DesignThe Revolution southern hemisphere and along the periphery of north and south, and DECEMBER 2017 NewcityNext Time created multiple insurgencies, giving rise to sporadic terrorist outrages against civilians almost everywhere.Exploring the Past and the Future in \"Revoliustiia!Demonstratsiia!\" at The Art Institute In the domain of economics since that fateful October, it’s la plus ça change. For a brief interlude, coincident with the Great Depression andBy Stephen F. Eisenman post-WWII reconstruction, global wage inequality declined. But since the recession of 1973 and the neoliberal onslaught of the Reagan andThe Russian Revolution seems longer ago than a hundred years. Thatcher regimes, income inequality in the United States and otherSince that time, there was a second World War, the Holocaust, a capitalist democracies (plus Russia), has risen to, or even exceeded themassive, postwar reconstruction and de-colonization, successive U.S. level of the Gilded Age that preceded the Russian Revolution. Thewars against Korea and Vietnam, and dozens of smaller wars, each of a world’s richest eight people, according to an extensively-researchedferocity and destructiveness out of proportion to their geographic extent. 2016 Oxfam paper, possess as much wealth as the 3.8 billion who(The war currently waged by Saudi Arabia—supported by the United comprise the poorest half of the entire global population. A revolutionStates—against tiny Yemen has killed around 15,000 and made three has never been more needed but never been more remote a prospect.million homeless.) And yet the exhibition at the Art Institute, \"Revoliustiia! Demonstratsiia!Since 1917, the center of world political power has shifted from the Soviet Art Put to the Test\" conveys a heady contemporaneity. ItUnited Kingdom to the United States and now, increasingly, to China. proposes revolution as a vital and viable prospect and the future as an(U.S. military hegemony remains intact.) Whereas the global class open question. Holding in abeyance the debacle that followed the risestruggle was formerly fought within the Western metropole, it is now of Stalin—forced collectivization, famine and the purges—it addresseslargely waged between the northern and southern hemispheres. two questions: What does it mean to reconstruct a society andClimate change has exacerbated existing interethnic conflicts in the economy from the ground up; and is it possible, under conditions of modernity, to renounce the bounded, bourgeois individual of the European Enlightenment and create a new, collective identity? (This post-revolutionary person would not be a feudal subject subordinated to God and Tsar, but a corporate subject responsible to fellow workers 51
and peasants, with the state functioning as essay), but also in the \"Press,\" \"Factory\" and facilitator.) \"Revoliustiia!\" highlights the art and \"Festival\" sections of \"Revoliustiia!\" The word visual culture that addressed those questions propaganda today conveys a sinister meaning. in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Rev- It was, of course, the specific brief of olution, and in so doing, invites us to ask how Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels from 1933-1945. It is also sometimes invoked DESIGN TOP 5 we would conduct an equally ambitious in discussions of Russian efforts to affect the 1 Chicago Architecture reconstruction in the future. Biennial. Chicago Cultural outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential Center and throughout the city. The architectural happening of a Eschewing a chronological installation, elections, as well as daily lies told by the lifetime, or at least every two years, nears its finish line in the exhibition is constructed like an orrery, current U.S. president, his press secretary and December. Visit chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/ with nine planets in orbit around a sun. The cabinet members, for example, the “mid- to get to it before it’s over. satellites are named Battleground, School, dle-class” tax cut and “failed Obamacare.” 2 One of A Kind Show. Merchandise Mart.)Shop Press, Theatre, Home/Storefront, Factory, However, in the early Soviet context, the term very local by buying directly from one of hundreds of Festival, Exhibition and Demonstration, with propaganda, like its sibling “agitation,” meant artisans at this annual holiday extravaganza. December 7-10 the celestial body in the center taking the form recognition of the situated nature of truth and of a speaker’s tribune and a small film theater the dissemination of useful knowledge. While 3 Randolph Street’s bourgeois (or capitalist) education taught Holiday Market. representing agitation and propaganda. The Plumber’s Hall. YOr shop local universals, Bolshevik education instructed at the holiday iteration (indoors reason for this spatial configuration for the season) of this workers and peasants about historical year-round monthly market is provided both in the exemplary catalogue with an eclectic array of particulars: the struggle against the Tsarist antiques and contemporary and the installation itself: far from being furniture, fashion and gift items. Whites and their international, capitalist December 16-17 isolated organisms, people are always abettors; the necessary solidarity between 4 Gingerbread “interpellated” (a phrase used by Marxist Architecture workers and soldiers; the value of literacy; and Competition. Glessner House philosopher Louis Althusser) through Museum. We’re thinking “Ate numerous social institutions such as the nine the need to produce food and materiel for the Entries to the Chicago Tribune Soviet military. Collection,” perhaps? cited above. The life of an individual and the December 5, 6:30pm progress of a revolution, in other words, In the domain of propaganda and agitation, 5 The Evolution of Pac-Man: Powerful cannot be conveyed by a simple narrative; Klutsis, Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and the Character Design In Video Games. Chicago Design they must instead be seen as a force field of Museum. Or if you prefer to attraction and repulsion, affinity and resistance. filmmaker Dziga Vertov were the masters, chomp on something entirely though there were many others almost non-holiday, attend a free lecture by Tim Lapetino on the For example, in the section called “Battle,” equally accomplished. (The greatest of all seminal game. December 5, 6pm we see photographs, posters, broadsides Soviet filmmakers, Sergei Eisenstein, is 52 and flyers that exhort Russian workers and inexplicably absent from the exhibition.) Klut- peasants (the vast majority of the population), sis’ designs for “agitational stands,” “radio-or- ators” and “tribune kiosks” from 1922, one of to rise up and defeat the enemies of the which is reconstructed at the center of the October 1917 Bolshevik coup. (A liberal exhibition space, are crazy concatenations of revolution in February led to the Tsar’s abdication in March.) The fact that resistance red, black and white beams, platforms and wires that would at once diminish the against enemies both domestic and foreign (including the United