salt seemed to have everything in his favor: looks, charisma, acting ability, a willingness to appear partially nude and boundless energy. What he needs some help with is his singing; he has plenty of vocal power but that seems to fail him when he is required to sing for long periods and indeed, toward the end of the show (his second for the day) his voice seemed to grow increasingly tired and less able to project as he might want it to even with the help of an audio assist.

There were plenty of good moments, as well. Josh Salt’s fine contribution has already been noted. Aja Wiltshire’s sensitive portrayal of Wendla, Melchior’s love object, was convincing. Mathew Fletcher’s portrayal of Moritz was inspired as was Fletcher’s singing (his was one of the best voices I hear that evening). Lindsay Leopold’s portrayal of Ilse was alluring to say the least. Ilse’s flight to the life of a Bohemian struck a bell in my own psyche and I found myself wanting to flee with her even though Moritz refused.

Special mention goes to Vanessa Greenway and Larry Baldacci who portrayed a variety of “elders” during the course of the evening. Various parents, school teachers, preachers and ministers, all came to life in the hands of these two veterans of the stage. They provided a strong anchor to the otherwise wild exuberance of the young actors.

Finally, a short but sweet episode between Adam Fane (Hanschen) and Adam Molloy (Ernst) deserves a brief kudo. Despite the late nineteenth century setting, Wedekind chose to present the first stirrings of love between two young men. Fane and Molloy gave it the sincerity it needed without the schmaltz it might have provoked.

The Verdict

It’s a worthwhile show, a good solid production and based on a great story and plot line. If you haven’t seen it, you should and you’ll probably enjoy it as did I. I could be a lot better musically. As I write these lines the show is closing. But if you get a chance to see Spring Awakening even with some of the flaws I have mentioned you won’t be unhappy for the experience.

Spring Awakening produced by The Griffin Theatre Company at Theater Wit closes today, January 8, 2012 with a 3:00 PM performance.

Blake Montgomery’s Charles Dickens Scintillates

2011-12-25T13:00:00.000-06:00

Charles Dickens Begrudgingly Performs A Christmas Carol. Again.

I have seen lots of theater this holiday season that ranges from the absurd that is barely a cut above the amateur to the honed professionalism of actors well-versed in their art and craft. There were two that stand out in my memory as “best of season” and both are one-man presentations. Earlier, I reviewed The Sanaland Diaries at Wandering Through Chicago's Arts and Culture: Murder on the North Pole Express. Yesterday, as a capstone to my Christmas theater travels, I watched the last performance of Blake Montgomery’s realization of what it must have been like for Charles Dickens to repeatedly present his annual reading of what is perhaps the best-loved of all Christmas novels, A Christmas Carol.

I am familiar with Montgomery’s style of theater development; it is an organic method that starts with a story and then attempts to tell that story on the stage. In the process a lot of discovery takes place, a lot of questions are asked and a lot of questions are answered. The result is always something that departs from the original words of the story’s originator and morphs into a uniquely Blake Montgomery vision of events and, most significantly, characters.

This is theater for audiences that enjoy thinking; it is not theater for the intellectually immature. If you need to be taken by the hand, have every nuance explained and made explicit then you’ll probably not find a great deal to make you comfortable in one of Montgomery’s Building Stage productions. On the other hand, if you enjoy looking into the hearts and minds of “real” people (whether fictional or factual) then Montgomery is your man. I don’t mean to suggest that a Ph.D. in philosophy or psychology is a prerequisite to enjoying a Blake Montgomery creation. To the contrary, ordinary living will provide you with sufficient tools to understand and appreciate what’s going on during the performance. However, if you’re used to “multitasking” and sending and receiving texts throughout your day; if you’re essentially unfocused in your activities; if your attention span is something bordering thirty seconds; if your mind runs in long strings of abbreviations like “BFF,” or “WTF” or any number of countless other shortcuts now in vogue, you’ll probably have a hard time becoming sufficiently involved to enjoy what Montgomery serves up in the way of in-depth and nuanced development. [Aside: Current evidence refutes the notion that humans are capable of “multitasking.” The reverse seems to be the case and to attempt to “multitask” is to ensure output that is both lower in quality and longer in development.]

The production itself is refreshingly unique. The front of the program announces, “Tea. Biscuits. Spiritual Terror.” The scenic design of Pamela Maurer is a wonder. You enter a Victorian drawing room through a stately Victorian front door. (To me it is nothing short of miraculous how Montgomery’s sets always appear to be “the real thing” and not just a set.) Mr. Dickens is already serving tea with biscuits and other goodies. He invites the audience to enjoy a cup of tea and a biscuit or scone. Once everyone is settled in and quietly sipping their tea Mr. Dickens attempts to avoid yet another telling of A Christmas Carol but is thwarted repeatedly by a poltergeist, apparently also a part of Lighting Designer Matthew Gawryk’s plan, with some skill at operating a modern theatrical light board. Eventually, Mr. Dickens capitulates and the story is retold, making this reading the 159^th annual reading for the recalcitrant Mr. Dickens. Montgomery starts off with a convincing British dialect that he maintains throughout the entire production. Montgomery’s skills with words and Izumi Inaba’s convincing costume immediately convey us back to Victorian England for an evening in a world we can only create in our imaginations.

Reading accounts of the life of Charles Dickens one is struck by the extremes he experienced in all directions. His childhood was marked by periods of extreme poverty and unhappiness, yet as an accomplished, wealthy and famous—even adored—writer he sailed over the heads of his peers surely and easily. Despite his occupation being “writer,” he was perhaps best known in his later years as a public figure and performer. Indeed, his acting skills were prodigious and evident at an early age. This combined with his nearly occult ability to read and describe characters, made his literary and stage efforts an unparalleled experience for his fans world-wide.

It is the stage presence of Dickens that Blake Montgomery captures so effectively in this Building Stage Production. Dickens is the charming and polite host, entertaining his audience; Dickens is the humorous, sometimes silly author connecting with his adoring fans; Dickens is the profoundly dramatic portrayer of some of mankind’s deepest fears and self-doubt. Montgomery captures all of this with such apparent ease that in the tradition of all great impersonations the audience forgets that they are, as Montgomery notes, “in a black-box theater in Chicago’s West industrial corridor.” They are in a drawing room, with Charles Dickens, who is recreating as only Dickens can amazing characters that populate his novel.

Montgomery does not fail to explore Dickens’s protagonist in A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge. During the exposition of the Dickens story we get glimpses of Scrooge’s early life, not surprisingly different from some of Dickens’s own early experiences. Montgomery deftly becomes Scrooge and each of the four ghosts who visit the miserly Scrooge before his rebirth and epiphany. We suddenly realize, along with Scrooge, that despite a life of hoarding there are still vestiges of humanity in the old miser that only await the correct stimulus to reawaken.

This complexity is nothing short of marvelous; Blake Montgomery becomes Charles Dickens to the point where we are no longer able to distinguish between Montgomery and Dickens. Then Dickens becomes Scrooge and we explore the mind of Scrooge and his four apparitions through the lens of Dickens. The effect is stunning and an example of the maturing style and ability of The Building Stage’s Artistic Director, Blake Montgomery.

As for the story that Charles Dickens penned, we already know how that story concludes; we understand the twists and turns it takes. What is important here is neither the story nor the conclusion; what is important is the journey we take with Blake Montgomery as our guide to travel through familiar ground and learn new insights, experience new emotions and depart with an increased understanding of one of the great literary geniuses of the 19^th century and the role he played in the artistic parade of Western Civilization.

I cannot imagine a better capstone for my holiday theater going than The Building Stage’s production of Charles Dickens Begrudgingly Performs A Christmas Carol. Again. Let’s hope that Montgomery decides to present the 160^th annual reading in December of 2012. If he does, don’t fail to see it. It may just become one of your own cherished holiday traditions.

Murder on the North Pole Express

2011-12-11T18:58:00.000-06:00

Murder on the North Pole Express

The Santaland Diaries Explores the Dark Side of Customer Service

David Sedaris first aired his essay The Santaland Diaries on NPR’s Morning Edition on December 23^rd, 1992. It has become a staple of the Christmas Season ever since. After twenty years it probably qualifies as “tired,” “trite,” “venerable,” or “shopworn.” But let’s face it: pieces like The Santaland Diaries, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the film Holiday Inn (think of the Irving Berlin song White Christmas,) Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory all satisfy an urgent and powerful need of the human spirit; we need to be connected during the holiday season regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, the Pagan Solstice or the simple pleasures of the Atheist who treasures time spent with family and loved ones.

Actor Mitchell Fain skillfully becomes Crumpet, the Elf, who works at a variety of positions at Macy’s Santaland. One by one he recounts the adventures and absurdities of parents, children, fellow elves and even Santa himself during this seventy-five minute one-man romp through the detritus of Christmas.

This particular version of Sedaris’s essay has been turned into adult theater by Joe Mantello. Some of the language would never make it on the air at NPR and some of the innuendo is definitely borderline XXX. These features are what make The Santaland Diaries resonate so strongly with audience members who have worked in service jobs, customer service positions or who have in general been faced with the daunting task of satisfying the often irrational and unreasonable demands of that mythic and ethereal being, “the customer.”

Fain, appropriately costumed as Crumpet, keeps interest high with interesting blocking and frequent shifts about the Joey Wade designed set that is probably ten times as inviting as anything Macy’s ever offered its clientele. Fain also has the uncanny ability to connect with everyone in the audience simultaneously. You feel as though he is telling you this story of his adventures over coffee at your local Starbucks.

Is there a message here for us all? Of course, there is. Be we’ve already heard it many times before. We know that we’re all obsessed with materialism at Christmas. We all become raging animals because of the incredible stress we experience when the Winter Solstice approaches. It is also worthwhile to hear this message again and again as we struggle to maintain our balance in life while still honoring whatever it is we want to honor at this time of the year. Santaland Diaries reminds us of our innate natures as human beings and cautions us to live a life of balance and fullness without becoming one of the monstrous creatures that made Crumpet’s life the “interesting” experience it was as he worked as an Elf in that magic place called Santaland.

Incidentally, toward the conclusion of Santaland Diaries Crumpet encounters a Santa he’s never worked with before. This Santa’s name was not on the list of regular “Santas” employed by the department store. I was more than touched as Fain/Crumpet recounted how this final Santa was able to satisfy parents and children without ever promising the child great material gifts. It is a brief but poignant moment in Santaland Diaries, but one well worth remembering. Fain handles it with remarkable sensitivity and skill.

Santaland Diaries is highly recommended, even if you’ve seen it before—even if you’ve seen it several times before. If you enjoy repeat performances of this kind of show, to hell with the nay-sayers; what do they know about satisfying your inner needs for connection over the holiday season? You can do much worse than watch someone as talented and skilled as Mitchell Fain who makes you smile, makes you nod in assent, and who makes you grateful that you at least can choose how you want to celebrate this holiday season.

Santaland Diaries plays at Theater Wit at 1229 West Belmont Avenue on Chicago’s North side through December 31^st, 2011. Visit Theater Wit: smart art or phone the box office at 773-975-8150 for tickets.

It’s Not Easy To Get Laid These Days

2011-12-11T09:48:00.000-06:00

It’s Not Easy To Get Laid These Days

Date Me Explores the Trials of Thirty-Something Womanhood

Noemi Schlosser and Michelle Slonim are best friends attending a wedding. They each have been unable to find a date and so are marooned at the bar together where they share about seventy-five minutes of some of the bawdiest adventures imaginable. As the wedding reception drags on the two women consume substantial amounts of the free-flowing Champaign that only adds to the frank and graphic depictions of their past escapades not to mention contributing to a very unsteady Slonim toward the play’s conclusion.

Don’t misunderstand these women, however. They are not ordinary sluts willing to take any man that happens along. Far from that, they have standards, preferring, for example, men who are circumcised as well as men who can boast of twenty-two centimeter equipment. (Schlosser is Belgian and they use the metric system to gauge a man’s important statistic. It turns out to be 8.66 inches in case you’re wondering.) Wealth is also a strong indicator of a man’s desirability.

The cell phone plays an important part in this glimpse of modern social intercourse. This writer has long believed that the cell phone along with texting has very nearly destroyed our last vestiges of civilized behavior and this is amply illustrated by Schlosser and Slonim as they interrupt their fast-paced romp through their recent sexual history frequently to send or receive calls and messages to their various trysts and amorous partners.

The “DJ” at the wedding adds a nice contrasting touch. Actors Brandon Galatz and Josh Odor alternate the role of the DJ. He’s a nice, stable accountant who makes a good living so bouncing him against Schlosser and Slonim only adds to the extreme promiscuity exhibited by the horny pair.

This is not a profound piece of theater although it does make one wonder overall what has become of our interpersonal relations when we evaluate a potential lover by metrics rather than more subtle and subjective means. This play gives us a glimpse at two women but the practice is just as common among men. Perhaps it is somehow related to texting and (dare I mention) Facebook, where your profile allows for limited kinds of information that tends to compartmentalize those individuals who don’t take the time to actually compose a prose narrative.

This is also a very tight and well-oiled production. You enter the theater space with the wedding reception in progress; they offer you a shot of beer; you’re invited on stage to dance awhile at the reception. Now that you’re in the mood for the wedding reception, Schlosser and Slonim take off on their romp through their brand of liberal young womanhood.

There are a few more surprises as the reception proceeds and things get raunchier and raunchier right up to the curtain but you should treat yourself to this production yourself rather than read spoilers in a blog. It’s a great evening of laughs and reflection on life and love in the modern world. You won’t be sorry you went to this wedding.

Date Me! Plays at Theater Wit, 1229 West Belmont on Chicago’s North side through December 18, 2011. See Theater Wit: smart art for show times and tickets or call the Theater Wit box office at 773-975-8150.

Paul Varnell: RIP

2011-12-10T11:47:00.003-06:00

Paul Varnell: RIP

Some Reflections on the Passing of an Old Friend

The Passing of Paul Varnell

Paul Varnell

Paul Varnell passed from this life on December 9, 2011 sometime in the afternoon. He had been experiencing a decline in health for some time and those of us who knew and cared were certainly prepared for what will be the final journey for all of us. It is inevitable when faced with the loss of a friend, no matter how much anticipated, that we stop to reflect a little on the life of the lost traveler and our own interactions over the years we knew, worked, played and enjoyed each other’s company. In Paul’s case it is a complex story; Paul was in some ways a complex man while in others he was crystal clear and transparent, never wavering from a strongly held set of values and ethics.

What follows are some of the highlights of my own interactions with Paul over time along with some notes about a few of his other noteworthy activities. I’m sure that many others will have relevant information to add to the story.

Paul is gone but I hope he will not be forgotten. His life is a model for many of the best characteristics of a man worthy of adoption and emulation by us all. His legacy is substantial.

His friends miss him greatly.

Independent Gay Forum

I first became involved with Paul in the 1990s. My own partner of 13 years died in 1994 and my life drifted to and fro without much direction. Bruce Bawer published Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy in 1996. Beyond Queer included a number of essays by Paul along with others penned by Bruce Bawer, Stephen H. Miller, Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, Mel Dahl, Stephen H. Chapman, David Link, Norah Vincent and David Boaz. With Bawer’s and the original authors’ permission we established a website to publish some of the essays contained in the book along with other work from other sources. Paul became the Independent Gay Forum’s first editor while I managed the technical aspects, becoming its first webmaster.

Over time Paul contributed many articles to the IGF website. I still have what I believe to be a complete archive of all of Paul’s articles now that the IGF has evolved into a different kind of program.

My own life took a different path toward the end of the 1990s and I turned my IGF responsibilities over to more capable hands while remaining an interested observer and avid reader of IGF content.

Around 2010 the IGF reevaluated its program and concluded that a shift in emphasis was in order. The IGF Culture Watch — IGF Culture Watch website explains it best:

IGF Culture Watch emerged from the Independent Gay Forum project. The original IGF project was created by a group of gay writers, academics, attorneys, and activists who felt dissatisfied with the then current level of discussion of gay-related issues. A great deal has been accomplished in the less than two decades since IGF was formed. Gay issues are now very much mainstream. The left-wing has lost much of its once exclusive grip on gay issues. Gays are now taking their place at the American political and cultural table, as equals, instead of as political pawns. With these advances, it was decide that The Independent Gay Forum should be downgraded from a formal 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization to a watch-keeper blog site, IGF Culture Watch.

We still hold the following goals and values:

· We support the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in civil society with legal equality and equal social respect. We argue that gays and lesbians, in turn, contribute to the creativity, robustness, and decency of our national life.

· We share a belief in the fundamental virtues of the American system and its traditions of individual liberty, personal moral autonomy and responsibility, and equality before the law. We believe those traditions depend on the institutions of a market economy, free discussion, and limited government.

· We deny “conservative” claims that gays and lesbians pose any threat to social morality or the political order.

