A performance by Bread and Puppet Theater, the legendary troupe out of Glover, Vermont, is always a singular experience. Their ramshackle, proudly political performances have been a linchpin of America’s protest theatre movement for over 50 years. Their show at Chicago’s Clarendon Park this past Tuesday, part of
Fiddler on the Roof is a totemic piece of midcentury Ashkenazi-American culture. Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock, and Sheldon Harnick’s 1964 musical Based on Sholem Aleichem’s stories about Tevye the Milkman, has served, for better or for worse, as the last shred of the shtetl in the American zeitgeist
When I was in graduate school, I was assigned to teach Rhetoric. Despite my having nothing resembling a classical education, my department informed me that teaching Rhetoric was a larger appointment and therefore a larger stipend (as in, just over the poverty line and not under it). I figured, well,
The “sad clown” archetype is well-worn. Jean Claudio and Raquel Torre’s Memorabilia, presented by Teatro Vista at Filament Theatre, approaches that territory and gracefully avoids the traps of overwrought sentimentality. Memorabilia is a melancholy clown show, equally silly and tender, navigating memory, its gaps, and what draws us back
Friendship, Tim Robinson’s first feature film, is much more than just an extended sketch. Written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, the film effortlessly weaves huge laughs with a true sense of despair, the story of one man’s bleak existence ruptured by his inability to understand male friendship. Craig
When comedians brag about comedy’s power as a political tool, they’re usually missing the point. Man-at-a-desk political comedy might draw thoughtful “hmms” and chuckles, but the comedy that brutally attacks those in power and comforts regular people is typically something much less refined. Taylor Mac’s GARY: A
I hope you're well. You may have noticed that I haven't posted too much on here recently, but don't worry! There's more to come. I've been lucky enough to contribute quite a bit to the venerable Chicago Reader in the
Whether it’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ abdication of duty regarding filmmaker (and recent Oscar winner) Hamdan Ballal after he was attacked by settlers in Masafer Yatta or billionaire producer Marc Platt flying cross-country to dress Rachel Zegler down for tweeting “Free Palestine”, corporate monoculture is
Describing itself as “a 67-minute true crime bathtub fantasia”, Three Crows Theatre’s production of THE DROWNING GIRLS is fast and surprisingly funny, no small feat given the grim subject matter. Written in the late 90s by the Canadian trio of Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson, and Daniela Vlaskalic, THE DROWNING
As a genre, the horror comedy has a tendency to over-deliver on one element and skimp on the other. A character getting their throat slit can be horrifying; a Deadpoolian “well, that just happened” isn’t all that funny. On the other hand, some filmmakers make what could be classified
Seph Mozes is a Chicago-based dramaturg and director whose evening of Gertrude Stein's plays, TURKEY AND BONES AND EATING AND WE LIKED IT, will be presented at Facility Theatre in Humboldt Park from March 14th to 29th. I sat down with him to discuss the unique challenges of
As the American theatre approaches the tenth anniversary of the death of writer Sam Shepard, who died in 2017, productions of his plays have become grounds of investigation and not just commemoration. When an artist dies, their work is upheld as a beacon of some sort of truth about the
Who needs the Oscars? Even with Conan O’Brien hosting, they’ll be disappointing, overlong, and, this year at least, likely transphobic and weird. So, as a cycle of new films comes to a close (like Rosh Hashanah for movies), let’s take some time to celebrate some of the
In presenting the classics, directors and producers tend to foreground an aesthetic twist in their production. Dramaturg extraordinaire Anne Cattaneo, in the chapter “Deepen an Interpretation” in her book The Art of Dramaturgy, uses “Coriolanus as Stalin” as a shorthand for this inclination. Maybe this happens due to anxiety about
For the return of lauded Chicago theatre company Lookingglass, an adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote feels like an auspicious choice of material. Lookingglass’ brand of equally intimate and epic theatre asks its audience to lean in and absorb the fact that they are sharing space with top-flight artists.
Brady Corbet’s postwar epic The Brutalist follows László Toth, a Jewish architect seeking refuge in post-war America, as he embarks on a building project for a mysterious Philadelphia benefactor and is reunited with his wife and niece. It’s a sensory-overload period piece, shot on the once-defunct Vistavision format,
Hello and welcome to Simpler and With More Laughter! You're likely seeing this because you previously followed me on Substack. For a variety of reasons, I have migrated my writing from Substack to Ghost, the service you are reading on now. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has elucidated many of
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A breath of fresh, sawdust-laden air.
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Not a list, but also a list.
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Punk Who? American What?
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On snobbery and earnestness
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Ngozi Anyanwu's Leroy and Lucy at Steppenwolf Theatre Company