States) lasted until 1922 individuality and accentuate the authority of the speaker. Amplified through a large meant that war and its rhetoric—unity, trumpet or megaphone, the orator would violence, self-defense, homeland and disappear and the message of proletarian sacrifice—infiltrated all aspects of daily life unity prevail. Vertov’s films, including and consciousness. El Lissitzky’s famous broadside lithograph titled \"Beat the Whites \"Kino-Week\" (1919-20), \"Kino-Eye\" (1924), \"Kino Pravda\" (1923) and \"Man with a Movie with the Red Wedge\" (1920) was therefore not the purist “Suprematist” composition it is Camera\" (1929) were alternately romantic and mechanomorphic. They turned viewers sometimes taken for in textbooks. Far from into peasants wielding scythes, factory extolling the supremacy of feeling, it workers maintaining an assembly line, and promoted action. The mass of the nation is film directors aiming the camera lens at the represented by a solid red triangle, the most dynamism of revolutionary life. acute angle of which pierces, and thereby divides and destroys the white (counter-revo- \"Revoliustiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to lutionary) circle. Gustav Klutsis’ photomon- the Test\" asks a lot of its visitors: that they tage \"Electrification of the Entire Coun- temporarily forget the mostly tragic denoue- try\" (1920) is similarly geometrical. It shows Lenin—in plain clothes and a flat cap—like a ment of the Russian Revolution; that they colossus bestride the globe. He endorses the forgo the comforting uni-directionality of most museum exhibitions; and that they read many new, modern art and architecture beneath explanatory texts while still attending to the him—there is no classicism or academicism main attractions: the exhibited paintings,Newcity DECEMBER 2017 in evidence—that was endorsed by the drawings, posters, sculptures, prints, films, Soviet government and its State Free Art photographs and models. But the reward is Workshops in 1919. That national stance great. Most of all it consists of the image of would enable some of the greatest achieve- one society changing itself—almost overnight— ments of visual art of the last century, into another, and the dream that a similarly including works by Tatlin, El Lissitzky, profound revolution (with a happier ending) Popova and Rodchenko, many of which are might occur here in the future. included here. The role of agitation and propaganda in the \"Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put revolution is made explicit in \"Battle\" (dis- to the Test\" is at the Art Institute until January cussed by Kathleen Tahk in her fine catalogue 15, 2018.
DINING & DRINKING & DrDininkiinngg Camille Austin ofTOP 5 Mezcal Montelobos Agave1 Lights, Camera, Array Cocktails. ArcLight Cinemas. December is the Exploring Mexican craft time for movies and drinking: spirits beyond Mezcal Benjamin Schiller (Apogee, Leviathan) mixes vodka-based By David Hammond drinks for “Casino Royale.” $35—not bad for a movie Tequila, we know. Mezcal, we’re and three cocktails. Happy getting to know better every day. damn holidays. December 6 Still, there are many spirits from2 Beer Fest Beat Down. Sears Centre Arena, Mexico that remain relatively un- Hoffman Estates. There will be beer. There will be bites. And known in the United States, and yes, of course, there will be Lucha Libre! December 12 events like Mexico in a Bottle teach3 Holiday Cocktails 101. us more about mezcal as well as Travelle Kitchen + Bar. Learn how to make fancy bev- about spirits that, though they have erages from the best: Marissa Huth, craft spirits expert, will been popular in Mexico for centuries, name from Tuxcacuesco, a town in Jalisco. show you how to get hammered in style. $25. December 14 are just becoming known here in Chicago, Traditionally made like all other mezcals, Tuxca4 Kachka: A Return to and just in time for holiday merry-making. is made from an agave indigenous to the area. Russian Cooking. Longman & Eagle. Chef Bonnie Mexico in a Bottle is an annual event, held this E. Ismael Gomez is distributing Balancan Morales of Portland’s renowned year in mid-October at Chop Shop (2033 West Tuxca, the first to enter the U.S. market. Kachka restaurant will sign “Tuxca is one of the oldest spirits in Mexico,” copies of her new cookbook North Avenue). Organized by Susan Coss and provide bites. December 16 he tells us. “What makes this spirit different is and Max Garrone, the San Francisco-based5 Whole Smoked Animal that the fermentation is in carved volcanic Feast. Frontier. What Mezcalistas, Mexico in a Bottle welcomes better way to celebrate NYE, rock wells that date back 400 years. For the and your uppermost position spirits makers and distributors to offer their on the food chain, than by products to those just starting to understand distillation, they use the trunk of trees that eating our fellow creatures— the depth and range of spirits our neighbors to grow in the region. They build the mechanism boar, goat, pig, lamb—in their the south have been perfecting for millennia. inside these trunks. The agaves used are entirety? December 31 wild-harvested Lineño and Cimarrón.” Why hold this event in Chicago? “Chicago Comiteco. At Mexico in a Bottle, we chatted has the second largest Mexican-American with Eduardo Belaunzarán, self-described population in the United States and a rich history of art and food within that community. “mezcal missionary” and managing partner behind Wahaka Mezcal. Belaunzarán de- Our events are all about presenting mezcal scribes Comiteco as “the missing link between within a cultural context,” Coss says. pulque and mezcal.” (Pulque is the fermented Tequila is made from agave, the succulent that sap of the agave, a kind of beer, whereas looks a little like a cactus, the heart of which is mezcal is made with the heart of the agave, cooked, smashed, fermented and distilled). usually cooked, smashed, fermented and distilled to produce the spirit. Tequila is made Comiteco is made from pulque with some from only Blue Weber agave, but mezcal can corn yeast added, and after fermentation, it’s distilled. This is an interesting drink: it doesn’t DECEMBER 2017 Newcity be made from about thirty different types of taste quite like mezcal or tequila, though it agave, each yielding a different taste, further does have lightly grassy notes and a pleasantly modified by the way the spirit is handled by dry finish. Moreover, Comiteco is the only way individual mezcaleros. you can taste anything like real pulque outside Beyond mezcals, Mexico in a Bottle sampled of the communities in Mexico where it is made. The beverage is actually produced inside a range of other spirits just starting to make the agave plant, where the sap of the plant their way here. ferments and then must be consumed within Tuxca. One of our favorite sips was Tuxca, hours before it goes bad. Pasteurized pulque made in Jalisco and Colima. Tuxca gets its is available in cans, but it is quite vile. 53