· We equally oppose “progressive” claims that gays should support radical social change or restructuring of society.

· We share an approach, but we disagree on many particulars. We include libertarians, limited-government conservatives, moderates, and classical liberals. We hold differing views on the role of government, personal morality, religious faith, and personal relationships. We share these disagreements openly: we hope that readers will find them interesting and thought-provoking.

Activism

Paul Varnell was, if anything, the epitome of a gay activist. He was a long-time columnist for more than one gay newspaper in Chicago and his columns also appeared in other gay publications from coast to coast. It is perhaps for his writing as it appeared in print and on the internet that Paul will be best remembered.

But Paul was much more than a writer. He was also a leader, although he would probably dispute that assertion. With his quiet, polite and gentle style Paul achieved much on behalf of gay advancement over the years. I found a sampling of some of his activities in a short biography that appears on the Internet at Paul Varnell: "The controversy over poppers".

Paul Varnell writes a weekly column for the Chicago Free Press and other gay newspapers.

He has also written for Reason magazine, the Advocate, Lambda Book Report, and the Chicago Reader. Some of his essays were included in Beyond Queer (Free Press, 1996) and The Bedford Guide for College Writers (Bedford, 1999).

Varnell has been involved in gay advocacy for more than two decades. He headed the education committee of the Gay/Lesbian Union in DeKalb, Illinois, 1977-1982, was a board member of Parents and Friends of Gays in Chicago, 1983-84; and chaired the Media Committee of the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Chicago, 1983-1990. He was a co-founder of Gay History Month in 1994.

He was a member of the Chicago AIDS Task Force and was appointed to the Illinois Department of Health's AIDS Advisory Committee. His areas of interest include classical music, gay history, political philosophy, libertarian theory, and socio-economic analysis.

Many of Paul Varnell’s previous columns are posted at the Independent Gay Forum.

In 2004 I joined Paul in protesting the appearance of the Jamaican reggae artist Capleton, whose patois lyrics of violence, murder and hate target gays and lesbians. The Chicago Tribune reported the protest at Anti-gay reggae - Chicago Tribune. This movement against all reggae artists spreading hate and violence has continued to the present. A small compendium of concert cancellations that resulted from these protests can be seen at Murder Inna Dancehall: Bounty Killer Concerts Cancelled.

This is only my personal involvement with one of Paul’s activities. He was constantly aware of the cutting edge of gay activism and the progress of the gay movement toward full equality and inclusion in society.

Personal Life

Paul was a generally private individual. His personal involvements were not shared with a wide audience. Yet there are certain parts of Paul’s interaction with others that cast a brilliant light on Paul Varnell the human being and illustrate the great kindness and affection he had for others. New York Journalist Jennifer Vanasco writes:

What I loved best about Paul was his unrelenting kindness. Paul was encouraging of me very early in my career. When he thought I got something wrong in print or in person, he pointed it out in the most gentle possible way. He was a great sounding board and warm friend. What I miss most, already, is him calling in his deliciously rounded voice, saying “Hello, it's Paul Varnell,” as if we shared a joke, or were about to.

I was proud to share an op-ed page with him for 15 years at our Chicago paper. Any libertarian tendencies I have I owe to him and his gentle and thoughtful persuasion.

I miss him already.

“Unrelenting kindness.” What greater tribute might one ask as a remembrance? I can offer nothing to surpass Vanasco’s description of Paul’s most memorable characteristic. I, too, was the recipient of Paul’s gentle persuasion and kindness.

Legacy

Paul leaves behind a legacy of what it means to be an effective activist whether that be for gay causes or otherwise. His gentle, polite and rational approach to issues will long stand as a model to those who follow.

Paul’s philosophy and activism is well preserved in his numerous articles and essays available from many sources.

Likewise, his early efforts as the Editor of the Independent Gay Forum leaves behind a strong legacy of quality internet journalism that has grown and evolved over the years into what remains a strong and important voice for the advancement of gay and lesbian rights.

Paul’s early efforts on behalf of Gay History Month are mentioned in the Wikipedia article LGBT History Month - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Begun in 1994 this month-long celebration remains with us today and in 2005 similar observances were initiated in England and Scotland. Since these early efforts, interest in gay history has seen progressively greater attention. In Chicago Tracy Baim, Publisher and Executive Editor of Windy City Media Group Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Trans News, launched the Chicago Gay History website that features an extensive series of video histories of prominent gay Chicagoans. In one such video Activist Tim Drake recounts how he and Paul accompanied two reporters from Chicago’s mainstream press to a downtown gay bar for after-work cocktails and even to a Mr. Chicago Leather competition in their efforts to educate and inform the non-gay community about gay culture and issues.

Doubtless other examples of Paul’s lasting legacy will be found as time passes. There will likely be a public memorial service to celebrate and recount the life of Paul Varnell. Paul is gone, but his memory will live on and in all probability easily exceed my own lifetime and the lifetimes of those yet unborn.

Thank you, Paul. It was an honor and privilege to know you, work with you and learn from you.

May you rest in peace.

Indifferent Torture

2011-12-09T11:20:00.000-06:00

Indifferent Torture

Sound of Silence by Jean Cocteau at Theater Wit

Indifference is one of the most powerful instruments of torture possessed by man. Since it is a form of psychological torture it is difficult to detect, intense but subtle in its effects and despite the fact that the victim probably has complete control over the application, nearly impossible to defend.

The premise of this hour-long monologue is simple: an attractive night club singer is in an unsatisfying relationship with her lover, who routinely abandons her for trysts with his ageing mistress. He also completely ignores the singer by taking refuge behind his newspaper. In this production, the lover is actually portrayed by a projection; it is physically impossible for the image to respond even if given stout blows with a club. The singer is thus trapped by a combination of her love and attraction to the lover and his torturous and complete indifference to her presence, monologue or needs.

The seeming paradox of the effects of indifference—the suffering contrasted with the simple solution of simply abandoning the unsatisfactory relationship—is explored in depth by the gifted European actress Noemi Schlosser. The piece begins with a low level of anxiety as the singer nervously awaits the return of her lover and builds in intensity as the lover returns, withdraws into his newspaper and maintains absolute indifference to her presence.

We are given two subtle devices to observe the passage of great time during the piece. First, there is an image of a telephone that simply exists as unresponsive as the lover. It becomes a symbol of indifference equal in its ability to inflict pain by virtue of its complete silence for most of the piece. On the occasions the telephone does ring, the results are disappointing further heightening effect of psychological pain by first promising relief and then inflicting even greater agony.

The other device used is the image of an ashtray with slowly burning cigarettes. One by one as each cigarette burns to the end it is augmented by another newly lit cigarette. This progression slowly fills the ash tray as a constant reminder that besides being an intense form of torture, indifference can be applied for extended periods of time without danger of the victim expiring because of physical damage.

As the piece proceeds we are witness to the emotions and torments of the singer as she struggles with the indifference of her lover. The effect is profound and the impact strong. This kind of exposition is not easy to achieve and certainly can’t be achieved quickly or with the theatrical devices typically sought by audiences more interested in easily grasped stories and explicitly stated moral lessons. Rather, Sound of Silence is a trip inside the mind of a single individual as she struggles with her inability to remove the pain she is experiencing. It is a journey that takes time to experience and indeed, it does not have a destination; the journey is the point of this intense exploration, not any particular dénouement.

Costuming for the singer is interesting because of its extremes. She appears most frequently in a “little black dress” replete with platform heels. Frequently, however, she removes the dress revealing her 1940s style lingerie. There is something appealing about an attractive woman dressed only in period lingerie—bra, panties, garter belt and stockings (this was before the era of panty-hose, remember). Her final costume is in reality a long, brilliantly red train of cloth that extends from the footlights to her exit up stage left. This exit is accompanied by a cabaret song in French with supertitles mercifully provided for those of us (me included) that are completely unable to understand the French language.

This is an absorbing piece, and judging from the total silence of the audience around me all were as absorbed in Schlosser’s brilliant performance as I was. It’s also a piece for mature audiences. By this I mean audiences who have experienced something of life and love on their own, not necessarily those of any advancing age; some have had profoundly moving life experiences even as youth. To really understand the singer and her travails it is almost imperative that the viewer have experienced something similar in his or her lifetime although perhaps not with the same intensity. The piece made me recall occasions where my own inability to control the indifference of a real or imagined lover had made my own existence vastly more painful than was necessary.

Sound of Silence is highly recommended. It appears at Theater Wit, 1229 West Belmont on Chicago’s North side through December 17^th, 2011.

Riff Raff

2011-09-25T02:20:00.001-05:00

Riff Raff

By Laurence Fishburne

The Story

Mike Cherry, Eric Sherman-Christ, Eduardo Martinez

Riff Raff tells the story of Michael (20/20) Leon and Michael (Torch) Murphy, two New York half-brothers who attempt to steal four kilos of heroine. Instead, they end up with three kilos and a trail of murder and violence as they end up hiding in an abandoned New York apartment. Enter Tony (The Tiger), an old drug dealing partner of 20/20. The minimalist plot unfolds for 110 violence-filled minutes. In fact, there isn’t a great deal of plot to unfold. 20/20 and Torch attempt to steal four kilos of heroin from the most powerful drug lord in New York City. In the process they kill the drug lord’s nephew. They take flight and end up in an abandoned apartment. 20/20 calls his old friend Tony The Tiger to ask Tony to help them escape the wrath of the drug lord.

The Real Story

As the characters interact with one another we learn a great deal about their individual weaknesses and strengths. Torch hates to be called “Bro.” by 20/20. He also hates to be called “Stupid.” He’s an incredibly violent man and prone to solve all of his problems by simply killing those he doesn’t like or who he perceives as a threat. 20/20 on the other hand perceives himself as very street-wise and smart when he actually has terribly misjudged just about everyone in the play along with a number of other characters who never appear but who play significant roles in the play’s ultimate resolution. 20/20 is also terrified of rats. Tony the Tiger may in fact be the one with the most street-smarts. He has a wife and daughter who matter to him although he elects to support them by dealing in drugs.

Mike cherry, Eduardo Martinez

Each of the characters has a long monologue that tells us how he arrived at his present station in life. None of the characters is the least bit likeable and early on there are probably none in the audience who have anything but contempt for the lot of these amoral, murderous and anti-social misfits. But the fact that they are misfits and how they came to be that way is what makes this play an important exploration. Circumstance impacts human development in many ways and while it may be comforting for the existentialists to point out how individual choice is what determines outcomes, that choice is often denied the very young or the very vulnerable. Should we be at all sympathetic toward these characters or should we grateful that most of them are no longer able to hurt other members of society?

There is no easy answer to that question, of course. But what may be of greater significance is our ability to perceive how grave mistakes like 20/20, Torch and Tiger are created and how we as a society might mitigate future occurrences.

At the play’s conclusion, I breathed a sigh of relief that I no longer had to be in such close proximity with these incredibly miserable and disgusting human beings.

Production

Mary Arrchie is the perfect venue for a play set in an abandoned New York City apartment. The seating feels like an extension of the set. Floors haven’t been swept for perhaps ten years. You are “in the mood” before the piece even starts. When 20/20 hears the scratching of rats, I was certain I felt something run over my foot! With only three members in the cast, a one-act production nearly two hours in length, and a dramatic intensity that exhausts even the audience, there is little room for any performance less than about 110% of the actor’s ability. Unfortunately, Eduardo Martinez (20/20) wasn’t always up to the task. On a couple of occasions he had to grope a bit for a line or a word; the book just wasn’t completely solid in his head. Martinez did have a firm grasp on the important monologue by 20/20 detailing his sordid criminal history. Mike Cherry (Torch) turned in a consistently solid performance that convincingly portrayed both his physical (his hand had been injured among other things) as well as his emotional sufferings. Likewise, his monologue provided the needed back-story of his journey from earliest youth to a life of violent crime. Eric Sherman Christ (Tony the Tiger) also turned in a convincing portrayal of a crafty, street-smart and ruthless criminal who was never-the-less able to “sell” a number of ideas to both 20/20 and Torch that ultimately resulted in great benefit to Tony but that were the final undoing of both 20/20 and Torch. Tony’s long rap about his life as a pimp with a “ho” seemed somehow out of place in a piece that was primarily concerned with violent drug dealing but did serve to cement the idea that Tony was a crafty and ruthless adversary.

Riff Raff runs through October 30 at Mary Arrchie. By the way, the playwright’s setting states that the time is the Present All Hallows Eve, making this a perfect choice for your Halloween outing! Don’t expect any answers, but instead expect a better understanding of the problem.

Farragut North

2011-09-24T17:54:00.000-05:00

Farragut North

Stage Left Theatre

And You Thought Politics Was About…

I’m not sure what I thought politics was about when I went to see this remarkable play by thirty-something playwright Beau Willimon. Certainly I didn’t think it was about what I saw. I almost never read reviews about plays I’m about to see and confine my “research” to the hype posted by the theater company. I’m almost never disappointed by this tactic since it permits me to form my own reactions and opinions as the production unfolds before my eyes.

Farragut North Cast

What first strikes you is the incredibly crisp set presented by Scenic Designer Roger Wykes. The formal, grey-blue tongue-and-groove paneling atop the clean, dark blue with white picture-frame wainscot speaks nothing of the perfidy you’re about to witness as Farragut North unfolds.

Playwright Willimon tells us in the Dramaturg’s Notes that “…the atmosphere of it, the paranoia, the bald ambition, the gluttony for power and the ways in which all those things can warp your soul—it was all there.” Years ago I was involved in a grass-roots presidential campaign and actually ran for statewide office (as an elector) by accident. I was there; they needed a name; they put mine on the form. I witnessed up close the same kinds of behavior that Willimon presents to us in this masterwork of political drama. This is not a play about political issues; it is a play about moral decay and the gamesmanship of politics at its worst.

Stage Left Scores

Brian Plocharczyk (Stephen) and Melanie Derleth (Molly)

There is little if anything to dislike about this strong Stage Left production. If you’ve ever worked even slightly on a political campaign you’ll recognize the characters easily and Stage Left has cast them to a T. The heavy lifting in the piece is born by Stage Left ensemble member Brian Plocharczyk portraying Stephen Bellamy, the whiz-kid Press Secretary who leaves no doubt in our minds as to his unquenchable desire to be a success in politics. Bellamy works for Paul, the Governor of Iowa’s Campaign Manager ably presented by Mike Dailey. Ian McLaren plays a smaller but critical role as the Campaign Manager for “the other side,” and indeed, when the play concludes we are left with the distinct feeling that it was McLaren’s character that emerges as the grand puppet-master in the entire charade. Melanie Derleth, Sandy Elias and Sarah Denison turn in strong supporting roles, especially Denison whose NYT Reporter character Ida teaches us that it’s not only the politicians who are morally bankrupt. Andy Quijano fills in with some important ancillary roles to round out this excellent cast.

The play is set in Des Moines, Iowa, during Iowa’s presidential caucuses and is very loosely based on the playwright’s experiences working on the 2004 Howard Dean campaign for President. Although the incidents are fiction, the ambiance and attitudes reflect what Willimon saw during his various assignments working on political campaigns.

The dialog is quick and wonky. It helps if you read about politics somewhat regularly. The pacing and rhythm of Stage Left’s production is fast but skillfully and executed. As we might say in the musical world, the tuttis and intonation are nearly perfect.

Farragut North | Stage Left Theatre runs until October 9^th, 2011 at Theatre Wit on Belmont. This is one you won’t want to miss. And if even ten percent of what it shows us is true, what does that say about the state of American politics?

The Double

2011-09-24T15:07:00.000-05:00

The Double

Babes With Blades Theatre Company

Fun With Swashbuckling

I wasn’t going to bother seeing this despite getting numerous offers from the various coupon/deal companies that seem to fill my in-box with offers for mostly massages and pedicures. Then I realized that in only a few minutes I could walk to the theatre from my apartment so I said what the heck, I’ll give it a shot. I wasn’t disappointed. Don’t look for a profound message in The Double. Right up front the director tells us that it’s “screwball comedy.” But what great fun it is, none-the-less.

The Double is a play about a play—always a winning concept in my book. Set in the 1940s The Double concerns a troupe of actors trying to mount a play about Cyrano de Bergerac and naturally are struggling to find funding. There are numbers of romantic involvements in the script, one that turns out to be a reunion of a married couple, another that makes a discovery about women who love women and yet another case of mistaken intentions—men who are friendly are not necessarily interested in a romantic involvement.

Throughout all of this craziness we are treated to a number of scenes on the vast open floor of the set that are nothing short of breathtakingly energetic and exciting examples of physical theater. In one scene a woman whose sensibilities have been offended by a faux-suitor throws a tantrum to end all tantrums not to mention throwing her shoes, purse and any other object she can lay her hands on. In yet another scene in a 1940s night club, we are given an energetic series of dances by two women who must certainly have learned their craft at Actor’s Gymnasium or some other school for circus arts. It was one of the most absorbing pieces of choreography I’ve seen in some time.

