Wandering Through Chicago's Arts and Culture

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 ...

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] ...

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 ...

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 us...

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 lif...

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 adventur...

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. Ever...