Bacanora. Named after the town of Bacanora including Oaxaca, Chihuahua and Durango— to drink their mezcal joven (or young), rather would sometimes eat sotol’s bulbous heart, than reposado (rested in a wooden barrel forin Sonora, this distillate is produced from an which like the agave’s heart (or pina, because a little while) or anejo (rested in a woodenagave called yaquina. Like the many agaves barrel for a longer while). Camille Austin offeredthat can be processed and turned into spirits it looks like a pineapple when the leaves areYaquina, an espadin varietal, has a distinctive stripped off), are sweet-tasting and contain tastes of Montelobos Mezcal, and she toldflavor. In the same way as different grapes yield nutrients. The sugars in sotol and agave hearts us, “Mezcal is the most complex and diverse can be converted to alcohol, and these spirits white spirit that exists on earth, before aging,”different tasting wines, different agaves yield became common after the Spanish introduced so although aging in wood is preferred fordifferent-tasting distillates. some spirits, like Scotch, it’s less desirable for distillation to the Americas. Sotol is a very mezcal, one strength of which comes fromRum. Paranubes is a rum from Oaxaca made pleasant sip, though some versions lack thein the Sierra Mazateca mountains, in a misty complexity of mezcal. the variation between bottles that results fromcloud forest that’s also home to an infamous different agaves and different productionindigenous psychedelic mushroom. If rum has …and Mezcal. With all these amazing and techniques. Those differences, often subtle,seemed to taste only like alcohol and sugar unfamiliar spirits, mezcal might start feeling can be obscured by the flavors imposed byto you, try Paranubes, which has many more pedestrian. But at Mexico in a Bottle there wood aging.dimensions of flavor, even some slightly bitter were fresh variations on this fundamental spirit Looking ahead, “We’re going to see a widernotes. It’s a truly beautiful artisanal expression. that blew minds. Jason Cox, representing Cinco Sentidos, told us “We have four spirits, variety of Mexican craft spirits,” Coss tells us.Local bartenders are getting wise to theadvantages of this Oaxacan aguardiente, and and they are all fascinating in their own way, “There will be more Mexican rums, liqueurs andyou can enjoy cocktails made with Paranubes made by amazing families. But if I had to hybrids. The mezcal world is growing, so I fullyat Estero. Lou Bank, who has been featured in choose just one expression, I would mention expect that we’ll have mezcals from more statesthese pages discussing mezcal, says Paran- our Pechuga de Mole Poblano. It’s distilled and many different variations. I see the storyubes is “very much like a Rhum Agricole— with cooked chicken and mole poblano (a becoming more about terroir, more espadinsand, in fact, it is made the same way: from sauce made from chocolate, dried chili ancho, and cupreatas and salmianas that express the flavors of the land. These are varieties that arefermented sugar cane juice.” chili mulato, apples, bananas, peanuts, almonds, sesame seeds, cinnamon and cumin) more easily cultivated and therefore verySotol. The word “sotol” comes from “tzotolin,” that have been added to the boiler chamber of sustainable. We’ll also continue to see thea word in Náhuatl, the language of the ancient Marcelo Luna’s Filipino (tree-trunk mount) still.” bifurcation of the market between the so called You can try Cox’s Cinco Sentidos spirits at cocktail mezcals meant for a large-volumeAztec still spoken in many parts of Mexico. The Aviary, Quiote and Billy Sunday. market, and the smaller production mezcals.”Sotol was once thought to be an agave, theplant used to produce tequila and mezcal, but Many small-production mezcals were available. For bottles of more obscure Mexican spirits,in the 1990s, botanists concluded that sotol And although cocktail mezcals are appropriate try Moreno’s Liquors, the best resource forwas technically not an agave but rather adasylirion. People in several Mexican states— for the larger market, mezcal aficionados prefer Mexican spirits in Chicago.
FILM TOP 5 Film1 Phantom Thread. Paul A Dream Of Drown Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis rub up against dramatic Beneath The Surfaces of “The Shape of Water” weft and weave in a based-on-life roundelay of womanizing and By Ray Pride thundercrack romance in the high-end fashion world of 1950s After an advance screening of “The mute as a child, living above a moldering DECEMBER 2017 Newcity England. Christmas Shape Of Water” before its Chicago movie palace amid racks of disused International Film Festival premiere, the 35mm movie reels, down a hallway2 The Shape of Water. lights came up halfway through the credits, littered with octagonal movie-reel canisters, The amniotic wash of revealing a telling image: the studio’s piracy dreaming at night of floating away, a fairytale and fancy finds Guillermo security guard casually wiping away tears, princess in her dreams, cast into a del Toro in fine, sometimes bawdy, cheeks streaked like rain, this stocky dream of watery release, a dream of sexually physicalized fettle: let all Latino nearly smiling, but stoic still. drown without the messy drowning. In her the dreaminess wash over you. dream-life aquatic, chairs dance beneath Guillermo del Toro’s mad and madcap the green, green sea, her world tumbles in December 8 fairytale, far from folly, conjures tears and nourishing amniotic fantasy, at least until daffy laughter and fearsome fret: it is an the morning alarm sounds, once again.3 Darkest Hour. Gary Oldman otherworld set down during the Cold War Richard Jenkins (Giles), her movie-mad is the funny Churchill. Gary of fifty-five years ago, during civil rights and diva-loving gay neighbor, living amid Oldman is the twinkly Churchill… protests in the South, in Baltimore and the clutter of décor he daily sits at the No… Gary Oldman is the human at a secret government facility on that city’s drawing board, reducing his dreams to Churchill. A funny wonder of a outskirts. Allegory for the politics of the advertising illustrations for which the drama from director Joe Wright, modern moment careen beneath nearly market is waning as photorealism which incidentally dovetails with every complication, and yet del Toro advances in the ad biz. Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.” keeps to the business of his lovingly designed sea of surfaces and his Michael Shannon, a savage G-man who December 8 complicated, cockeyed espionage plot hates his work almost as much as he while threading a single, singular theme hates himself, who brings a much-coveted4 Call Me By Your Name. throughout: loneliness. secret from the Amazon to the facility Luca Guadagnino charts the where Elisa works. Doug Jones: the secret course of sudden sunny summery Faces of loneliness: look upon them. Sally creature, thought a god by the villagers love to the strains of Psychedelic Hawkins (Elisa), a cleaning woman made from whose land he was torn, akin to the Furs’ “Love My Way.” December 155 The Disaster Artist. Music Box. James Franco’s welter of little-seen productions about artists and poets finds comic balance in the unlikely tale of the making of “The Room” and the squirmy dreams of its poète maudit,Tommy Wiseau. December 1 55