Then, there is the final sword fight involving nearly all the cast. What else would you expect from a theatre company named Babes With Blades? When it’s all over, not only are the actors completely relaxed without a trace of exhaustion (only the audience is exhausted by the action) but they have secured their funding.

What a great time and a chance to really laugh, smile and enjoy yourself for a couple of hours.

The Company

According to the program, Babes With Blades Theatre Company uses stage combat to place women and their stories center stage. They do that to perfection. Coming up next March Babes With Blades will be presenting Trash | babeswithblades.org. Check it out, I’m sure you’ll have the time of your life, but don’t sit too close to the flashing hardware!

Understanding the Fundamentals of Music

2011-09-24T13:59:00.000-05:00

Understanding the Fundamentals of Music

A Teaching Company Course Taught by Robert Greenberg

The Great Master

Robert M. Greenberg

It is no secret that I admire Robert Greenberg greatly as a lecturer and teacher. His complete mastery of his subject I view as a prerequisite to being a great lecturer and unquestionably Greenberg has mastered whatever he teaches and then some. What sets him apart as a teacher is his ability to communicate that material, complex though it may be, in ways that are understandable by any student willing to engage his brain (and in the case of music courses his ears) in the pursuit of the knowledge Greenberg freely passes on.

I have even been known to purchase a ticket to Ravinia, for a concert I had no interest in hearing, just to be able to attend a Greenberg lecture following in the Murray Theatre. In person he is just as impressive as he is on an edited and produced DVD with the added bonus that during the following Q&A he was patient and persevering with even most dense of audience members who seemed to be having trouble with understanding his concepts.

They just don’t come any more enjoyable than Greenberg.

The Course

Understanding the Fundamentals of Music is a somewhat technical course on music theory that covers much of what you might expect from a beginning survey course: tamber; beat, tempo, meter, pitch, mode, intervals, tunings, tonality, key signatures and the circle of fifths. The more difficult topics of motifs, melody, repetition, sequencing and metamorphosis are also dealt with in clear, straightforward fashion. But there is even more as he delves into harmony, function, tendency, dominance, progression, cadence and modulation.

Even more impressive is that he covers this broad set of topics without resorting to musical notation of any kind. He does use illustrations of a piano keyboard to describe intervals and chords, but the beginning student does not have to learn the intricacies of staves, measures, notes and so forth that probably confuse more than they enlighten until some facility is gained in reading what has become our standard western notation.

As with all of Greenberg’s courses (and the Teaching Company courses in general) there are an ample number of examples to help the learner’s ears understand just what kind of concept is being communicated. Unlike other Greenberg courses I have viewed, Greenberg plays a number of examples at the piano himself rather than resort to a recorded example. He is actually a fairly proficient pianist and besides the obligatory chord progressions we are given at appropriate lecture points he even illustrates some of his concepts with excerpts from Beethoven's less demanding sonatas that he plays himself at the piano.

Recommendation

If you like music of any kind and are willing to invest a little time and thought into developing your right brain, artistic sensibilities and musical skills, this course will provide you with a foundation that will last for the rest of your life. On this, you can continue to build your musical proficiency or just enjoy your next trip to the opera, concert hall or rock band venue all the more. It’s worth every minute you put into it.

You can find out more about Greenberg's courses at the Teaching Company Website.

Deconstructing Putting It Together

2011-09-12T11:39:00.001-05:00

Deconstructing Putting It Together

Notes From a Sondheim Ambivalent

In The First Place…

I wanted to write a great deal about my impressions of Stephen Sondheim and his art. That’s going to take up most of this blog entry. I know that lots of people will want to hear about the current Porchlight production of Putting It Together and won’t care a bit about what I think about Stephen Sondheim’s art. So up front, here’s the skinny, the low-down, the scoop, the cat’s meow and the cream from the milk:

This is a terrific production even if you’re not completely enamored of Sondheim’s output. Porchlight is superb; the venue is great, the staging is nothing short of miraculous, the music direction is flawless; the singers are just what you’d expect from Sondheim vocalists and then some.

Rush over to your PC and buy tickets, NOW! Purchase Tickets - Porchlight Music Theatre.

Now I can write about what really interests me. By the way, there are a lot of good reviews of this production already on the Internet. You can see some of them at Review: Putting It Together (Porchlight Music Theatre) | Chicago Theater Beat, or Porchlight season off to sizzling start - Chicago Sun-Times and THEATER REVIEW: Putting It Together from Porchlight Music Theatre at Theater Wit gets 3 stars - Chicago Tribune.

Why I Don’t Adore Sondheim (or His Art)

Let me start by saying I don’t dislike Stephen Sondheim’s artistic efforts; I simply don’t adore them. There seems to be an implicit polarization of Sondheim camps in the world; either you love the entire body of his work or you find it repulsive and unendurable. I’m in neither camp. I’m not particularly fond of his work, but I do enjoy hearing it. Some of it I can do without.

I view musical theater as a distinctly American form of opera. It has soliloquy, dialogue, scenery, action and nearly continuous music; these are all of the things that characterize opera. We might more succinctly summarize these parts as book, lyrics and music. I find Sondheim weakest when listening to his music.

Without music it’s simply not musical theater; it’s theater (without the music). Since I don’t find Sondheim’s music particularly noteworthy or even satisfying, I can’t really place him in my “most adored” category.

Lyrics, Book, Music

To be certain, his lyrics are among the most engaging and illuminated ever created in the English language. Cleverness is one of the Sondheim hallmarks as is his use of the unconventional and unexpected. It helps to stay very alert when listening to something with the Sondheim autograph.

His books, which is to say the topics he treats in a production, are generally interesting and always timely. (Sondheim has always collaborated with a book-writer of some sort.) He is the quintessential twentieth century artist in his reflections of all the angst and shortcomings of a world that emerged from the relative innocence of Late Romanticism into an era of two world wars, a host smaller ones, a constant stream of economic misery interspersed with periods of prosperity, a pace to life and change of dizzying speed, and finally the rise of the modern terrorist. No wonder he is generally concerned with some sort of disappointment or suffering among his characters.

It is the music that I find uninteresting. It is the composer, after all, who adds the drama, emotion and nuance to the words of the lyricist and librettist. For a musical to be really memorable it must synthesize all three major parts—book, lyrics and music—into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Sondheim fails to achieve that most of the time and it is his music that is simultaneously the most significant and weakest link in the chain. When Sondheim began to handle both lyrics and music on a regular basis it is as though his focus shifted completely to the lyrics, relegating the music to a supporting rather than a starring role.

I exclude from my evaluation those projects where he worked strictly as lyricist, most famously and successfully West Side Story and Gypsy. It is when Sondheim began tackling both music and lyrics that merit gave way to other considerations.

One of the key components that any composer must master is melodic invention. The principles of melody are well understood, especially as they apply to Broadway musicals that need to rapidly engage and entertain an audience not always sophisticated enough to grasp contemporary trends in musical invention. Through the devices of the motif, repetition, sequence and transformation a skilled composer can take some very fundamental elements and create an amazing kaleidoscope of musical experience for his listeners.

The starting point of the melody also has some bearing on things. Motifs that have a lyrical basis (ones that you would be inclined to sing) are generally easier and more memorable for an audience. Twentieth century practice has been to use melodic components that are not lyrical in nature. It is still possible to apply all of the techniques of invention to non-lyrical bases but it does require that the audience be somewhat more educated and sensitive to the processes taking place. Sondheim is able to utilize the tools of his trade and in fact is a reasonable craftsman when it comes to constructing melodies.

His music, however, doesn’t benefit a great deal from his craftsmanship as a composer for a couple of reasons: first, much of his music sounds like all of the rest of his music; it is monotonous; second, the music itself often does little to enhance the meaning of the book and lyrics. A musical is a synthesis after all, and unless there is a synergy injected by the composer, the whole will not be greater than the sum of the parts.

There are exceptions to these general criticisms, as there are always exceptions to nearly every generalization. But I maintain that the fundamental observations hold true and are the reasons that I don’t dislike the artistic efforts of Stephen Sondheim, but I don’t adore them, either.

Porchlight Is Superb

All of that being said, I again state that I found the Porchlight production superb in every aspect. Putting It Together is, after all, nothing more than a cabaret act with a bunch of songs strung together. Porchlite’s set, comfortable venue (Theater Wit) and plot exploits made the experience much more than just another song mash-up.

The singers, three men and two women, were what you’d expect from a group of solid professionals. Especially noteworthy was Alex Weisman whose banter and commentary added some needed breaks to the otherwise uninterrupted cascade of Sondheim songs.

Also deserving high praise is youthful Music Director Austin Cook. Cook’s piano wizardry helped alleviate some of the ennui surrounding Sondheim’s compositional shortcomings mentioned earlier.

Did I enjoy it? Of course I did. Would I recommend it? Yes. My level of enthusiasm in recommending this production should be in direct proportion to my listener’s devotion to the cult of Sondheim. If you adore Sondheim, you will definitely not want to miss this one.

Underground With Madness

2011-09-10T18:05:00.000-05:00

Underground With Madness

Christopher Hampton’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground

Mad Hatters and March Hares

City Lit Theater has spent nearly one-third of a century (a very long time indeed) “dedicated to the vitality and accessibility of the literary imagination.” In keeping with that part of its mission statement, City Lit is currently treating us to the Chicago premier of Alice’s Adventures Underground, a romp through the unlikely slapstick world created by Lewis Carroll for his favorite muse, Alice Liddell. Audience looking for a stage adaptation of Carroll’s best-known works for children, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, will be disappointed. The play most certainly does not attempt to recreate the contents of the books. Rather, it is a play about the relationship between Carroll and Liddell and attempts to imagine the creative process that gave us these timeless and charming children’s stories.

The play opens innocently enough with Alice paying a visit on Carroll in his Victorian drawing room. It quickly slips over the edge into fantasy as the unforgettable characters begin to flow from Carroll’s imagination to fill the world of Alice. Alice interacts with the characters as though they were real and in the process invites the audience into the magical world of the White Rabbit, The Mad Hatter, The Doormouse and all the others that populate the books. Throughout the play the audience’s conscious is repeatedly escorted from reality to fantasy and back again as Alice experiences the flights of fancy that so entertained and fascinated her. In fact, this technique of “crossing over” between the real world and the imaginary is one that Carroll also employed to great effect in another of his children’s novels, Bruno and Sylvie.

At one point, the eighty-five minute production takes a short detour into some darker material that explores the nineteenth century practice of photographing nude children. While this was common practice for the time, the twentieth century discovery of some photographs taken by Carroll of nude children raised immediate questions regarding the propriety of his relationship with Alice Liddell. Scholars have since debunked such concerns, yet it is evidence that we, as contemporary members of society, have yet to completely understand and accept the intimate relationships of that romantic era that don’t exactly conform to our own notions of sterile morality.

Thus Hampton’s play leaves us with a strangely clouded vision of mid-nineteenth century life which by all accounts was a period of intense emotions and strong personal attachments. At the same time, we feel great nostalgia for those parts of the culture we can accept without effort. This mixture of mild precaution and attractive romanticism accompanies the audience as they leave the performance, perhaps with visions of their own childhoods and what they may have experienced or not experienced during those halcyon days of youth so long ago.

Changing Roles

The entire five-person cast is called upon to play multiple roles. Even Emily Garman, the talented young actress who portrays Alice so effectively, is called upon to become an oyster at one point. The remaining actors all assume a range of Carroll’s book characters ranging from five to eight in number. There are no costume changes, but the acting is at a high level and Carroll’s archetypes leave little doubt as to the identities of the characters as they sweep in and out of Alice’s imagination through a variety of clever entrances and exits built into the set.

Emily Garman’s fine work has already been mentioned. She was required to be sometimes sweet, sometimes frightened and sometimes petulant but always a bright and energetic seven-and-one-half-year-old. Kudos to Emily.

Nick Lake likewise had his hands full as he switched from Lewis Carroll, the clever inventor of Children’s fantasy to a more serious monolog dealing with the photographs of nude children mentioned earlier. In between, he effectively portrayed nine of the Carroll characters for the delight and amusement of the audience.

Likewise, LeeWichman, Edward Kuffert and Morgan McCabe all put forth outstanding performances as they deftly switched from one insane character to another in the twinkling of an eye. Especially noteworthy were McCabes portrayal of the Duchess and her pig baby along with Kuffert’s portrayal of the Cook in the same scene. Lee Wichman’s Mock Turtle was nothing short of brilliant.

Production

Ray Blackburn’s set design, while it may have appeared to be a “normal” Victorian drawing room was anything but. Clever secret entrances allowed the actors to appear and disappear in ways that reinforced the fantasy and magical experience of the world Carroll created in his books. The looking glass over the mantle was a nice touch that permitted us to wonder just how much of all of this was real, and how much might have been imaginary.

Worthy of mention is Devon Carroll’s lighting design that gave us a simulated flash powder experience, Tom Kieffer’s costume design that had just the right amount of extravagance to elevate us to the fantasy and yet remain firmly anchored in Victorian England.

Also notable were Richard Peaslee’s original songs that set some of Carroll’s poetry to music. The songs added yet another surreal touch to the entire production that left us wandering between here and now and then and somewhere imaginary.

Do You Remember

If you remember Lewis Carroll’s books fondly; if you read them as a child, or if they were read to you; if you read the books recently as I just happened to do for no apparent reason, then you will probably find great pleasure and satisfaction in this fine production. You will be transported to a land you may have only dreamed of on a long-ago afternoon; you will experience once again the magic of a world that knows little restraint and that celebrates the unexpected and outrageous. You will, in short, become a child again, even if for only about an hour and a half.

This is a recommended production for all ages. Alice’s Adventures Under Ground is at City Lit Theater through October 9, 2011.

Koval Distillery: When the Spirit Moves You

2011-09-05T17:58:00.000-05:00

There are spirits and then there are spirits

Of course what I’m referring to here are ethanol spirits: the kind that alter your consciousness to a greater or lesser extent so that the man or woman in the bar next to you that you wouldn’t have given the time of day to a couple of hours ago now appears to be the handsomest or most beautiful creature you’ve ever laid eyes on. This, of course, refers to its psychoactive properties.

It can also be used as a solvent or added to the gasoline in your car to “fortify” it. (Mainly, it provides subsidies for farmers since its value as a fuel additive is far less than the cost of producing it.)

But Koval makes spirits for human consumption, and wonderful spirits they are—twenty-six different products ranging from clear whiskies made from five different grains to spirits in a light or dark form depending on the barrels they were aged in to some of the most exquisite liqueurs you’ve ever had cross your jaded palate.

How spirits are made

To gain a feel for the painstaking care that goes into the preparation of a whisky or liqueur you really need to take the Koval Distillery tour. You’ll see samples of the original grains that are the beginnings of the distillation process. In Koval’s case, they use wheat, oats, rye, millet[i] and spelt.[ii] Starting with a mash and an enzyme boost[iii] Next, distillation to extract the ethanol from the resulting mash. Finally, some of the finished product is placed into barrels to age while batches are bottled as clear whisky similar to vodka. The extent to which an ageing barrel is charred determines to a large extend whether the finished whisky will be light in color or dark. Koval uses no artificial coloring in any of its products. Liqueurs are produced from clear whisky by the addition of flavorings such as ginger or rose hips.

Although the preceding explanation takes only a paragraph to describe, the actual details involved are numerous and critical to producing a quality product. For example, each time the pot still is utilized it produces essentially three kinds of ethanol termed the head, hearts and tail. The head is produced first and is pretty nasty stuff that smells like nail polish remover. In fact, heads are often sold to cosmetic firms for just that purpose. The hearts are what you are really after and constitute the most desirable portion of the run. The tails follow the hearts, are not as offensive as the heads, but are not as desirable as the hearts. The ability to distinguish between these three parts of a still’s output is not something that can be “automatically” or mechanically determined. It takes a skilled Master Distiller to actually take samples of a still’s output to determine when the stop collecting heads and start collecting hearts and so forth.

Touring Koval

The best way to learn about the production of spirits is to tour the Koval Distillery. Tours cost $10 per person and include a tasting of many of the Koval products. Many of the people on the tour I took stopped in the Koval store following the tour to purchase products to take home.

If you’ve never thought about how spirits are distilled you’re in for some surprises. The equipment used is somewhat exotic, like the two thousand liter pot still with a whiskey helmet pictured here, or the five hours it takes to distil the contents of a three hundred liter pot still.

The tour covers all parts of the steps needed to produce a product for sale, not just the distilling process described above. Following distillation and warehousing (in the case of aged whiskies) there next comes bottling, labeling, packaging and distribution. For some of the liqueurs a certain amount of labor is required to prepare the fruits and flavorings used in the production process. In fact, when Koval makes Ginger Liqueur they often ask for volunteers via their Facebook page who help in the preparation of the ginger root used to produce the liqueur. In return for volunteer services the ginger-peelers might get a gift t-shirt emblazoned with the Koval logo.

More On Koval

To see a little bit more about Koval Distillery, visit Wandering Lion—Koval Distillery Tour. There you will find a Google Map of the Koval Distillery, a link to some photos I took of the distillery during the tour and a link to the Koval website that contains more details about history, products and tours.

For anyone with an interest in high-quality spirits, Koval is a must-see in the next time you’re in Chicago.

[i] Millet is a small-seeded or cereal grain that grows in difficult conditions of low moisture.

[ii] Spelt is an ancient grain, closely related to wheat, that paleobiologists now believe may have been widely cultivated by the Chinese even before rice became a staple of the Eastern diet.

[iii] Koval does not malt its grains the way a brewer does. Malting requires heat to stop the germination process and heat, according to Koval’s founder Robert Birnecker, would damage the distinctive and characteristic flavors of the individual grains.

New Millennium Orchestra Opera

2011-09-03T13:16:00.001-05:00

New Millennium ~~Orchestra~~ Opera

Milioto and Lee Team Up For an Evening of Superb Music

A Night of Favorite Opera

Yonghoon Lee

A great tenor, a fine orchestra, a gifted conductor, Orchestra Hall: It doesn’t get any better than this. This thought passed through my mind as I sat in Orchestra Hall’s Upper Balcony listening to lirico-spinto Tenor Yonghoon Lee effortlessly enchant a largely Korean audience with his renditions of some of opera’s most beloved Tenor arias. Accompanying Mr. Lee was The New Millennium Orchestra led by its co-founder and Conductor, Francesco Milioto.

People's Gas Building

The concert was preceded by a reception/fundraiser for the orchestra at Chicago’s Cliff Dweller’s Club, high atop the building at 200 S. Michigan Avenue. Across was the Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, Grant Park, the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium and Monroe Street Harbor. Buckingham Fountain seemed almost miniature from the Cliff Dweller’s vantage point. Across Jackson Boulevard sits the Daniel Burnham masterpiece, People’s Gas Building, now facing serious deterioration and crumbling capitals on the columns that surmount the top of the building. The balustrade atop the building features a row of ferocious lions that, from the nearly level vantage point of Cliff Dweller’s, remind us of the opulent, fin de siècle architecture that still graces Chicago’s downtown.

Mr. Lee

Mr. Lee made his operatic debut in 2007 in Santiago Chile, a city with a climate remarkably similar to Chicago’s except “revered” in a seasonal sense as they are in the Southern hemisphere. He has since established a remarkable career as a an internationally known tenor have appeared both at Chicago’s Lyric and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Lee’s program included noteworthy renditions of La fleur que tu m’avais jetée from Bizet’s Carmen, and a courageous finale in the form of Nessun dorma from Puccini’s Turandot. The first half of the program was all Verdi, including Ma se m’è forza perderti from Un Ballo in Maschera and La vita é Inferno from La For a del Destino.

Mr. Lee retained sufficient energy to deliver several encores including a Korean folk song with Western orchestral accompaniment that delighted the audience. His final number was Amazing Grace. Mr. Lee is a devout Christian and gave testimony to the divine inspiration he received to return to his singing career when he had abandoned it a number of years earlier.

Mr. Lee is clearly destined for great things as an operatic tenor. Watch for his future roles at major houses in the U.S. and abroad.

Mr. Milioto

Francesco Milioto

Francesco Milioto is one of Chicago’s rising conducting stars. But there’s more to this youthful conductor than simply the ability to get an orchestra to perform beyond its capabilities (although that is a significant achievement in itself.) Mr. Milioto is additionally a charming individual; he’s the kind of person you’d enjoy having dinner with or a cocktail after a hard day of work. His charming personality and witty, urbane intelligence makes him a desirable social companion in any setting.

On the podium his is a man simultaneously yielding and in control. The program was interspersed with orchestral pieces, generally overtures or other selections from opera (example: Meditation from Thaïs by Massenet.) During those moments he performed just as one might expect a seasoned conductor and then some. Precise tutties, effective and appropriate dynamics and a dramatic sense that was a pleasure to watch. While accompanying Mr. Lee he added to these already impressive credentials an uncanny ability to watch and sense his soloist, giving the tenor the artistic freedom to interpret the aria while still maintaining the musical integrity of the piece.

Mr. Milioto is another Chicago artist to keep in your performing arts focus.

New Millennium Orchestra

This small but amazingly talented ensemble is another born-in-Chicago ensemble to command your attention. True, ensemble playing becomes easier if the group of musicians is smaller but it is also true that sound becomes more transparent. Even fewer hesitations and false notes are permitted when a single individual makes up a larger percentage of the section. The New Millennium Orchestra was certainly up to the challenge, exhibiting exceptional intonation, attack and sensitivity whether playing accompaniment to Mr. Lee’s gentle piano passages or vigorously attacking Verdi’s Overture to La Forza del Destino. Importantly, although it could have overpowered the tenor at certain climactic points in the program, it did not. The orchestra provided sufficient power to give the audience a sense of grand climax but still allowed Mr. Lee to remain the center of the aria’s gravity.

Other Notes

I didn’t know that Symphony Center had free Wi-Fi. It enabled me to check my bus schedule to ensure that I wasn’t going to be stranded if I stayed for yet another encore. Thanks, CSO and CSO President Deborah Rutter!

I need to bring a camera back to my next visit to Cliff Dwellers. The city-lake-scapes are magnificent.

I recently discovered how easy it is to insert diacritical marks when using Word or Outlook (that uses Word as its default editor.) It certainly makes entry of classical music names much easier.

Pornography

2011-09-01T15:46:00.000-05:00

Pornography

He who looks deserves what he gets: Nothing.

What is Pornography?

At first I thought that perhaps I didn’t understand pornography despite having watched a lot of it over the years. I jumped over to Onelook, the online free dictionary and learned a few things I didn’t know about pornography.

The word comes from Greek (where else?) and means “writing about prostitutes.” This was a pretty honorable profession to the ancient Greeks, so what happened?

Somewhere western civilization decided that prostitution was something to be eschewed and spurned. Prostitutes themselves fell in stature and esteem. I assume that this is true for both male and female prostitutes since rest assured; both types exist, although the male variety is probably much smaller in number for reasons that beg yet another blog at another time.

The word “pornography” came to mean something more specific. For example:

the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement[i]

We added the caveat that pornography must “[intend] to cause sexual excitement.” But there is yet another definition of pornography in the same source cited:

the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction

This makes the word a little more useful in that we don’t have to limit ourselves to sexual excitement alone. Any old excitement will do.

Finally, Pornography is the name of a play written by British playwright Simon Stephens and currently enjoying sold-out performances at Steep Theatre Company just East of the Berwyn Red Line stop on Chicago’s north side. I went to see Pornography this past Saturday evening and came away with some rather intense emotional reactions of my own. In that sense, the play succeeds admirably in agreement with the last definition cited above.

Unfortunately, my intense emotional reaction was negative as I walked out the door of the theatre and became increasingly negative the more I thought about the play and the more I researched what others have found in their own analyses.

The play doesn’t really tell a story, not that any play needs to do so although it makes life a little easier for your audience if there is some thread of continuity upon which to cling. It consists of a series of seven vignettes that may be presented in whatever order the whim of the director dictates. The vignettes take place in London over the seven day period July 1 through July 7, 2005. On July 7, 2005 three young men detonated bombs in London’s Underground railway system with a fourth young man, having been thwarted in his attempt by the closing of one of the lines, detonated his bomb on a bus about fifty minutes later.

What does the play Pornography tell us?

I had to rely on published interviews with the playwright to gain even a glimmer of understanding about his intentions. In Stephens’ view the production and consumption of pornography objectifies people. This explains the title of the play. But it is more than the consumption and production of pornography that Stephens is portraying; he is portraying a group of four young men who feel objectified, alienated and distanced from those around them. According to Stephens, “We live in pornographic times.”[ii]

The play illustrates the perceived distance between the terrorists who detonated their bombs on July 7 and what Stephens believed was a necessary outcome to that perception of objectification and distance, e.g., the taking of 52 innocent lives.

The Guardian has chosen the following lead for the article cited: “Simon Stephens makes audiences confront their own guilt.” Whether that is the product of some hack headline writer or the author (Lynn Gardner) of the piece, it is in no way supported by Stephens’ comments in the article. Stephens seems to feel that the outcome was inevitable but stops short of attaching guilt. Who could possibly be guilty? The audience? How about “society?” These are the absurd constructs of the Guardian and Stephens is too smart to fall into that trap. Individuals objectify other individuals. Groups do not objectify individuals and this difference is profound in its ability to differentiate between extreme liberal reactions to acts of terrorism and the classical liberal approach that holds the individual to be the atom of civilization.

Stephens does want us to understand that these are important considerations; not the least of which is the possibility that yet more disenfranchised individuals will follow the same futile path of destruction and terrorism. He offers no solutions, only questions.

How was the production?

With some minor flaws, the production was superb. I have never seen a bad play at Steep. Since the cast is listed in alphabetical rather than appearance order and since none of the characters are identified by name, I have difficulty recalling who was who in the play. I believe it ws Kendra Thulin who presented the opening monologue. Despite I very good British dialect I had great difficulty in understanding what she was saying. This was largely a matter of voice timbre and projection, not the dialect. Needless to say, this got things off to a very slow start for me and it wasn’t until the second monologue, convincingly and superbly presented by Rudy Galvan that I was able to settle in and begin to follow the character development (which is really all the play has to offer).

Humorously, the title page of the program states: “Steep Theatre Company proudly presents Simon Stephen’s…” instead of the correct formation of the possessive. I am reminded of a similar misspelling many years ago by a company that sold yachting gear from its Elston Avenue headquarters in Chicago. “Lands’ End” was a printer’s error that went undetected until thousands of catalogs had been printed. Lacking the money to reprint and rebind the book, they went with “Lands’ End” and the rest is history. I vaguely recall a clearly missed lighting cue that left the actor yammering away in the darkness until the technical people got it corrected.

Chelsea Warren’s Set Design was nothing short of inspired. Steep is small and it is difficult to repeatedly design small, compact sets that don’t look exactly like all the other small, compact sets you’ve seen. Chelsea was up to the challenge.

I was somewhat distracted by Mike Tutaj’s video design which I found more distracting than anything. A number of large monitors were suspended above the stage turned so that everyone in the audience could see at least one of them. Before the opening curtain they displayed some interesting “facts” about the forthcoming vignettes while during the production the screens displayed seemingly random and bothersome rows of flashing lights. I assume these lights were intended to mimic the passing of cars on the London Underground but I found them more of an irritation than a compliment.

I also need to mention Caroline Neff, who I have seen in a number of other Steep productions. Besides taking a role in Pornography she also acted as Casting Director. Her superb abilities as an actress never disappoint. Her performance in Pornography was no exception.

Then what’s wrong with this play?

Basically, it is way too difficult to understand this play without doing a great deal of research. Robin Witt’s Directors [sic] Notes were of little help. Witt repeated what she saw as the recurring lament in Pornography three times: “Are you laughing or are you crying?” This phrase still makes no sense to me after repeatedly trying to integrate it into my understanding of the play.

The other major flaw with the play is the lack of any markers that enables the audience to make connections that run something like: Pornography—Objectification—Disenfranchised Young Men—Senseless Acts of Terrorism. It is simply too vaguely written to be understood even upon subsequent reflection.

While Stephens’ rationale has its adherents it should also be mentioned that not everyone shares the notion that sexually explicit images result in objectification; that assertion is made by extreme liberals and feminists. There is another view shared by many that sexually explicit images are no different from other kinds of celebrity images. Does that mean that we objectify someone like Madonna, or Lady Gaga, or Justin Beiber, or John Wayne? Regardless of your view of sexually explicit images and objectification you could probably understand the argument if it had been presented more coherently. In this regard, the playwright has failed his audience.

Once we get past the objectification argument we might then examine the remaining steps to the puzzle of Pornography. Unfortunately, the balance of the equation is as opaque as the beginning, and we must seek our own epiphany, probably using the internet. Ironically, in Stephens’ view, the internet contributes to isolation and objectification. His is a very tenuous and loosely constructed argument, indeed. It could be more defensible if Pornography had developed its ideas more carefully.

Would I recommend seeing this play? You bet I would. Now that you’ve read this far you’re probably prepared to enjoy the production. In fact, you’ll probably get more out of it than I did.

[i] Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 11th Edition

[ii] Gardner, Lynn. The Finger Pointer (article) published Monday, August 4, 2008 in The Guardian. Downloaded 2011-09-01 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/04/edinburghfestival.festivals

A Walk In the Woods; The Green Table

2011-08-30T02:00:00.000-05:00

Some Thoughts on Diplomacy and Art

Death Comes in Threes

Three things have recently converged on my mind that remind me of the grave danger we face every day by submitting our fate to the hands of “leaders.” First, I saw TimeLine Theatre’s magnificent production of Lee Blessing’s A Walk in the Woods playing now through Novermber 20^th at Theater Wit. That experience reminded me of a ballet I saw several years ago at a Joffrey Ballet of Chicago performance. German Choreographer Curt Jooss’s The Green Table portrays the futility of negotiation and the triumph of death over sanity and humanism. Finally, I have been viewing a Teaching Company DVD entitled Transformational Leadership: How Leaders change Teams, Companies and Organizations.

Diplomacy vs. Negotiation

Certainly the production of A Walk in the Woods by TimeLine Theatre Company is what started me thinking about all of this. This is a two-character play, mostly dialog that takes place in an unchanging wooded setting populated only by stylized trees and foliage augmented by projected images and a single bench. U.S. negotiator John Honeyman is played by David Parkes and Soviet negotiator Anya Botvinnik is handled by Janet Ulrich Brooks. Both actors turn in spectacular and convincing performances. Parkes’ portrayal of the somewhat inexperienced and idealistic American is convincing; Brooks’ portrayal of Botvinnik is equally convincing and comes complete with a Russian dialect that never misses a beat for the entire production.

Honeyman, the American, keeps insisting that the two are “negotiating” and not engaged in “diplomacy.” A quick look at a dictionary will reveal that there is a substantial difference between the two words. Most dictionaries lead us to believe that diplomacy is the art of relationships that are treated with sensitivity, friendship and respect while negotiation is an attempt to reach an agreement between parties with an almost adversarial connotation. The Russian, Botvinnik, repeatedly uses the word diplomacy only to be corrected by the American who insists that they are in reality negotiating. This difference presents a telling attitude on the part of each of the pair.

At intermission my mind drifted toward what I know about conflict resolution and how one of the most important parts of any conflict resolution is the discovery of common goals and objectives. These shared objectives can become the basis for real ongoing conversation that ultimately results in a lasting resolution to seemingly intractable differences. Witness for example, the difficulties facing several major orchestras at this point in history. Recently, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and currently the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Louisville Orchestra face desperate financial situations. Given the adversarial relationship that exists between musicians and the governing boards and management it should come as no surprise that these “negotiations” are proceeding with more venom than shared values and objectives. While these adversarial proceedings suit the agendas of some critics and bloggers (what fun it must be to fan the flames of controversy in order to have something to blog about tomorrow) it does little to begin to repair the damage that has been done by decades of American-style labor relations. The “negotiations” take place; both sides feel as though they have given more than they have received; both sides grudgingly agree to a settlement with a firm resolve that “next time, I’ll get even.” Where is the diplomacy? Where is the sensitivity? Where is the understanding? Where are the shared values and objectives?

Ultimately, Botvinnik, the Soviet negotiator, triumphs in her attempt to introduce diplomacy into her relationship with the American Honeyman. Eventually, they discover their shared values and objectives. Will this discovery between two people impact the future of mankind? In point of historical fact there are many who will assert that the real events surrounding the fictional realization if A Walk in the Woods did in fact send a signal to the world that the United States and Soviet Union were at last serious about arms control. The conclusion of the play finds Honeyman and Botvinnik reaching agreement on a suggestion for a treaty, just as historical fact records. It must next be accepted by their respective governments.

Negotiate; Make War; Bury the Wounded; Negotiate

Kurt Jooss’s ballet, The Green Table, is so named because of the custom of conducting negotiations across a table covered with green felt. The dancers portray the negotiators. The grotesque and stylized movements of the negotiators are exaggerated by the masques worn by the dancers as they trade thrusts and parries across the negotiating table. Eventually, the negotiators draw pistols and fire them, signaling the declaration of war and the beginning of hostilities. There follows a number of sections such as The Farewell, as soldiers bid their family adieu as they leave for battle; The Battle and The Partisan depict the war itself; loneliness and misery is shown by The Refugees; The Brothel shows us the emptiness of “entertaining the troops”; finally, The Aftermath presents the psychologically wounded survivors. The ballet concludes with a repeat of the opening scene of “The Gentlemen in Black” around the negotiating table. Throughout the ballet the dancer that portrays Death emerges triumphant and the Profiteer rakes in his monetary rewards for the sufferings of others.