“Creature from the Black Lagoon,” but also the Reviews wordsmithing of writers like Tom Stoppard beauty and the beast from the myth, especially (who wrote the screenplay for Wright’s “Anna Jean Cocteau’s 1946 “Beauty and the Beast.” Thirst Street Karenina”). Wright’s second Second World Octavia Spencer: Elisa’s loving, common- Nathan Silver cleverly, craftily, stealthily War movie pushes ahead with implacable sense coworker whose husband is a blank has composed an idiosyncratic wealth of pace, but not haste, toward Dunkirk, which he wall of indolence and indifference. Michael low-to-the-ground no-to-low-budget movies had depicted in “Atonement” as an extended as effectively as any young filmmaker thriving single take of dizzying panoply traversing Stuhlbarg: features fleet as mercury, a spy space populated by thousands of men on the who is caught between two identities, today. Since seeing his short “Anecdote” at beach and beyond at Dunkirk. Even as the misunderstood both as an American scientist Slamdance in in 2008 and through seven features (with another on the way), Silver has planning for Dunkirk dovetails pleasingly with and as a Soviet operative. The general who memories of Christopher Nolan’s figuring of spits out “Unfuck this mess,” to Shannon in impressed with his bravado but also his yet another facet of the allegory upon allegory obstinate stylistic thumbprint, with sound and war in his “Dunkirk,” Wright stays closer to of past and present, and an unknowable future image studiously designed to match each of ground, to the man, to the struggles of will between those who believe that scented isle yet to come. Lonely souls. Will, can, should, his subjective sallies into the messiness of would be just as well off under the hand of shall any of them make fruitful contact, let the subconscious unleashed. “Thirst Street” fascists like Oswald Mosley or Adolf Hitler alone know love? is one of two marvelous, bold visual feats than a prime minister approved of by the King. released this year by cinematographer Sean There are occasional bracing bursts of Wright’s A museum exhibition is touring the world, Price Williams, and its fevered Paris is the recurring visual fancies, including angel’s-eye first resident in Los Angeles at LACMA, equal of Williams’ New York City extremities overhead views of battlefield topography, “Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters,” in the parallel splendid neon mayhem of the poured out a small portion of the contents of Safdies’ “Good Time.” Lindsay Burdge is the images refracted through glass and screen- hot center of “Thirst,” playing a flight attendant, filling close-ups of keys impressing letters onto the couple of houses del Toro has stocked paper. Wright used this in a pivotal image in with his collections of art high and low. depressed after the suicide of her lover, who meets up with a nightclub bartender (Damien “Atonement,” as well as in the variety of images More of it finds its way into “The Shape of Bonnard), with whom she becomes perversely he provided early in his career for stadium Water.” On Twitter between projects, the projections for bands like Chemical Brothers fifty-three-year-old Mexican polymath of myth obsessed, staying in France and causing deadly trouble all around. Silver and C. Mason and Underworld. (“’I was definitely off my head will sometimes align his timeline with the Wells’ screenplay offers Burdge (“A Teacher”) on ecstasy for quite a few years. I was up a sources that inform his imagination, familiar names and illustrations, but also images that ample opportunity to engage her substantial scaffold, sixty feet above this seething mass of people, matching visuals to music from these contain mystery after mystery. Del Toro has charisma as well as her ability to shift from one tremulous register to another with hardly amazing DJs,” he told the Guardian in 2008.) consumed and compacted more art, more fable, than most of us will ever encounter. a flicker between. Slim, expressive flights of this Swaddled within the plush but playful caliber into extremes of lust movie-movie atmosphere, del Toro works and romantic self-deception his idiosyncratic alchemy, lavishing intricate are all too rare. With Esther lighting and production detail familiar, but seen Garrel. 83m. (Ray Pride) too seldom nowadays outside of movies by the Coen brothers or way back in the century “Thirst Street” opens Friday, to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amélie” (2001). December 1 at Facets. “Shape” benefits mightily from a modulated beauty of a score by the oft-overwrought Darkest Hour Alexandre Desplat, production design by Nimble Brit director Joe Paul Denham Austerberry (“30 Days of Night,” Wright arrives again; it seems “Assault On Precinct 13,” 2005) and cinema- like he’s always arriving every tography by Dan Laustsen (“John Wick: couple of years, every other Chapter 2,” “Crimson Peak”). He finds room film announcing himself as across his sprawling yet intimate canvas for a bold maker of thumping winks to prior masters and their work, too, entertainments, who as in a quick glance at a neon sign above alternates precise, startling a storefront near the movie palace named work with fancies that fail. “Laughton,” which indicates a key visual But when his work ob- influence, Charles Laughton’s only feature tains—“Pride & Prejudice,” And Gary Oldman? Gary Oldman is Winston as director, the memorably wicked and “Hanna,” “Atonement,” and now, “Darkest Churchill. He’s the man. And when Wright watery “Night of the Hunter” (1955). Hour”—the results outshine the pyre of his finds the sly moment to add light from the pictures that sputter (“The Soloist,” “Anna side via a window or in an unexpected shaft Del Toro doesn’t hold back on the low, either: Karenina,” “Pan”). In “Darkest Hour,” Wright essays a fresh take on the legend and legacy in a subterranean war room, Oldman twinkles. “The Shape of Water” is unstinting in its His Churchill twinkles. His performance is voluptuous delight but also its earthy glories. of Winston Churchill, capturing the career unabashed delight: both his sly command and Del Toro’s character strokes are cheerily politician’s fraught wartime ascension and the sheer joy he conveys, as both the unlikelyNewcity DECEMBER 2017 bawdy, as in the advice melancholy Giles succeeding obstinacy in the face of assault statesman in his sixty-fifth year and as Gary would have offered his younger self: “Take by cabinet treachery and Nazi advances. But all that is armature for sleek performances, Oldman, master actor. With Kristin Scott better care of your teeth and fuck more.” Thomas as Churchill’s slyly witty, ever-loving including a portrayal of the man as funny, wife Clementine, Ronald Pickup as a peaked, Near the end, “Shape” threatens to fall apart, charming, driven, and even flirtatious. Gary wounded Neville Chamberlain, Lily James as as plot elements cascade to what seems like a Oldman says he took a year to immerse disappointing end, but the rebound is majestic, himself in as much of the copious Churchilliana Churchill’s attentive stenographer and the mesmeric Ben Mendelsohn, slyly understated, its climactic passage thrilling in its onrushing and the witty, verbal screenplay by Anthony McCarten (“The Theory Of Everything,” 2014). keenly watchful as King George VI. 125m. imagery, transcendent in its final, triumphant (Ray Pride) gesture. Tears are shameless. The lashings of laugh-out-loud epigrams suggest keen study of the corpus of biography “The Shape of Water” opens Friday, December 8. and autobiography and an awareness of the “Darkest Hour” opens Friday, December 8.56