This is admittedly a severely cynical view of negotiating but given the origins of the piece, the Weimar Republic of Germany in 1932, it represents one artist’s concerns over the course being taken by his own country. From that concern he extrapolates the general futility of negotiating and the cyclical nature of the negotiating process: negotiate, make war, bury the wounded, negotiate again.

The similarities between A Walk in the Woods and The Green Table are unmistakable as are the similarities among A Walk in the Woods, The Green Table and some current labor negotiations at prominent American Orchestras. All three share the same themes of mistrust, lack of understanding, a failure to find common ground and a willingness to view the entire process as a zero-sum game. Well, perhaps Honeyman and Botvinnik eventually begin to see the futility of negotiation toward the end of their walks.

Leadership: An Incomplete View

I am interested in leadership because I am involved in nonprofit management. Although not unique to nonprofits, it is an especially important consideration given the nature of the nonprofit organization that lacks the profit motive as an instrument of inspiration and that depends instead on abstract notions of mission and leadership. The Teaching Company has always published material that I have found both informative and valuable, so I ordered Transformational Leadership: How Leaders Change Teams, Companies, and Organizations. I have only viewed the first three of the twenty-four half-hour lectures. The course has already proved to be both informative and valuable. Very early in the course Professor Michael A. Roberto, the course’s instructor, makes it plain that there is no correlation between character traits and our ability to predict success as a leader. Rather, it is skills and competencies that are the most valuable predictors of success as a leader. Despite this fact, investigated and researched many times by scholars who all arrive independently at the same conclusion, you will find countless internet websites alleging to counsel individuals on how to advance their career by developing certain “character traits.” There is absolutely no evidence to support any of this emphasis on things like “passion,” “an optimistic attitude” or “self-confidence.” Yet we continue to use these obsolete and disproved notions in our evaluation of others.

Ultimately, this course will examine the success of a “leader” as a combination of factors such as context and the implementation of a team leadership approach that really involves a group of individuals and not just the single “Lone Ranger” hero of the organization. In the long run, skills and competencies that can be learned and perfected are what determine the success of a leader.

The implications for this are enormous. As A Walk in the Woods portrays the agreement developed by Honeyman and Botvinnik was presented to their respective governments. But was the decision to accept or reject the agreement made by a single individual? Was there instead some sort of team effort that ultimately determined the course of strategic arms negotiations? The Green Table on the other hand treats leadership as though it didn’t exist and as though it were simply “fate” and a poorly conceived system of negotiations that results in the inevitable cycle of death and destruction faced by mankind. What about negotiations between symphony musicians and their governing boards? Is it really the absence of strong leadership—leadership that is skilled and competent—that results in the confrontational nature of contract negotiations?

These are complex issues that occur in a variety of contexts ranging from the truly horrific, such as nuclear holocaust at the national level, to the way you try to reason with your teenaged son or daughter who clearly entertains different standards of behavior than you do.

TimeLine; Time Out

TimeLine Theatre Company’s Board President Cindy Giacchetti makes the following observation:

A TimeLine play is not just 120 minutes in a dark theater. It is the conversation you have with others, or even with yourself, hours and sometimes days after the applause ends.

Ms. Giacchetti never claims that TimeLine will provide answers and indeed, in this case it has only provided a means for my own further explorations of leadership, diplomacy and negotiations.

Mission accomplished.

Death at Jay Pritzker Pavilion

2011-08-23T12:33:00.017-05:00

The End of the Grant Park Music Festival 2011 Season

Requiem as Art and Drama

The thought of ending the Grant Park Music Festival with Giuseppe Verdi’s great Requiem Mass, in Memory of Alessandro Manzoni for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Tenor and Bass Soloists, Mixed Chorus and Orchestra immediately conjured images in my mind of all the terrors of Medieval Christianity as so effectively documented by that obscure 13^th century Franciscan friar-poet (generally thought to be Thomas of Celano (c. 1200 – c. 1260–1270) whose Dies Irae is included in so many of the world’s great musical settings of the Missa defunctorum or Mass of the Dead. Thomas’s words are here presented in the English translation from Latin by William Josiah Irons that replicates the rhyme and metre of the original.

The day of wrath, that day

Will dissolve the world in ashes
As foretold by David and the sibyl!

Oh, what fear man's bosom rendeth,

when from heaven the Judge descendeth,
on whose sentence all dependeth.

Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth;

through earth's sepulchers it ringeth;
all before the throne it bringeth.

Death is struck, and nature quaking,

all creation is awaking,
to its Judge an answer making.

Lo! the book, exactly worded,

wherein all hath been recorded:
thence shall judgment be awarded.

When the Judge his seat attaineth,

and each hidden deed arraigneth,
nothing unavenged remaineth.

What shall I, frail man, be pleading?

Who for me be interceding,
when the just are mercy needing?

King of Majesty tremendous,

who dost free salvation send us,
Fount of pity, then befriend us!

Think, good Jesus, my salvation

cost thy wondrous Incarnation;
leave me not to reprobation!

Faint and weary, thou hast sought me,

on the cross of suffering bought me.
shall such grace be vainly brought me?

Righteous Judge! for sin's pollution

grant thy gift of absolution,
ere the day of retribution.

Guilty, now I pour my moaning,

all my shame with anguish owning;
spare, O God, thy suppliant groaning!

Thou the sinful woman savedst;

thou the dying thief forgavest;
and to me a hope vouchsafest.

Worthless are my prayers and sighing,

yet, good Lord, in grace complying,
rescue me from fires undying!

With thy favored sheep O place me;

nor among the goats abase me;
but to thy right hand upraise me.

While the wicked are confounded,

doomed to flames of woe unbounded
call me with thy saints surrounded.

Now I kneel, with heart submission,

see, like ashes, my contrition;
help me in my last condition.

Ah! that day of tears and mourning!

From the dust of earth returning
man for judgment must prepare him;

Spare, O God, in mercy spare him!

Lord, all pitying, Jesus blest,
grant them thine eternal rest.
Amen.

Aside from the fact that this sort of drama exhibits strong evidence that early Christians were a fearful lot, terrified of even the slightest transgression against their wrathful and jealous god, this is the stuff of great drama and if Verdi was anything, he was a great dramatist. For that matter, so was Hector Berlioz who also made effective use of the same Dies Irae although in a different setting. Other texts in the Requiem are also found in the Ordinary Mass; the Kyrie is one such portion as are Sanctus and Agnus Dei.

But it is the Dies Irae that seemed to preoccupy Verdi more than any other section. It is the lengthiest of all of the sections of Verdi’s Requiem. It begins with four “hammer blows” from the orchestra that are guaranteed to wake even most soundly sleeping corpse and proceeds to terrify us with liturgical power, apocalyptical imagery and sheer musical genius for nearly one-third the of the entire ninety-odd minute composition. Those hammer blows fittingly return along with Thomas’s opening words near the end of the section just before Lacrimosa (tears). The hammer blows and Thomas’s reminder of our impending death, destruction and judgement occurs once more near the end of the Requiem in Libera me (deliver me). I occurred to me that Verdi’s hammer blows may have somehow inspired Gustav Mahler’s use of a similar device in his 6^th Symphony twenty-five years later. Both effects are somehow linked to the notion of “fate,” although the musical realization is different. Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky was another composer who seemed to be preoccupied with “fate.” Tchaikovsky’s best known exploration of fate is probably the theme used in his Fifth symphony (that he borrowed from Mikhail Glinka’s A Life for the Czar). Unlike the hammer blows of Verdi and Mahler, however, Tchaikovsky used a melodic representation. Tchaikovsky has sometimes been disparagingly referred to as “Mr. Melody.” There can be no doubt that Tchaikovsky’s prowess at endless melodic invention is one of the greatest of any composer who ever lived, so it is not surprising that he chose melody rather than rhythm to represent man’s destiny.

The Festival Ends on a High Note

The Festival’s presentation of Verdi’s great masterpiece was no less than excellent. Soprano Amber Wagner, a recent graduate of the Lyric Opera’s Patrick G. and Shirley Ryan Opera Center, is clearly a force to be reckoned with as she moves forward with her singing career. No less impressive was Mezzo-soprano Michaela Martens who made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2006–2007. Wagner, Martens and the chorus joined forces in the breathtakingly beautiful and transparent Agnus Dei. Tenor Michael Fabiano delivered Igmenisco (groans) with an artistry that both extracted pity and delighted the listener by its sheer artistry and the tambre of his fine tenor voice. Bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen often faced difficult passages requiring great strength in his lowest registers along with a considerable tessitura. His Confutatis (roughly “convicted and cast out”) wrenched our hearts as he implored forgiveness and entrance into the Shangri-La of the saved.

Great praise goes to the Grant Park Chorus for its superb performance. Christopher Bell, the Festival’s regular Chorus Director had returned to his principal duties in Scotland but the chorus was ably prepared for the Verdi performances by Guest Chorus Director William Spaulding. Spaulding is an American whose current position is with the Deutsch Oper Berlin as Principal Chorus Master. Nowhere was the chorus put to greater effect than in the Sanctus, the musical climax of the Requiem. If you failed to experience electricity in your spine during Sanctus you were probably one of the corpses for whom the Requiem was intended.

The chorus has been used on a number of occasions this season and has given listeners much more than any of us has a right to expect. The Grant Park Chorus is truly one of the great choral organizations in music today. Next year will be the Chorus’s fiftieth anniversary year. What can they possibly do to exceed the artistry they have delivered this year and for so many years? Be sure to watch for next year’s programming.

The musicians of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra rank high in musical ability and accomplishment. As an ensemble they are among the most unique of all orchestras in that they arrive en masse one day in June, instruments in hand, greet one another after nearly nine months of absence, sit down and begin rehearsing. Two days later they present their first performance. During the next ten weeks they prepare twenty different programs. The demands made on these musicians are nothing short of immense and even more astonishing is the way in which they rise to the challenges and deliver quality and even outstanding music week after week that improves over time as they become more and more accustomed to playing as an ensemble.

The musicians of the orchestra for the most part are gone from Chicago now. They have returned to other places to continue making music and pursuing their musical artistry. Most will be back again next year. Chicago is indeed fortunate to have this legacy of musical quality.

Finally, consider Carlos Kalmar, who is now Music Director as well as Principal Conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival. Where would we be without him? Tireless and endowed with boundless energy he arrives at rehearsal on his bicycle (in good weather). On hot days he has a supply of clean t-shirts that quickly become soaked with perspiration during the hot afternoons of rehearsals. He then faces three evenings a week most weeks conducting performances. Add to this his musical and leadership skills and you have a small sense of the great treasure Chicago has in Kalmar’s annual Summer residence.

The Verdi Requiem is a particularly good example of Kalmar’s great musical and leadership skills. Consider that by the time you assemble a full chorus and symphony orchestra plus soloists and antiphonal brass (did I forget to mention the antiphonal brass that are a part of the Dies Irae?) Kalmar faces nearly 200 musicians whose intention is to present one of the great masterpieces of Western music. What is needed, of course, is the leadership, artistry and control of a great conductor. Kalmar’s abilities were nowhere more apparent than the Verdi Requiem that concluded the Grant Park Music Festival Season.

Next Year

It’s a bit early to speculate about the Festival’s programming for next year. We know that planning has already begun but final announcements of the 2012 season programming won’t appear until well into next year. We do know that the Chorus will celebrate a major anniversary, so it’s reasonable to expect a pretty exciting season of choral and vocal presentations.

Advice: Save your Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings in June, July and August for some of the best music anywhere at a price you can easily afford. We may run into each other at a Festival concert next year.

Netflix for Theatre

2011-08-18T14:46:00.000-05:00

Netflix for Theatre

Theater Wit’s Brave New [Ticketing] World

Memberships

Theater Wit’s Artistic Director, Jeremy Wechsler, never one for timid action, has embarked on a bold new plan to benefit artists, patrons and theater companies that present on one of Theater Wit’s three stages. Simply put, you can buy a Membership at Theater Wit that entitles you to see any play presented in the space once, many times or never, as your whim and fancy dictates. The only caveat is that tickets are subject to availability so for popular productions the prudent course is to call well in advance to reserve your ticket. There’s nothing to stop you from just “dropping in” five minutes before curtain if you feel like it and if there are seats available, one will be yours. All of this for the low monthly membership fee of $36.

Wechsler was inspired by a similar program in place at Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre. In Seattle’s case the membership program hasn’t resulted in a decrease in number of traditional season tickets sold by ACT. Wechsler anticipates a similar result here at Theater Wit.

Many Theatre Companies, One Venue

Theater Wit is actually both a space and a company. The Theater Wit space encloses three separate theaters in a single building. With its extensive capacity, plays are presented all year long by a number of different companies, some resident at Theater Wit, others itinerate. One of the values of the Theater Wit membership is that it permits a member to sample a number of different companies without any increase in financial risk. Once you pay your monthly fee, it’s a smorgasbord of theatre at no additional cost other than your time to reserve a seat and enjoy the production. For the theater companies it offers a way to introduce themselves to a large audience of patrons they might not have been able to attract previously. Overall, this is a win/win situation.

More Information

I won’t repeat the details of membership or Wechsler’s thinking here. Instead, here are some links to external sources that should provide ample detail about this brave experiment in ticketing and audience development:

Theater Wit offers unlimited attendance for flat monthly fee - Theater - Time Out Chicago

Wit's End: A Blog by Jeremy Wechsler

Become a Member: From the Theater Wit Website

Extending the Idea

It occurred to me that this idea could be extended in a couple of different ways: first, a consortium of theater companies could work together to offer memberships good at all productions without regard for venue. The other thought was for music organization to embark on a similar program. Here are some ways these two things might be approached.

Theater Consortia

Suppose a number of itinerate theater companies, say eight to twelve, formed a consortium that offered memberships to the theater-going public. These memberships would allow the holder to attend unlimited performances of any production by any member of the consortium for a single, monthly fee. Further, this privilege would extend regardless of venue, thus allowing the benefits of the membership program even though a large theater facility was not a part of the program.

One clearly important consideration in the consortium plan is the consolidation of ticketing for all participating companies. Would a single source of ticketing be provided for all companies (similar to the way Theater Wit handles ticketing for all productions in its own building), or would each company handle its own ticketing with the consortium employing some sort of clearing mechanism to distribute revenues in the agreed fashion. Either way, there are some important considerations to be explored, This would be an important part of the collaborative negotiation.

Musical Organizations

A similar program could be established by a consortium of orchestras. Clearly, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra would probably not be interested in this sort of collaboration, but what about the smaller regional orchestras that dot the landscape? To get some idea of the number of orchestras that might participate in this sort of program, visit Welcome | Illinois Council of Orchestras and click on the menu item “Directory.” There is clearly a broad range of quality in the membership list, but there is also a great chance that a consortium of a dozen orchestras could be assembled that would be happy to participate in a membership program.

If we broaden our perspective to include chamber music groups we have yet another possibility for a membership program that might be appealing to both artists and patrons. Universities are especially likely to have chamber music presentations that would appeal to patrons who are members of a chamber music society program.

Conclusion

My main interest in the present case lies with Theater Wit’s brave experiment with a membership program. I have tried to argue that it might be possible to extend that model to musical organizations both large and small. I hope Jeremy Wechsler succeeds beyond his wildest dreams with his experiment and I’d like to see some enterprising managers from musical organizations engage in similar experiments.

If anyone knows of a performing arts company who is actually doing these sorts of things, I’d like to hear about it. If successful, this stuff could result in a dramatic paradigm shift.

The Beginning of the End

2011-08-17T23:08:00.000-05:00

Tonight was the penultimate concert of the Grant Park Music Festival 2011 season. It was an odd program comprised of two works: John Adams's The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra and Dmitri Shostakovitch's Symphony No. 10.

The Chairman Dances

This is a typical Adams piece.The orchestra payed homage to the monotonous Adams minimalism that repeats the same motifs endlessly as instruments are layered upon instruments until a climax of sorts is achieved which is quickly followed by a barely audible recapitulation of what we have just heard, building into yet another crescendo, and so forth until ennui overtakes all but the most avid Adams fan. I understand that Adams composes in a cabin overlooking the Pacific; undoubtedly, his exposure to the monotonous sound of the Pacific waves contributes to his overall artistic direction.

In fairness, Adams writes great ballet music. I have seen ballets accompanied by Adams's music and they are stunning. Of course, when one goes to the ballet, one expects to see dance; the music is not the primary raison d'etre.

Symphony No. 10

Only Shostakovitch understands (understood, since he's now dead) this piece. He refused to tell anyone anything about it except that the second movement was about Stalin; we already knew that Stalin was a butcher and evil man and didn't need Shostakovitch to tell us about it.

Programme music aside, despite our inability to "understand" Symphony No. 10, we can still enjoy the magnificent achievement it represents artistically. Remember that Shostakovitch was plagued his entire artistic career by the spectre of Stalin and all the oppression he represented; it is a miracle of human spirit and endurance that Schostakovitch produced the masterpieces he did in the shadow of so brutish and ignorant a dictator as Stalin.

Kalmar and company produced an impressive exposition of Symphony No. 10. Sadly, it will be presented only one time.

This brings us to...

The Beginning of the End

By this I mean that we are but two concerts (with the same program) of the end of yet another Grant Park Music Festival Season. This Friday and Saturday will conclude the season with the Verdi Requiem. Attention Dies irae lovers. Here's your big chance.

[Muic Director Carlos] Kalmar is a masterful programmer. He knows what will attract a crowd and for a season finale, that often means a large-scale choral work. Certainly, the Verdi Requiem fits that order.

At the same time, we need to realize that another ten-week season of the Grant Park Music festival will conclude when the final curtain call has been taken, the final soloist has taken his or her bow, the chorus has been given the standing ovation, and the orchestra rises to acknowledge a grateful audience.

I haven't had a chance to speak with Leigh Levine, Acting Executive Director, but I know for certain that she and her staff under the able direction of Music Director Carlos Kalmar and Chorus Director Christopher Bell have begun planning Grant Park Music Festival 2012.

Meanwhile, if you can find a seat to sit in or a patch of lawn to pitch your folding chair on, don't miss the Verdi Reguiem this Friday or Saturday.

Summer in Chicago is made all the more glorious by the Grant Park Music Festival. Don't miss it.

Midwest New Musicals: Spring Rains and Labor Pains

2011-07-18T00:11:00.000-05:00

A Writers Workshop and Development Program

John Sparks founded the musical theater writers workshop at the Theatre building in 1987. The program ran for thirteen years until it was suspended in 2009. It has now been resurrected by Sparks as Midwest New Musicals and run in association with Light Opera Works. Having both a Fall and Winter/Spring term, the program teaches both the writing and production of musical theatre. The Mini-Musicals are the capstone for the Winter/Spring semester where aspiring composers, lyricists and writers showcase their work performed by professional actors in front of a live audience.

This year’s theme, Spring Rains and Labor Pains, was subject to several constraints (as are all of Sparks’ exercises.)

· No scenery or props are to be used.

· Each mini-musical must utilize each of the following elements at least once:

o The image of a pound of rancid bacon

o The line “I want a blue sweater and I want it now!”

o A four-note musical motif (which we weren’t given but sounded like Do-Mi-Sol-Fa to my relatively untrained ears.

Once the assignment is presented, each team has twenty-four hours to produce an outline for their proposed musical. Next they have about ten days to write the first draft which is then subject to a reading and critique. Following revisions another reading takes place and after a final revision, the rehearsals and performance are produced.

This is a very hectic schedule and high-pressure creativity. Sparks deliberately plans it this way to simulate the real-life situations his mentees will experience in the real world of theatre.

Life Has Its Ups and Downs

This first mini by Laura Toffenetti (Book), Gail Sonkin & Laura Toffenetti (Lyrics) and Gail Sonkin (Music) dealt with a Blagojevich-styled politician who was busy cheating on all of his mistresses as well as his wife. The gimmick was the elevator operator, an illegal Polish immigrant who hoped to gain legal status through the politician’s underhanded manipulations.

The creative team came up with some good music and lyrics that was appropriately styled to both the situation and the character. The politician’s introduction of himself was particularly effective, filled with bravado and self-congratulatory music and words. The other high point musically was a song the ensemble sang together. The sense of drama experienced by the group while trapped in an elevator during a power outage was strongly conveyed.

This was a good, solid effort by the creative team although it isn’t stellar. The major weakness seems to be the core idea and basic plot, that doesn’t seem to have a sufficiently interesting series of events to hold the audience’s attention.

Another Life

The team of J. Linn Allen (Book & Lyrics) and Leo Schwartz (Music) also dealt with a man cheating on his wife. This was a bit darker than the previous mini. The piece has a fast, upbeat opening that lets us know in uncertain terms how happy this philanderer is with his girlfriend (who is two years older than half his age). Enter wife and children and a long scene featuring nothing but dialogue. I kept hoping for some music to break up the monotony but none was forthcoming. There really needs to be something added to this portion of the mini.

Enter wife and grown children, each with his or her own complaints to pile on our hapless wanderer. The song What Am I to You? while using appropriate lyrics for the situation seemed to have missed the mark musically. It is the composer, after all, that must assume the role of dramatist in any musical production.

Overall, this was a good effort. Like the first mini, the fundamental premise and plot needs to be strengthened to hold an audience’s imagination. Musically it was okay, but the composer/lyricist combination needs to polish the synergistic application of words and music to achieve maximum emotional impact.

Reeeeeeeeal Life

David Nelson (Book) and Scott Free (Lyrics and Music) created an hypothetical reality TV news program featuring a reporter who claimed absolute objectivity. (Right there, I was suspicious!) The creative team clearly hates Republicans, conservatives and especially Tea Partiers; they make no bones about and take no prisoners in their relentless pursuit of the “bad guys” of today’s political scene. This strong political statement unfortunately makes the mini degenerate into a series of musical numbers that all sound like agitprop and suspiciously similar in melodic, rhythmic and lyrical content. Certainly at one point, anyway, some sort of anthem might have been an appropriate way for the “workers” of the mini to express unity and determination.

The closing musical number was something of a tribute to Barack Obama, an ethereal almost angelic piece of writing that emphasized Obama’s attempts at unification of an inclusive power base. Overall, the entire piece was so extreme in its characterizations that little doubt was left in the audience’s mind that the archetypes portrayed were completely artificial and contrived regardless of political persuasion.

This is one case where art really has suffered at the hands of politics. The entire concept needs to be discarded and a more sophisticated approach to parody adopted. There’s nothing wrong (and indeed much right) with parody but when it becomes ham-handed the effect is not only lost but may actually have the reverse of the intended impact.

Surrogates

The team of David Charles Goyette (Book), Jean Vanier (Lyrics) and Mike O’Mara (Music) scored the real winner of the evening with this well-conceived premise of two gay men in a committed relationship who are seeking a surrogate mother to bear the child they hope to raise. First they approach one man’s sister, who declines. This is followed by the two men interviewing a series of prospective surrogates. All the women decline for one reason or another.

The mini includes some remarkable music from a composer who clearly is on his way to understanding the power of the music and how to make music and word combine to give a power that would be impossible with either words or music separately. An early ballad between the two men effectively conveys their love and devotion for one another. A trio with the two men and one man’s sister approaches a parlante style of opera with each singer expressing differing but relevant viewpoints. The mini concludes with another fine trio between the same characters where the sister finally agrees to become the surrogate for her brother and his partner.

I spoke briefly with Vanier and O’Mara following the performance and asked whether the mini would be developed into something larger. The answer, it seems, depends on whether Book writer Goyette feels he can develop the plot sufficiently for a longer production. Stay tuned; this one could turn into a real winner.

Regardless of this particular mini’s fate, the careers of Goyette, Vanier and O’Mara bear watching, especially O’Mara. He has a firm grasp on what it takes to pack real strength into a musical production; this is rare in one as young as he appears and we can only hope he continues to nurture his great gift.

Godspell: Millennials Rising

2011-07-17T15:49:00.000-05:00

The Theatre and Interpretation Center at Northwestern University

What? Still more Judeo-Christian mythology?

I wondered why anyone would want to take the time to see a rock musical based on the Biblical New Testament Gospel of St. Matthew. Then it occurred to me that the same question might be asked about wanting to see Montiverdi’s Orfeo, Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, or Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites. All four of these operas (and I include Godspell as an opera avatar that is uniquely American culturally and linguistically) fit the definition of opera provided by composer-musicologist Robert Greenberg who says:

[Opera is a] whole that is greater than the sum of its parts in its combination of combination of soliloquy, dialogue, scenery, action and continuous (or nearly continuous) music. We see how music can evoke what words cannot express; the composer is the dramatist. This combination of words and music endows opera with a unique dramatic power.[1]

This is why, for over 400 years, opera has endured as an art form regardless of content.

But that is only part of the reason for being interested in Godspel.l Regardless of your own personal belief or skepticism[2] regarding the supernatural, most systems of religious thinking have morals and ethics woven into their fabrics that are generally accepted by the vast majority of humans, not all of whom share the same theological basis. We therefore are able to collaboratively share these principles across religious boundaries, at least on a selective basis, at the same time challenging one another where those beliefs are in conflict.

Another reason for our universal interest in matters religious is the simple fact that throughout the history of homo sapiens religious thought, whether affirmative or negative, has shaped our history as a species on this planet. Understanding the journey of mankind is significantly enhanced if we understand the religious underpinnings of many of his activities.

There are, of course, devoted Christians who will view Godspell as a refreshing romp back at Sunday School, where Biblical lessons were drilled into them as a child. For this group, and I suspect it is large, there is no need of any other justification.

So whether you are a student of opera, and Broadway musicals in particular, or seeking illustrations of morals and ethics you can support and adopt, or attempting to understand the religious underpinnings of man’s inhumanity or benevolence toward his fellows, or simply looking for a way to reinforce your already-determined system of religious faith, Godspell is definitely your cup of tea.

Indeed, this version of Godspell is a remarkably well-steeped and produced cup of tea.

Godspell: Good Word

Wikipedia tells us

The word "Gospel" is derived from Anglo Saxon "Gódspell" (ca AD 1000), which means "good word".[3]

In this production, the good word comes to us through thirteen amazingly talented and energetic performers who can not only act, but can sing and dance as though they have been doing it most of their lives (and many probably have). All are Northwestern University undergraduates or recent undergraduates. Christopher Herr’s (Jesus) status isn’t clear from the program, but his roots to Northwestern are obviously deep. He’s a member of Asterik, an all-male a cappella group at NU that can be seen in this YouTube video: ?ASTERIK: "Rockin' the Suburbs" by Ben Folds?? - YouTube.

The most striking thing about the cast is that they are all capable soloists, yet they are able sing as an ensemble with equal skill and grace. One by one (with two exceptions) they step forward to present us with one musical number after another that ranges from the gentle ballad Side by Side effectively sung by Letty Perez and Rebecca Ruttle to the raucous tent-meeting O Bless the Lord featuring Hannah Kahn. The velvety tenor of Will Carlyon adds a special quality to All Good Gifts while the Kermit the Frog-style rendition of Light of the World brings the first act to a rousing close.

The second act finds Frankie DiCiaccio’s We Beseech Thee one of the most energetic and effective of all the musical numbers. It was DeCiaccio and Herr who rewrote Save the People in the first act, converting it from a somewhat boring spoken vocal to the stirring rap number it is in the present production. The Day by Day reprise of the second act finds the cast reenacting the Last Supper, where Herr (Jesus) delivers what to my ears was a traditional prayer in Hebrew. (Disclaimer: I speak not a word of Hebrew other than “Yaweh” so I could be easily fooled.) On the Willows finds Herr embracing each of the disciples in turn, an effectively staged and presented vignette. Finally, in this version of the Matthew Gospel, Judas arrives, but is too terrified to kiss Jesus; instead Jesus kisses him, and is carried off to be crucified.

Throughout, this amazing cast sings, dances, runs up and down aisles, climbs poles and scales ladders and other assorted props with a never-ending store of energy. They can dance. They can sing. They can act. Their tambre, tessitura and intonation are superb. What more could you ask for in an American opera, a Broadway musical?

We shouldn’t forget the contributions of Patrick Sulken’s orchestra, out of sight but never out of earshot: Elizabeth Doran on Synthesizer, Charles Mueller on Guitar, Jesse Bowman on Bass and Dylan Frank on Drums. Sets by William Boles and Costumes by Jeremy W. Floyd were especially effective in bringing Godspell up to contemporary speed in the grit of a large urban setting. Matt Raftery’s choreography deserves special mention for its variety and effectively deployment of limited resources in a pretty confining space.

The Ethel M. Barber Theater features a thrust stage with stadium seating that rises from the performance floor on three sides. I counted between three hundred and three hundred fifty in attendance with room for perhaps another fifty in vacant seats. This is in every sense, intimate theatre, especially if one is seated in the first half-dozen rows. You can literally reach out and touch the actors in many cases, and they’d probably take your hand and touch you back in this production that emphasizes community, fraternity and collaboration.

Director Dominic Missimi give us a really tight production. I typically feel a “beat” to any kind of performance, whether it’s a symphony orchestra or a dance company or live theatre. What passes before you in all these cases has a rhythm that is unmistakable when it is done correctly and jarring when it “misses a beat.” Sometimes the beat or the miss is obvious, as when an errant trombone makes a “social error” during the closing measures of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony. More subtle, but equally as important, is the tempo and timing of a piece as it rolls from the opening bars or scenes on toward the finishing moments of the performance. Does everything seem to follow naturally, one event after the other? Is there sufficiently large or adequately small space between logical segments for the audience to both connect the action and at the same time shift attention? Does is appear that someone has anticipated incorrectly or forgotten to continue the performance on a timely basis? These are questions of artistic competence and not always easily applied. In the present case, I found only one point where I found myself “waiting” for something to happen. The pause was very brief, less than a second I would guess, but after so many minutes of perfect execution, even a slight misstep can be easily detected. Fortunately, it was brief, immediately repaired and I noticed hardly a break in my concentration or enjoyment of the production. I wish all productions of all kinds were as professionally paced as this one.

Despite Missimi’s excellent direction, he clearly misses the message of Godspell by characterizing it as “family entertainment” and a “lovely way to get a dose of religion.” It’s not about religion; it’s not about anybody’s god. It’s about mankind, and mankind’s future. For a better understanding of Missimi’s point of view see ?Behind The Scenes With Godspell Director Dominic Missimi?? - YouTube.

So What’s All This Millennium Stuff?

Godspell isn’t really about Trinitarian Christianity. It may use New Testament stories as a basis, but right off the bat you discover that Jesus’s followers are equally divided between men and women, and we all know that the twelve disciples were all male. You can’t have a Broadway musical with an ensemble that doesn’t include girls as well as boys, so of course we have a mixed gender group of disciples. The story becomes immediately more believable, doesn’t it? We also begin to understand that New Testament stories are just that: stories intended to teach lessons, but hardly the stuff of accurate historical fact.

I’m a great fan of William Strauss and Neil Howe, whose landmark book Generations[4] laid the groundwork for what has become a fascinating and never-ending journey for every marketer, politician and student of American culture (plus a few other countries) now alive. Basically, Millennials are members of the Hero archetype, characterized as:

This generation is defined as the one with a deep trust in authority and institutions; they are sort of conventional but still powerful. They grow up during the Unraveling with more protections than the previous generation. They believe in team work and thus when they come of age, turn into the heroic team-working young people of a Crisis. During their midlife they are the energetic, decisive and strong leaders of a High era; while they become the attacked powerful elders during the Awakening cycle. The Greatest Generation (1916-1924) belongs to this category. Generation Y is expected to become the next example of this type.[5]

We find ourselves currently in one of the greatest crises of modern times in the form of imminent financial collapse world-wide. If ever we needed a group of heroic, team-working young persons, it is now. In fact, that is what Godspell is really about; there was this guy who lived about two thousand years ago, who was a little off his rocker but charismatic as a leader; he gathered a group of twelve followers about him who literally changed the course of the world. Sit and watch the energetic, confident, collaborative, loving and intelligent young actors that comprise the cast of Godspell and see if you, too, are not swept up in the sheer optimism and capability of this group of men and women who, as they explain in the musical number Beautiful City

Out of the ruins and rubble

Out of the smoke
Out of our night of struggle
Can we see a ray of hope?
One pale thin ray reaching for the day.

We can build a beautiful city
Yes we can; yes, we can
We can build a beautiful city
Not a city of angels but we can build a city of man.

We may not reach the ending

But we can start
Slowly but truly mending
Brick by brick, heart by heart
Now, even now
We’ll start learning how.

We can build a beautiful city

Yes, we can; yes, we can
We can build a beautiful city
Not a city of angels
But we can build a city of man.

When your trust is all but shattered

When your faith is all but killed
You can give up, bitter and battered
Or you can slowly start to build.

A beautiful city

Yes, we can; yes, we can
We can build a beautiful city
Not a city of angels
But finally a city of man.