We will be closed for renovations in December —but the films continue with off-site Gene SiskelFilm Center On Location throughout the month! SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2:00 PMI KNOW A MAN...ASHLEY BRYANLOGAN CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 915 E. 60TH ST. MONDAY, DECEMBER 4, 6:00 PMTIME TO DIEINSTITUTO CERVANTES, 31 W. OHIO ST. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 7:00 PMSWIM TEAMGORTON COMMUNITY CENTER, 400 E. ILLINOIS RD., LAKE FOREST SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 3:00 PMKEDICHICAGO ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION, 12 S. MICHIGAN AVE. TICKETS & DETAILS AT s i s k e l f i l m c e n t e r. o r g /o n l o c a t i o n
Lit LIT TOP 5 Hunting for 1 Poetry of Protest. Poetry Biochemical Foundation. A workshop for Weapons all experience levels led by Maggie Queeney, in conjunction with the “Signs Jamie Freveletti of Resistance” exhibition, co-curated discusses “Blood Run” by the Poetry Foundation and poet, playwright and activist Kristiana Rae By Toni Nealie Colón. December 16, 1pmNewcity DECEMBER 2017 Jamie Freveletti writes an award-win- that belonged to my aunts and gave them 2 Unscrewed. Women & ning thriller series featuring scientist to me. I still have a first edition “The Secret Children First. Author Jaclyn Emma Caldridge. She has also written of the Old Clock” from that box that I Friedman in conversation with two novels for Robert Ludlum’s “Covert handed down to my daughter. As a result, professional feminist Veronica Arreola One” series. A distance runner, black belt my books are thrillers with an action-adven- about “Unscrewed: Women, Sex, in aikido and former lawyer, she talked to ture bent and a strong female character. Power and How to Stop Letting the Newcity about her latest title, “Blood Run.” System Screw Us.” December 7, How much of you is in the character? 7:30pm Your intrepid hero Emma Caldridge Not much, though I do love science. sure gets around. Why West Africa Caldridge is a logical and unemotional 3 CHIRBY Awards. Volumes for this adventure? scientist. You could call her a female Bookcafe. The Chicago Caldridge is a biochemist searching the MacGyver. She uses her wits to get out of Review of Books Awards include world for rare plants and chemicals. She’s tough situations, not always a gun. While book signings by shortlisted authors been in the United States, Colombia, I love reading clinical reports and the Eve Ewing, Elise Paschen, Christina Somalia, Mexico and the Caribbean, Federal Register—both pretty dry periodi- Pugh, Don Share, Megan Stielstra, usually battling the environment as well as cals—I view life from a more emotional and Jac Jemc, Juan Martinez, Lindsay human-made trouble. I was reading about relational perspective. I threw in the running Hunter, Angela Jackson, Fred Sasaki, the Dakar Rally (when it still went through because I love to run and it’s something I Quraysh Ali Lansana, Camille Bordas, the Sahara) and the tough sand conditions. know about. Sandra Jackson-Opoku and It seemed the ideal location to place her Augustus Rose. December 1, 7pm next. In this case, she battles the Sahara I read that you had read an article about Desert and trouble. a missing vial of smallpox vaccine— 4 One-Hundredth Anniversary was that the germ for this novel? of the Russian Revolution. What made you want to write thrillers? It was a vial of active smallpox virus! Can The Seminary Co-op Bookstore. Probably reading Dumas’ “The Three you imagine? Quite dangerous. I read about Yuri Slezkine discusses his epic Musketeers,” coupled with Edgar Allan dusty vials found in an old closet in the “The House of Government” with Poe’s stories, gave me a feel for mystery building used by the National Institutes of Eleonor Gilburd from the University and action. And then my grandmother dug Health. When tested, they discovered there of Chicago. December 15, 6pm a set of Nancy Drew books out of her attic was live smallpox virus. Somehow it had 5 Tuesday Funk. Hopleaf. Guests include James Gordon, Faisal Mohyuddin, Jasmine Davila, H. Melt and Tom Underberg. December 5, 7:30pm58
survived years in that closet. They’re supposed Macgyver moment where Caldridge had to and I wanted to show that Caldridge, for all herto be under lock and key, and so that gave me come up with a weapon from everyday things strength and ability, is helped by others andthe idea. around her. I’m glad you liked it! experiences loss too.Most people had no clue that American There is a philosophic thread of living “Africa is the world of many sorrows,”forces were active in West Africa until the for the moment, not being certain of an says Emma. Are you ever concernedrecent Niger deaths. I’m sure not many afterlife: “The past was done and the about reproducing a stereotyped view ofpeople know that slavery exists in future uncertain.” Where does that good versus evil in a geopolitical way?Mauritania. Do you want your books to emerge from in Emma and is it How do you counter that?have an educational as well as entertain- something you share with her? That quote is not about evil, but aboutment value? Like most people, I’m always planning while disease—Caldridge is discussing a character’sThe book is fiction, so not intended to be grappling with the day. But in the past few wife that has died of either malaria or H.I.V.factual, but it does mention that slavery was years I’ve been confronted with the deaths of and she is commenting on those scourges.banned by Mauritania in 1981 (the practice my parents, both quite healthy one day and Caldridge has battled evil actors worldwide,was made a crime in 2007), and the country then diagnosed with cancer and Alzheimer’s including in the United States, and the booksis grappling with the same human-trafficking the next, and it hammered home the fact that are not meant to be geopolitical treatises onissues that many countries worldwide are the future is not within your control. Now I try crime, which is everywhere. In all of thembattling. The United States consults or assists to live more in the moment while still planning she’s helped by locals. In this one she isaround the world, so that aspect of the book is a way to pay the bills and build a future. It’s a helped by a crew consisting of men, women,believable. While I try to get some facts right, tough balance, but I’m working on it. teenagers, Africans from different countriesthe basis of any thriller novel is fiction not on the continent, foreigners, and, my personalfactual, and the fiction is what is expanded You write convincingly about loss— favorites, two elderly Senegalese womeninto a story. specifically about Emma’s dear friend. that help her not once, but twice. It’s not what usually comes up in thrillers.How do you research? Do you visit any This made me wonder about audience. Jackson Rand has a touch of Big Badof the places you write about or do you Who reads your books and where? Pharma—but he turns out to be moreresearch from the internet? The end is My audience consists of thriller readers complicated. Similarly, Darkview (whosuch a convincing, exciting blow ‘em up worldwide, because the Ludlum books I write I assume is modeled on Blackwater) isscene—how do you do that? are published in a lot of different countries. I’m not clearly cast. Why?It’s a mixture of travel and research, but the glad you liked that scene. It was almost cut as Both are doing what they must to help others.bulk requires research, because though I’ve being not pertinent to the events in the book. Darkview is a contract security company butvisited many places that I write about, a tourist I kept it because I think most readers have is also forced to work within boundaries andcan only scratch the surface during their short dealt with the loss of a loved one and have does. Banner is a military man and Jacksonstay in an area. The last scene was another been helped through hard times by others, Rand a billionaire and I wanted this book toIN THE FORMER BOOKMAN’S ALLEY SPACE AT Live at The Book Cellar 1712 SHERMAN AVE, EVANSTON Storytime with Miss Jamie! Photos with Santa at 11am Holiday Shopping Can Still be Fun Stories with Santa at 6pm at Bookends & Beginnings! December 1, 11am December 9 Visit us Rachel Holtzman Thursday, 12/7 from 5-8 pm on Jeff Cioletti “Recipe for a Cookbook: Evanston’s Warm Bevvy Walk A Behind the Scenes Look at “The Drinkable Globe” How Cookbooks Are Made” Event with tasting Sunday, 12/17 from 3-4 pm for live jazz by the December 1, 7pm December 13, 7pm Music Institute of Chicago Common Pantry Toy Drive Shop Late in Lincoln Square And shop our 2017 Holiday Catalog December 2 and 3, 11am with dozens of great gift selections, December 14, 6-10pm Michael Kostroff in-store or online at TallGrass Writers “Audition Psych 101” Guild readings www.bookendsandbeginnings.com December 2, 7pm December 14, 7pm CALL 224.999.7722 FOR DETAILS Book Cellar Book Club Publisher Night Stephanie Strohm Learn about publisher reps’ “Prince in Disguise” favorite picks December 19, 7pm All Welcome December 6, 7pm Closing at 2pm Elizabeth Berg December 24 “The Story of Arthur Truluv” Closed for Christmas December 7, 7pm December 25 and 26 The Kates!! 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show that crime can touch everyone no matter “Blood Run” by Jamie Freveletti, Calexia Press, I’ll Be Your Mirror how rich they are or how well armed. The key 360 pages, $16 A hybrid collection, David Lazar’s “I’ll Be to survival in this book is cooperation by many. Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms,” includes Jamie Freveletti reads with James Rollins on short memoirs, erudite essays and aphorisms, There were a couple of quirky moments December 10, 5pm at Volumes Bookcafe, weaving together surreal and disparate about your minor character, e.g.; the 1474 North Milwaukee, (773)697-8066. reflections on relationships, family and habits. nineteen-year-old Daoud from Minnesota Reviews These divergent pieces and styles speak to who gets roped into war because the disjointed nature of memory and the \"teenagers are stupid” and the drag queen fragmented essence of human experience. Vic in a green dress. How do you envisage What We Build Upon the Ruins It’s this sense of disconnection that holds the the back stories of your characters? Dipping a toe in Giano Cromley’s new medley together. We all contend in our own That quote is some dialogue between a collection of stories “What We Build Upon the lives with what doesn’t appear to fit on the couple of teenagers who are sparring and one Ruins” feels so welcoming that you slip right in. surface and it’s this familiar feeling that allows us to shuffle along with the writer from one calls the other stupid, but both are assisting So beautifully written, so relatable; and then everyone to escape, and Vic is a theater actor you realize the water is toxic, there are leeches. experience to another while still keeping our You are altered, but you can’t get out, you just hands and feet inside the ride. caught up in the war. In this story, I wanted to show how war can sweep up everyone in have to finish. And you will enjoy it anyway, just as his characters survive the pain of their The deeply personal essays of the book’s first its path from many ages and walks of life, choices or the hand they were dealt, if scarred. leg are doused with a mixture of humor and including a traveling theater troupe and two guilt and worry over the jagged edges of teenagers from different backgrounds. what love has wrought both individually and This is your seventh novel. How is it When I was growing up, there was a family collectively. “I spend half my days sitting different writing your own creation across the street that seemed cursed—with around waiting for a knock on the door, cancer, child suicide and early widowhood. compared to writing the Robert Ludlum The survivors had no choice but to mourn and someone standing there with a paper full of “Covert One” series? Is there a formula? tough out some healing after their family unit’s accusations,” the author admits. His topics range from his This may surprise many readers, but there amputations. How shitty, dead ex-lover to is no formula that I’m aware of, nor was I I thought, that they were terrifying dreams, ever told how to write or what direction to the “lucky ones” still left. insomnia to lead the characters. The only caveat for Cromley’s afflicted, Pandora’s Box; Ludlum was that I use the main characters imperfect, mostly blue we jump from that he had created. The whole experience collar, and utterly human subject to subject has been great and the Ludlum readers have cast is stung by grief, as if we are in been gracious to me as well. I really enjoy ignorance, perversion and Lazar’s head, writing the series. weakness. The characters leaping mid- try to do the best they can, When can we expect an Emma Caldridge but they can’t help who thought off the movie franchise to shift focus away they are and therefore problems that from Bourne and his ilk? High time for can’t help but suffer what pepper these a woman to take center screen? happens to them. introspective As a woman thriller writer writing a strong compositions female protagonist, I would love to have the This collection opens onto others we character picked up and made into a film. with part one of a triptych knew not of. The recent success of the “Wonder Woman” about a young family trying Part two appeals movie is a help, because films are so to recover from tragedy, to the reader’s expensive to make and that movie really this one told from the older own experiences showed that a strong female character can son’s perspective. They in order for the be successful both critically and commercially. blindly try to