This is hardly a Trinitarian Christian lyric; it doesn’t even reference any kind of god, let alone the God of Abraham. But it does tell us something about what’s ahead, I think, and frankly, I’m excited. There will be pain, and the old Boomers will grouse and complain about losing their cherished entitlements that they never really earned, but the Millennials will fix things, for better or for worse. Do yourself a huge favor and go see The Theatre and Interpretation Center at Northwestern University’s production of Godspell. You may find it a playful romp back to your days in Sunday School, but if you really think about it, it’s about our future, yours and mine, and how today’s youth will eventually inherit and improve the incredible problems that are their legacy.

Godspell: There are only four performances left. Godspell closes July 24, 2011. See the website for more information: Godspell, Theatre and Interpretation Center, School of Communication, Northwestern University. The July 21 performance will have two sign language interpreters who will sign the entire performance. The actors currently all sign Day by Day, but July 21 will be a complete interpretation by skilled signers.

[1] Greenberg, Robert. How to Listen to and Understand Opera: course Guidebook. The Teaching Company, Chantilly, VA. 1997. p. 5

[2] I use the word skeptic in its literal, Greek sense: inquiring, reflective. The reader may apply the further extension of doubt as he finds appropriate.

[3] This is further referenced to: Bosworth, Joseph. The Gothic and Anglo Saxon Gospells. John Russell Smith, 1874

[4] Strauss, William & Howe, Neil. Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. Perennial, 1992 (Reprint). ISBN 0-688-11912-3

[5] Excerpted from http://www.youbioit.com/en/article/shared-information/1357/generation-y. See the entire web page for a good summary of Strauss & Howe’s theories and descriptive prose.

First Folio Plans Intriguing Presentation of Merchant of Venice

2011-07-16T17:07:00.000-05:00

I'm a city kid that barely has any interest in the suburbs around Chicago except to avoid going there. Traffic is a nightmare and nothing is pedestrian friendly, not even the Woodfield Mall parking lot. But there is an attraction that I used to frequent when I worked in Schaumburg that's known as First Folio Theatre. Of course, they present Shakespeare, but only as an adjunct to their regular season of more main stream work. This season First Folio will mount the most controversial of Shakespeare's output, The Merchant of Venice.

As a species, we never seem to tire of examining the lives of Jews. Literature, opera, theatre and film all have classic expositions of various aspects of Jewish existence. In film, Schindler's List and Rod Steiger's masterful portrayal of The Pawnbroker come to mind. The Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof is another example of our fascination with Jewish life and tradition. In literature I can immediately name Pillars of the Earth and World Without End (both contemporary historical novels by Ken Follett) that portray the prejudices of medieval England toward Jews. The very existence of Hollywood is probably dependent on Jewish immigrants who began making films in the Southern California desert. For a quick overview of the Jewish contribution to American entertainment see the brief article Jews and the Entertainment Industry in Los Angeles California. For a contemporary theatre piece that gives us a realistic look at Jews in the Southern United States, try The Last Night of Ballyhoo by Alfred Uhry. Uhry also wrote Driving Miss Daisy and the libretto for the musical Parade; the three have become known collectively as the Atlanta Trilogy and all three treat themes related to the Jewish experience in the U.S.

Clearly, some portrayals of Jews are sympathetic while others are rife with prejudice and stereotype. The Merchant of Venice falls into this latter category, hence it has become the target of politically correct critics over the years. I write not to judge the merits of Shakespeare's play, nor to judge the wisdom of presenting it or not presenting it. Rather, what is interesting about the First Folio approach is that they have planned The Merchant Project along with the production of The Merchant of Venice. Briefly, The Merchant Project is a series of staged readings of alternate versions of Shakespere's tale.

For what it's worth, I can recall reading a heavily redacted version of The Merchant of Venice for a high school English class in the late 1950s. I wonder if that would happen today?

Here's the lineup of First Folio's staged readings:

Maurice Schwartz: Shylock and His Daughter performed by the National Yiddish Theatre.
Ramon flores and Lynn Butler: The Merchant of Santa Fe performed by Teatro Vista
Shishir Kurup: Merchant on Venice performed by Silk Road Theatre Project
Christopher Marlowe: The Jew of Malta performed by Signal Ensemble

I've recently become a much more avid Shakespeare fan which, added to my already nascent admiration of Christopher Marlow makes the whole project that much more attractive. I will probably brave the wilds of Oakbrook's Mayslake Peabody Estate Forest Preserve (home of First Folio) to take in at least a portion of this interesting season.

For more information about First Folio Theatre Company visit First Folio Theatre Home Page.

[The] Cherry Orchard

2011-06-06T18:10:00.001-05:00

BY ANTON CHEKHOV

I have not seen a lot of Chekhov. Three Sisters and Marriage Proposal are the only two other plays I have seen by this playwright. In all cases, including the present one, I have been less than enamored by the production. I’m beginning to suspect that in all cases it is more a matter of Chekhov than the production, and it’s more a matter of the Slavic origins of the words than the acting. In translation the words simply don’t “sparkle” the way I expect them to in a first-class theatrical presentation. I’m beginning to suspect that the translation may be the key to presenting a program that is really alive with flesh and blood characters.

While I used the definite article in the name of the play for this posting's title, I omitted it in the names of the two other Chekhov plays I mention in the opening paragraph. Russian does not have articles; they get along just fine without them, thank you. (English is one of the minority of the world's languages that uses articles.) To me, omitting them makes a substantial difference in the timbre and tessitura of the language, if I may be permitted to borrow some musical terms to describe spoken rather than sung language.

That being said I should note that first of all this was a preview that I saw and the naturally occurring learning curve of the cast may have not yet had an opportunity to reach its full potential; the give and take of dialog at some points was not always believable. Second, this is an American production of what is clearly a Russian sensibility; I don’t think that Americans are completely at ease with Russians and their weltanschauung. Although I have personally known but two native Muscovites I find their personal views of life to be quite different from my own. They are, never-the-less, vivid and animated views that I somehow found lacking in this production. Perhaps it is something as simple as a cultural difference not fully understood.

Would I see more Chekhov? Absolutely. You can’t ignore one of the giants of early theatre. Would I see more Raven? Again, I’m firmly in the Raven camp. I even purchased next season’s subscription while I was there. This was a difficult production for me to love, but not everything in life can be stellar, after all. A different viewer may have a completely different reaction.

[The] Cherry Orchard now through July 23rd at Raven Theatre, 6157 N Clark Street Chicago IL 60660, Phone: (773) 338-2177 Email: info@raventheatre.com. Recommended for the serious theatre-goer.

In Arabia We'd All Be Kings

2011-06-06T07:55:00.000-05:00

I found the text for this review stored on my hard drive during a house-cleaning excursion. I wrote it, but apparently didn't publish it. It's not very timely today, but I preserved it just so I could return some day to see what I may have thought about some experience.

And What a Kingdom It Is!

What would you do if you had to become a sex worker just to survive? What if your ability to earn your own way was so limited that you could do little else besides pass out leaflets and have sex with people you found unattractive? What if your choice was to panhandle and steal or sleep on park benches? If you’ve ever faced any of these kinds of choices, then you’ll probably find yourself nodding and even smiling a little as the denizens of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen struggle to maintain their place in the world during the gentrification of Times Square in the 1990s.
Director Joanie Schultz brings Stephen Adly Guirgis’ vignette of one of New York’s seediest bars vividly to life. For three days the patrons of this unnamed and undistinguished dive just two blocks from rapidly gentrifying Times Square come and go, bargain and connive, argue and fight, drink and do drugs, hook and have sex and generally choose the most inappropriate choices for advancing their own lives as they struggle to hang on to what little remains of their once tidy little world that is now literally vanishing before their very eyes.

Life is hard and these characters have been down and out for some time. They are not likely to ever regain their self-respect even slightly. Never-the-less, we watch in fascination as Skank (Johnathan Edwards) and Greer (D’Wayne Taylor) bargain over just what services Skank (ostensibly heterosexual) will provide to Greer. Eventually, he gives up nearly everything for twenty dollars. Chickie (Caroline Neff) tries her best to teach DeMaris (Rinska M. Prestinary) the fine points of prostitution, but fails as DeMaris repeatedly takes offense at being propositioned and calls every potential john who walks by a nigger (even when they are clearly not). The bar even has its chronic drunk, Sammy (Peter Esposito), who sits on his customary stool for most of the play, occasionally regaining consciousness and marginal coherence to utter some inappropriate remark. It is from Sammy that the title of the play derives during one of his bursts of verbiage.

The action runs non-stop and the dialog is machine-gun deadly. But you still find yourself immensely entertained despite the clearly dysfunctional and hopeless state of all of the characters. They are destined to fail, and fail they do. One by one they reveal their substantial flaws, try to take corrective action, and in the process only mire themselves deeper in the slime and grunge that eventually will destroy each of them, one at a time. These are outrageous characters, and you probably won’t meet people like this in ten years of a normal lifetime. Yet, under the skilled direction of Joanie Schultz and the well-schooled and crisp performances of the entire cast, you actually believe that you have been given the special privilege of watching this group of losers plunge headlong into the abyss of self-destruction.

In Arabia We’d all Be Kings makes no judgments and preaches no morals. It only records the action as it took place, and then lets the audience decide who is right and who is wrong, who is admirable and who is despicable. In the end, of course, there is no right and wrong, good guys and bad guys or even saints and sinners. There is only life in Hell’s Kitchen as the actors come and go across the stage of existence in this famous New York neighborhood. We are merely given the privilege of watching, for three days, as some of its prominent citizens go about their daily existences, that to them, are probably no worse in their eyes than yours and mine are in ours.

Highly recommended, In Arabia We’d All Be Kings runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm through February 28^th, 2009 at The Steep Theater Co., www.steeptheatre.com, just steps East of the Berwyn stop on the Red Line. General admission is $18.00.

Blade Runner: Final Cut

2011-01-01T00:00:00.002-06:00

I just finished my New Year's film, "Blade Runner." This was the "Final Cut" (number 7 out of 7) and the one that director Ridley Scott really wanted to be released. I found this to be an especially thought-provoking experience. This version has very limited dialog and no narration. It is essentially a series of "experiences" and "scenes" with minimal explanation of why anything is happening. But listen closely to the magnificent score by Vangelis. Since there are few words spoken in the film, it is up to the composer as dramatist to enhance your perceptions of the story.

It is, in fact, a very simple story. It is so simple that it really isn't worth telling until one begins to contemplate the ethics behind the science fiction. If one then adds the marvelous special effects (no computer animations in this film) and the musical score, the viewer is left with the feeling of having experienced more of an unbelievable and fantastical adventure in a dream than anything.

The retirement of the final replicant is, regardless, one of the great cliff-hangers ever filmed and kept me thoroughly involved to the final dénouement. But lest the viewer feel too smug with self-satisfaction and having saved Los Angeles from the replicant terrorists, this Final Cut leaves a thread for us to chew on—a provocative failure to resolve leaves us with a false cadence and the uncomfortable feeling that we have much more to learn.

Tiny, foil origami figures suggest a story yet untold.

Highly recommended for those who find neat endings and White and Black hat dichotomies less than stimulating.

Carl Schurz High School at 100

2010-05-04T08:24:00.002-05:00

This past weekend I attended the Carl Schurz High School Centennial Celebration. On Saturday, there were tours of the school and a sock-hop followed by a party at the Abbey Pub.

I hadn’t set foot in the building for nearly fifty years. Here are some reactions.

Much has not changed. I went in the main entrance and everything seemed to be in place. On the other hand, I can’t remember what door I usually used when I was a student. It was probably a door toward the train station, since I used the old Milwaukee Road commuter trains to go to and from school.
The place is really clean. I couldn’t find any graffiti except for a few scratches on the backs of some ancient bathroom stall doors. Lockers are all new looking. Not a mark on them.
I walked through the halls, almost all of them, and could hardly remember where I took any classes. I couldn’t even find my home room with certainty. It was probably one of the first two just as you go into the triangle on the North end of the building. Everything was like a distant vision through a fog. Where did I take Harry Lassen’s chemistry classes? Where did I spend many hilarious days in Frank Ulveling’s physics classes? It’s all long gone in my past memories.
I did stand in the pit in Slocum Hall, the assembly hall. I remember spending many hours there playing for various musical events under Arthur Clark’s baton. I climbed up to the band room, but it was locked. Their band director must weigh 800 pounds. How does he get up there?
Nobody was in socks and nobody hopped. The DJ’s played a lot of oldies. People sat and talked.
I met a few old classmates. Marcia Hawk and a couple of others. I spoke with some others from nearby class years but who weren’t involved in music. I do recall that my whole existence revolved around band and those are the strongest memories.
By the end of the first day, I was stunned and don’t know why. You can never go home again, they say, but this was no home that I could remember. What was my life like way back then?
Then, on to the Abbey Pub, one of Chicago’s sleazier Northwest Side bars. Poorly organized and poorly executed best describes the huge lines and long wait in order to just get into the door to drink three-dollar Millers from plastic cups. A typical bar buffet was served with more interminable lines. What is so damned difficult about serving yourself some lukewarm pasta from a tray? People seem to stand and examine every hunk of Italian sausage, every strand of spaghetti, every salad olive. Then they discuss it with their neighbor. I finally got some food, had another beer, and watched old photos projected on a huge screen while the DJ’s played more oldies.
The Abbey Pub looks like it should be torn down before it falls down. The entire event should have been held at the Irish Cultural Center, not too far away. The Irish Cultural Center has a great ballroom with its own bar and kitchen. Further, the paint isn’t peeling from all the walls and the plaster isn’t crumbling. Besides the private ballroom there is a (great) public bar and restaurant. There is also a huge parking lot, another plus.

Sunday was the “The Great Ceremony” at 1:00 pm.

The program started more or less on time at 1:00 pm and went until about 4:45 pm—with no intermissions what-so-ever. Most people wandered in and out when the urge to urinate became more than a slight discomfort.
The auditorium is as clean as the rest of the school, recently painted and quite pleasant. The seats appear to be original 1924 seats, but amazingly, were wide and comfortable enough for even my considerable ass. I can’t say that for most auditoriums and public seating I frequent. The only thing more ample than these seats are the outdoor seats at the Jay Pritzger Pavilion in Millennium Park.
The program started with a lot of music, from the Orchestra, from the Chorus, from the Band. Now, this is the Chicago Public Schools, not New Trier. He kids try, but they are far from the best. I can only say that I personally appreciated all of their sincerity and efforts. It was actually pretty good.
The chorus was fascinating. There are only three boys in the chorus. (Don’t these guys know that joining the chorus is a good way to meet chicks?) Two tenors and one bass was it. The chorus director made up for this by miking the boys to give their voices a boost. In my mind, it takes a boy with some cojones to know that he is the only one singing bass and his voice is the only one that will be heard and still sing well. Likewise, the two tenors carried their part with calm professionalism. As the chorus filed up the center aisle the last member was the boy singing bass. I was reminded of the old Seventy-six Trombones lyric: “Then I modestly took my place as the one and only bass/and I oompahed up and down the square.” Sitting on the aisle, I flashed him a thumbs-up. He looked at me and I could see his lips form “Thank you.”
The JROTC posted the colors. They obviously take this very seriously and did a first-class job with the ceremony. This was followed by the Pledge to the Flag and then, to my amazement, the entire assemblage sang the National Anthem a capella. And they sang well.
Then there were a series of endless speeches from the Centennial Committee, the new president of the Alumni Association, the current principal and three past principals.
Sandwiched in there were some politicians. This is Chicago, after all. They all read proclamations of some sort, and probably hoped you would vote for them for writing such flowery stuff. But I think there is a whole, highly-paid department of politicians aids somewhere that write those things.
The principal guest speaker was Chicago Tribune columnist, Rick Kogan. He told lots of Studs Terkel stories and some were quite good.
There were ten inductees into the Schurz High School Hall of Fame. From George Devine, Class of 1933, Professor of Music for many years at the University of Tennessee, to Annie Crawley, Class of 1986, Underwater Videographer, Photographer, Author, they each accepted their award and made a speech (unless they were dead, of course, and then sometimes the surviving spouse gave the speech instead). There were ten, in all, including the current 35th Ward Alderman, Rey Colon (this is Chicago, after all).
The most interesting was probably Annie Crawley, who has enough energy for ten women. To see some of her spectacular work, visit her website http://www.anniecrawley.com/index.htm or her new venture, http://www.diveintoyourimagination.com/.
Also inducted was someone many here will fondly remember: Dr. Nicholas Valenziano was inducted into the Schurz Hall of Fame. I spoke briefly with him after the ceremony. He and his wife are doing well and he sends his regards to all.
A longish section of singing by the Schurz Player Drama Group followed. This “tradition” lasted 26 years from 1974 until the retirement of Jeffrey S. Berke, the faculty member who helped students produce musicals ranging from Fiddler on the Roof, to Guys and Dolls. If I recall correctly, the Slocum Hall stage is now the Jeffrey S. Berke Stage.
Finally, the Schurz Sports Hall of Fame Induction emceed by Bob Dekas, Class of 1969. The inductee was Todd Van Horn, a Professional Baseball Player. They both made long speeches.
Next up, a demonstration of the M.P. Moller Pipe Organ, only about a quarter restored. It sounded terrific. They continue to raise money to restore this instrument and if you have a few pennies to spare, by all means this is a good cause. I’d like to see someone like Cameron Carpenter play this instrument when it is finally restored. They don’t make it easy for you to donate, but I’d suggest joining the Alumni Association as a starting point. How do you do that? Your guess is as good as mine. My membership came with the ticket I bought for the Centennial Celebration. There doesn’t seem to be anything on any website I can find about how to join.
We ended up by singing a few rounds of the Schurz Victory March, Alma Mater and “Deep in My Heart Schurz.”