move on, writer to justify or In fact, there’s so much being done in film each in their own way, but to better under- and on television now that both mediums the boy realizes, “What stand his own: “Let are delivering interesting and diverse stories happened to our sister me whisper in your and it’s an exciting time to be a writer! would always be at the ear. It’s just the two What is your writing practice? center of our lives. My of us. Come on, family, the four of us now, you can tell me. Or rather, it’s okay, I can tell I try to write one-thousand words a day, five would be planets forever revolving around you. The confession. After all, I’m writing about days a week, but sometimes life takes over that moment.” The other two parts of their myself, and my subject is really important, and I can’t do that. But when I do sit down story weave a tale of grief and bonding, with right?” Lazar asks in “To the Reader, Sincerely,” I don’t stop until at least a thousand words humor and unease as they navigate the a two-sided conversation conducted by only are written. I write on the second floor of my aftermath of loss. one end of the equation. house in a corner of my bedroom with a window on my left shoulder and a view of There is an honesty and a humanity in each of these characters, even the most depraved, The final section presents aphorisms on God,Newcity DECEMBER 2017 a Chicago alley. It works for me! mothers, us all: “Everyone loves you for the What’s next for you? and when their horrible secrets are revealed less bothersome version of who you used to or even just hinted at, you wince but find be,” the author suggests. Because as time, I’m working on the next in the Emma you’ve been pulled in and can’t help caring about them. We all have friends who’ve made like this essay collection, stacks on itself, Caldridge series and I’ve also been asked there’s always more material to mine. The to contribute to an anthology of Sherlock terrible mistakes, and have sometimes been Holmes stories that is due to publish in 2018. those people, and in this collection we are in deeper we dig the more we wish for simpler times. (Amy Strauss Friedman) I’m also writing a screenplay and in discus- good, if shadowed, company. (Kate Burns) sions to shoot the film. Tess Gerritsen recently produced her own screenplay, (the woman is “What We Build Upon the Ruins: And Other “I’ll Be Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms” amazing) and she inspired me to give it a try. Stories” by Giano Cromley, Tortoise Books, I’ll keep you posted! by David Lazar, University of Nebraska Press, 162 pages, $12.99 238 pages, $22.9560
Music Todd RundgrenMUSIC TOP 51 Jay-Z. United Center. Return The superstar rapper tours to Gender his phenomenal new album“4:44”—not a response to wife Todd Rundgren and Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” but Rufus Wainwright’s an equally powerful personal Elastic Masculinity testament. December 5 By Robert Rodi2 Elliot Moss. SPACE. The twenty-one-year-old prodigy When I saw that Todd Rundgren was essentially interchangeable with “We gotta get DECEMBER 2017 Newcity has built a dazzling repertoire of playing Park West this month, I decided to you a weekend in Cozumel” or “We gotta get tunes that manage to be both take a spin through his extensive body of work you a six-pack and a steak on the grill.” Pick compellingly minimalist and to reacquaint myself with his oeuvre. Which isn’t you right up, Leroy, old salt. Just you wait. gorgeously textured. December 2 so easily done; Rundgren’s a restless talent hard to pin down, and over the past forty-odd But while 1971 is long enough gone to have3 Bebel Gilberto. City years he’s ranged everywhere from bossa nova jettisoned any broad-based acceptance of Winery. The beguiling, to EDM. Rundgren’s appalling imagery, it isn’t long second-generation bossa nova enough gone to have jettisoned Rundgren virtuoso has recontextualized the But the most significant surprise came from a himself. He’s still around, still writing lyrics, enduring genre for postmillennial song relatively early in his career: 1971’s pop hit, still recording them. The question then: how audiences. December 19 and 20 “We Gotta Get You a Woman.” And the surprise different is he from his callow 1971 self? As the was entirely of the how-the-hell-did-anyone- world evolves, has he kept pace?4 Kaiju Daiko & Chikoto think-this-was-okay variety. The song (still Taiku. Old Town School ridiculously catchy after all these decades) finds It’s a question that might be asked of any of the of Folk Music. Hard to think of Rundgren serenading his dejected friend Leroy male rockers who over the decades have a better antidote to saccharine with the resolution, “We gotta get you a woman produced cringeworthy misogynist anthems holiday music than the lean, / It’s like nothin’ else to make you feel sure (Mick Jagger sinuously gloating “Under My muscular, percussive repertoire you’re alive.” Granted, this was just a trickle Thumb”; Sting crooning the creepy stalker of these Japanese folk past the cusp of the seventies, when feminism anthem “Every Breath You Take.\" But Rundgren ensembles. December 13 was still a set-up for late-night talk-show jokes; is a more complicated animal from his bet- but like so many things about the period (casual ter-known colleagues. He’s at least as success-5 Angel Olsen. Riviera racism, blithe homophobia and that whole ful as a producer as he is a performer, and the Theatre. The singer- genocidal-bombing-in-Cambodia thing), it dissonance between the Apollonian domain of songwriter’s impressive range shocks us well-meaning twenty-first-century the engineer’s booth (a realm of precision, incorporates everything from folk that anyone could ever get behind some- calibration and control) and the Dionysian arena whispery soprano and country thing like this. I mean, yes, we post-millennials of the performer (a literal stage for intuition, invo- swagger to audacious post- recently elected a sexual predator to the White cation and catharsis), is sufficient to lend his punk. December 9 House, but dammit, Todd Rundgren is a records an elaborate duality. Even his best work sensitive singer-songwriter—he’s supposed to manages to be both irresistibly accessible and be one of the good guys. And here he is talking too smart for its own good. Which is, admittedly, about women like they’re a consumer prod- exactly the kind of thing some of us love. My uct—“We gotta get you a woman” being point is, if anyone can shake off the libertine 61