Well, what to make of all of this.

The first day was spooky. After all, here was a place where I spent four years of my life, and then, one day in January of 1961, I walked away from it and never went back—for nearly fifty years. It wasn’t like meeting up with an old friend; it was like meeting a completely new friend.
Day two was different. First of all, I gained a greater appreciation for the students at Schurz who actually participate in music. Also, the JROTC kids who posted the colors were serious and professional. Not everything you hear about high school students in Chicago is true. Some are actually there to learn, and are doing their best to improve themselves.
I found myself examining my own life in light of what I was seeing and hearing during the Hall of Fame Induction. I didn’t compare very favorably in the sense of I haven’t lived up to my own expectations. I knew this at least ten years ago when I set about making some radical changes in my life, getting advanced degrees, working for organizations that represented at least partially my ideals, and so forth. Regardless, events like this cause me to become introspective and strengthen my own resolve to achieve more of my own goal set.
Schurz deserves to be nurtured and encouraged. Yes, it’s a part of the Chicago Public Schools and we all know what a reputation that school system has. But consider this, during its first 100 years it educated 50,000 students. During its next 100 years it will educate another 50,000. Doesn’t it make sense for you and me to try to ensure that this next 50,000 have as great an opportunity to achieve the American Dream as you and I had? After all, we are going to be handing down our civilization to the generation of students that today walk the halls of Schurz, tomorrow the halls of our great Universities, and ultimately the board rooms of our great corporations and chambers of our great political bodies. Some will be pipe-fitters or carpenters; some will be musicians and actors; some will be educators; some will be preachers and ministers; some will be lawyers and politicians; all of them will be citizens of this society. We need to ensure that the foundations for continuing our great traditions are firmly planted in this generation of youth.
I arrived skeptical and came away encouraged. I hope I have communicated a little of that hope for the future that I found when I spent a couple of days at Carl Schurz High School on a May weekend in 2010.

Best regards,
Milan Vydareny

North Shore Chamber Orchestra

2009-05-31T22:33:00.000-05:00

It has been over a year since I saw this small community group that plays in the Alice Millar Chapel on the Northwestern University campus. They've clearly been busy and it shows in the general improvement in the playing.

Of note is the addition of Rachel Taylor as Concertmaster. Ms. Taylor adds strong leadership to the strings and to the violins in particular. Alas, despite the significant improvement, NSCO violins still have a way to go. Some section members still struggle to get the notes out, let alone in tune. Given the improvements Ms. Taylor has made to date, it might not be too much to expect even better future performances.

Concerto for Harpsichord in D minor, J.S. Bach BWV 1052

Harpsichord soloist Robert McConnell delivered this venerable Bach work with journeyman skill and sensitivity. There were some problems with the high strings, as noted earlier, that tended to detract from the overall performance. However, Bach being what it is, it is difficult to find a lot of fault with a harpsichord well-played.

Twelve Kontretanzen, L. van Beethoven WoO 14

This charming set of country dances is always a welcome addition to a program. Listeners will recognize at least one familiar theme used by Beethoven in other works: both The Creatures of Prometheus and the Eroica symphony echo the theme of the seventh dance. This is not particularly deep, serious or profound music, but rather a light recapitulation of life in the country, where the press of city and town life melts away into the joys of light-hearted social activity.

Carinhoso, Pixinguinha and Jao de Barros (arr. Marcio Modesto)

This short piece in the chorro style of early 20th century Brazil featured the winds of the North Shore Chamber Orchestra. The piece itself is marked by the dissonances so typical of 20th century music, but the overall feeling is one of urban excitement and sophistication.

Mother Goose Suite, Maurice Ravel

Ravel's genius is clearly evident in this orchestration of his original piano for four hands composition. The North Shore Chamber Orchestra winds and percussion were clearly up for the task, and the incredible blending of strings, winds and percussion filled the hall with a delightful clarity and beauty. Of particular note was the addition of harpist Sarah Thompson whose smooth glissandos and well-blended accompaniments added much to the performance.

Other Comments

This performance was conducted by Sandra Cintra Gebram, a Master's student in conducting at Northwestern University. Her background in conducting extends to both South America and Europe as well as the United States. Ms. Gebram's command of the techniques of the art form were excellent and she maintained excellent control of her musicians at all times. Interpretations were good, especially given the occasional difficulties of the musicians in executing the printed scores. Overall, Ms. Gebram got the most from her resources, something any conductor would be pleased to accomplish.

The North Shore Chamber Orchestra was founded by Harvey Treger, who remains its President. In fact, Treger never seems to tire of exhibiting what in the nonprofit world is referred to as "founder's syndrome". He places his own name prominently at the top of the front cover of the program, and again on the front conver when he lists the Board of Directors. He even devotes a full half-page on the interior of the program to one of his own quotations. During the concert he speaks frequently although mercifully, his comments are generally short.

Mr. Treger would serve his audiences better were he to substitute more music and music education for his own wanderings, which tend to contribute only little to the experience and take up valuable space in the program that might be better used for other purposes.

This particular performance had an audience of about sixty-five. This is a significant increase over the last time I attended a performance of this orchestra, and seems to indicate that they are doing something right if they are now able to attract that many patrons. At $10 admission for adults and free admission for children, it is a good family outing and an excellent way to introduce children to music. Despite this attempt to lure families, there seemed to be none in the audience at this performance. There were plenty of elderly, however, including two elderly women who sat nearby talking nonstop for most of the concert. While one might expect a little disturbance from children and even welcome it as a sign of excitement over the musical experience, the same behavior by adults is clearly simply rude and unacceptable.

The next North Shore Chamber concert is on October 4, 2009. It certainly merits a date on anyone's calendar who is seeking a way to spend a chilly Fall afternoon in the warmth of the spectacular Alice Millar Chapel listening to what is steadily becoming a more polished and professional organization.

Serenade No. 10 in Bb Major: "Gran Partita"; Wolfgang Mozart

2009-05-26T17:51:00.007-05:00

Rush Hour Concerts, the remarkable musical tapas that are the tenderly nurtured brainchild of Artistic Director Deborah Sobol kicks off its tenth season on June 2, 2009 with a pre-performance reception at 5:15 pm followed by a performance of Mozart's incomparable Serenade No. 10 in Bb Major, K 361, the Gran Partita. Motion picture fans will remember the scene in Amadeus where Salieri reflects on Mozart's great masterpiece, concluding "It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God."

The Mayor has chosen to honor Rush Hour Concerts by declaring June 2, 2009 "Rush Hour Concerts Day in Chicago". The roster of musicians who will perform the thirteen-instrument masterpiece are among the finest in the city, including members of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera Orchestra.

Given the intimate and acoustically splendid venue provided by St. James Cathedral and the quality of the performers, this is an event that should be a must on every chamber music lover's calendar. I plan on attending if at all possible, even with the long trek I have to make from Schaumburg to arrive on time.

For more information, visit the Rush Hour Concerts website.

Serenade No. 10 in Bb Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart K 361
Presented by Rush Hour Concerts at St. James Cathedral
Chicago, Illinois.

June 2, 2009–5:15 pm

Ghetto

2009-05-24T22:17:00.010-05:00

Long one of Chicago's educational crown jewels, Northwestern University boasts of many outstanding accomplishments and traditions from its dual campuses in downtown Chicago and Evanston, Illinois to the North. One of Northwestern's more visible contributions to the community is the Theater and Interpretation Center, located at the South end of NU's Evanston campus adjacent to Lake Michigan. The setting alone makes the trip worthwhile, surrounded by idyllic parks brushed with gentle breezes from nearby Lake Michigan. It is here that Artistic Director Henry Godinez presides over a season of theater, music theater and dance. Part of that season includes a series of main stage productions in the Ethel M. Barber Theater and the Josephine Louis Theater. Their final main stage presentation of the 2008–2009 season, Ghetto, by Joshua Sobol and directed by NU faculty member Daniel Cantor, is typical of the high-quality we have come to expect from TIC's program.

The play is based on the diary of a librarian who sought asylum in Vilna, Lithuania and includes both fact and fantasy as the playwright explores what Godinez calls the "intersection of humanity and art amidst the direst of circumstances". In this case, these dire circumstances are the holocaust experienced by Europe's Jews during World War II. While it might seem counter-intuitive, this is not a story of right and wrong, evil and righteousness, but rather a story of unending paradoxes and moral dilemmas. That the holocaust itself is an unspeakable evil is taken as given; what remains is to examine the response of those affected and the agonizing decisions that faced them as they struggled to maintain even a tiny fraction of their pride, humanity and self-respect in the face of certain annihilation.

The Jews of the Vilna Ghetto mount a Ghetto Theater. This, in itself, was a controversial topic among the Ghetto Jews, some feeling it dissuaded Jews from physical resistance and dishonored the recently deceased. Ultimately, the Ghetto Theater was quite successful with performances selling out weeks in advance. It is against this backdrop of anomaly that Ghetto tells its tale. As director Daniel Cantor so correctly assesses, "It's here that I begin to find what I consider points of aesthetic vitality for story telling: contradiction, complexity, ambiguity, paradox."

Cantor's direction has brought out the best in the young cast of Ghetto. Especially strong performances are given by Joel Sinensky (Weiskopf, a tailor and businessman), Connor White (Srulik, ventriloquist and theatre director), Erika Rankin (ventriloquist's dummy) and Kevin Fugaro (Kittel, SS Officer/Dr. Paul).

The story unfolds as a series of vignettes depicting the struggles of the Ghetto Jews and the moral and ethical dilemmas they face. Example: given that supplies of insulin will certainly run out prior to their liberation, should they withhold treatment from those most certain to perish anyway, reserving their dwindling supplies for the young and strong who are more likely to survive the entire ordeal? Also perplexing is the dilemma facing Gens, the Chief of Jewish Police and then Ruler of the Ghetto. Is his collaboration with the Nazi's justified when it clearly sacrifices some Jews to save others? And what about Weiskopf, the tailor and businessman? He employs many Jews in his clothing sweatshop, and thus employed, the Nazis pass over them when selecting victims to be sent to concentration camps. But Weiskopf also enriches himself and becomes quite wealthy. He brags about his generous gifts to charitable causes in the Ghetto, but can this justify his overall profiteering from the suffering around him?

In the end, we are left with questions having few, if any, answers. Instead we realize the incredibly difficult decisions that were confronted and resolved, rightly or wrongly, as the Vilna Ghetto population struggled to survive.

Cantor has inspired his large cast to a surprisingly high level of performance. In addition to the main dramatic roles there are a Ghetto Acting Troupe, Musicians of the Acting Troup as well as several other groups of minor characters such as Underground Resistors, Jewish Police and so forth. There is a lot of part doubling requiring actors to change both costume and character as the complicated story unfolds. Add to this the multiple entrances to the performance stage as well as the entrances and exits that use the lobby doors and seating aisles, and one gets the sense that a great deal of thought has gone into the overall design of the production. All this technical artistry is accomplished with professional skill, and we aren't even aware of the amount of coordination and planning that has gone in to the two-and-one-half hour performance.

When the play concludes, what can we take away from the experience? The evening was certainly absorbing, even gripping. Did we reach any conclusions? Perhaps individually there are those who will be willing to make the hard choices faced by the play's characters. Overall, however, we can hardly be expected to respond with more than "It depends," if we were confronted with similar choices. And perhaps that is the real message of the play: Prevention is essential. Mankind must never again face situations that require these kinds of decisions to be made.

TIC's Ghetto is an outstanding evening of theater and highly recommended.

Ghetto by Joshua Sobol directed by Daniel Cantor at the Ethel M. Barber Theater of the Theatre and Interpretation Center at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

May 22—May 31, 2009

Theater and Interpretation Center at Northwestern University

Owen Wingrave

2009-05-24T00:58:00.011-05:00

Chicago Opera Theater is faithful to its slogan: "Opera Less Ordinary". Their last 2009 production, Benjamin Britten's Owen Wingrave is exemplary of that tradition.

One is struck almost immediately by the design of COT's production; it's much more elaborate than COT subscribers are accustomed to seeing. Further, set elements move on and off the stage at frequent intervals providing a very fluid setting for the unfolding story. At some points, the movement of some very large set pieces almost seems chaotic. Then, suddenly, the entire scene congeals into a coherent whole with set pieces, singers and actors precisely placed and blocked to advance the story.

Another interesting feature of the production is the use of two supernumeraries whose performance is absolutely essential to the telling of the story. The characters are named simply Father and Boy in the program and are played by Blake Montgomery and Mason Baker respectively. They appear immediately as the curtain rises representing ghosts. They have no speaking parts and yet appear repeatedly throughout the opera as Owen Wingrave struggles with his own self-acceptance. They dominate the stage whenever they appear.

Britten's music is, after all, 20th Century British; Britten's atonality is not my own first choice for an enjoyable evening of music. It is also very difficult for the singers, who must literally memorize and place every note where it belongs with almost no clues based on traditional musical forms. On the other hand, it's impossible to tell if they've incorrectly sung a passage unless one has a score to reference. Occasionally, Britten resorts to a twelve-tone string, but I couldn't identify a twelve-tone string if my life depended on it, so such compositional gymnastics are wasted on me. In Act II, as Owen comes to terms with himself, Britten switches to lyrical, diatonic style, demonstrating that he actually can write major and minor triads when it suits his purposes.

COT is always careful to select superb, rising, young singers for its productions, and Owen Wingrave is no exception. Matt Boehler in the role of Spencer Coyle is especially strong, as is Robin Leggate in the role of Sir Philip Wingrave. Brenda Harris is worthy of mention for both singing and acting the role of Mrs. Julian. Mary Jane Johnson's portrayal of Miss Wingrave also deserves mention.

Finally, the story: Director Ken Cazan's program notes call the opera a distinctly anti-war piece. This is true, but only at the most superficial level. It is true that the character Owen Wingrave refuses to follow the family tradition of becoming an officer and soldier, but closer analysis will reveal that Owen is much more complex than a simple pacifist. He is both courageous and strong in his resolve to pursue his own path away from a military career despite his family's nearly brutal insistence that he uphold the family honor and traditions. But at several points he condemns military men and governments who command them and would have them all executed. These are hardly the words of a pacifist and only illustrate the fact that Owen is perfectly willing to inflict death and destruction providing they advance his own agenda. No, this is not about anti-war and pacifism.

In the final analysis, Owen Wingrave is about one man's search for, and coming to terms with his own plans for his own destiny in the face of brutal opposition from his family. It explores the notion of duty: what is it and to whom is it owed? What are the consequences of nonconformity? When are we justified in taking control of our own destinies, even when that entails depriving others of real or imagined benefits? The questions raised by the opera are both profound and numerous and in the end, none are answered. There are, after all, no answers to these questions; there are only personal decisions in the context of personal life experiences. Each individual must face these questions, to a greater or lesser degree, and answer them for himself.

The production is superb; the opera is superb; the experience made me sit in my seat for nearly five minutes after the rest of the audience had departed, just turning these kinds of thoughts over in my mind. Soon, of course, I realized that I wasn't about to discover answers to these kinds of questions and I left.

Highly recommended.

Owen Wingrave

An Opera in Two Acts based on the short story by Henry James

By Benjamin Britten & David Matthews

Libretto by Myfawy Piper
Chamber reduction by David Matthews

Conducted by Steuart Bedford; Directed by Ken Cazan

Harris Theater for Music and Dance at Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois

May 16, 20, 22, 24, 26, 2009

The Mission

2009-05-24T00:50:00.004-05:00

I wouldn't be a good student of nonprofit management if I overlooked having a mission. Why create yet another blog? There are thousands, perhaps millions of blogs. Who would want to read anything I wrote?

That's where the mission comes in. This blog exists because I need a reference to past experiences and reactions to the many arts experiences I have. It's really that simple! What did I think about such-and-such? When did I attend thus-and-so? What did I experience over yonder? Did I enjoy myself the last time I listened to a symphony by what's-her-name?

Friends and others are welcome to read my postings if they choose, but this blog is mainly for me. I'm curious as to where I have been and where I'm going. This blog will provide valuable clues.