excesses of the strutting, late- I can’t help comparing it to a song twentieth-century rock-and-roll by another artist who’s in town this satyr, it’s this guy. month: “The Art Teacher” by Rufus Wainwright (from his 2004 album And it seems a suddenly urgent “Want Two”), also written from a question, given the recent public female point of view, but which outing—pulling back the curtain Wainwright elected to sing himself. on decades of past abuse— “There I was in uniform,” he croons of misogynist monsters of the over a strikingly spare piano Trump, James Toback and Harvey arrangement—just a series of Weinstein variety. Rundgren is fluttering, descending chords in scarcely in that cretinous class; the treble clef—“Looking at the art he’s just a guy who once wrote teacher / I was just a girl then / about women like you’d write Never have I loved since then.” about cars. But his current point of Wainwright doesn’t self-conscious- view is important because if he’s ly play a character, or alter his tone come around, it means the more or register to be more feminine; he toxic extreme of the culture has just flat-out sings from the heart, the potential to do the same. and overrides any demographic disconnect to hit square at the Fortunately, Rundgren released center of universal loss and longing. an album earlier this year, so we have a recent reflection of his Granted, Wainwright has had less mindset to go by. And let me just of a road to travel than Rundgren say right off the bat that “White to get to the point where he’s Knight” is a very Todd Rundgren comfortable channeling a female album, in that the production persona. He is, after all, a quar- values are so lavish, they might ter-century younger, not to mention have been layered on with a gay, and he was brought up in frosting knife. “White Knight” is possibly the most famous matriar- also an agreeably collegial album. chy in entertainment history. His Instead of presenting himself as mother and aunt, Kate and Anna a grizzled, iconoclastic loner, McGarrigle of the legendary Rundgren’s invited a whole posse Canadian folk duo The McGarrigle of his peers (a few of them women) Sisters, co-founded a musical to come by and collaborate. dynasty that is overwhelmingly female (comprising Rufus’ sister The woman question, however, Martha Wainwright, his cousin remains problematic. “Naked & Lily Lanken and his aunt Jane Afraid” is a song about a man-de- McGarrigle). To any feminist vouring temptress, a black widow firebrand accusing him of gender who leaves “graveyards full of appropriation, I’d have to ask: how bodies / Of those who disbelieve.” could the guy not have an insight Rundgren has said his inspiration into women’s inner lives? for the tune is Tina Turner in “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” so But Wainwright isn’t a rock star; perhaps we shouldn’t take it he’s generally tagged as a folk-pop entirely seriously; it’s about a balladeer, though in essence he’s camped-up, cartoon version of really an art-song composer, a a female. And while the dragon- pomo incarnation of Samuel lady stereotype is more than a tad Barber or Ned Rorem—or for that hoary, Rundgren at least gives said matter, Franz Schubert or Robert dragon lady her own voice within Schumann. The misogynist the tune, courtesy of guest artist swagger of the rock ‘n’ roll rake Bettye Lavette. isn’t any part of his inheritance.Newcity DECEMBER 2017 Ah, but then there’s “That Could In a perfect world, then? Well, Have Been Me,” which Rundgren much as I love Robyn’s vocals on writes entirely from a woman’s “It Could Have Been Me,” I’d have point of view—and even more liked it better had Rundgren sung it fortuitously, gives to the beguiling himself. Maybe he will, on the Park Swedish pop vocalist Robyn to West stage. Or maybe, on the sing. It’s an achingly affecting off-chance Rufus Wainwright is still portrayal of a woman leaving her in town, he’ll swing on over and distant, emotionally remote lover have a go at it. Just to show how with an equal measure of regret it’s done. and disdain: “That empty pillow by your side / That could have Rufus Wainwright: December 3, been me.” It’s a poignant indict- 7:30pm at North Shore Center for ment of male inaccessibility, and it the Performing Arts , Skokie and ends up being the best track on Todd Rundgren: December 16-17, the album. 7pm at Park West.62
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Stage Dorothy Humphrey and Mary Kate Young in “The Portrait STAGE TOP 5 of Dorian Gray” a co-production between Pop Magic and The Runaways Lab Theatre/Photo: Mike Rivera 1 Little Red Cyrano. Red Theater Chicago. Dramatic Revolution Combining Cyrano de Bergerac with Red Riding The State of DIY Theater In Chicago Hood, this new play mixes whip-smart spoken dialogue, By Danielle Levsky swashbuckling and romance.Newcity DECEMBER 2017 When it comes to defining DIY theater, the Gannon Reedy. “We just want it on our terms Opens December 1 answers and depictions vary from company and explored in a different context.” to company and person to person. 2 Altar Boyz. Theo Reedy believes it’s possible to retain what makes Ubique Cabaret With an already large and still-growing DIY music theater exciting and accessible while also Theatre. A musical comedy scene, it comes as no surprise that DIY theater experimenting with the platform and figuring out about a fictitious Christian plays a significant role in how Chicago artists what draws people in. As founder and former boy-band on the last night choose to orient their work. The freedom of artistic director of the Runaways, Olivia Lilley also of their national “Raise creative and artistic expression is coupled with thinks that DIY theater goes against the grain of the Praise” tour. Opens the comfort of a community. Many spaces and traditionalism within theater. She is currently the December 4 venues rent out or make themselves available to creative director and co-founder of Pop Magic burgeoning artists. Productions, which focuses on creating events 3 Turandot. Lyric Opera that are attended “as often and as casually as a of Chicago. The final “One of the reasons I’m in Chicago is that there’s bar or club.” work of Giacomo Puccini’s an enthusiasm and hunger for new kinds of career showcases the work,” Walkabout Theater Company artistic “DIY theater is making theater in the recession,” composer’s magnificent director Thom Pasculli says. “There is something says Lilley. “The traditional elements of theater melodic outpourings. about the DIY movement right now.” Walkabout are relics from a dead time. What do we have to focuses on performing “new site-specific and lose by changing it up and making sure people Opens December 5 experimental work in Chicago, challenging are engaged?” traditional theatrical models.” 4 Red Velvet. Chicago Nothing Without A Company’s co-artistic director Shakespeare Theater. In theater, there is a pattern of what is expect- Anna Rose Ii-Epstein finds that the term “DIY The story of Ira Aldridge, ed: The audience walks into a space. The theater” is misleading because, she believes it the first black actor to audience receives programs. The audience should be “DIT: Do It Together.” perform on the stages of enters into another space. The audience has London’s West End. Opens a place to observe. The actors have a place Nothing Without A Company focuses on bringing December 1 to perform. Everything is designated by “theater works to Chicago in non-traditional these patterns. spaces.” Co-artistic director Hannah Ii-Epstein 5 BLKS. Steppenwolf finds that there is a passion behind DIY theater Theatre Company. The Runaways Lab Theatre identifies as a that isn’t present in other forms. “There’s that Poet Aziza Barnes’ theater company that “produces work free extra layer of contact, that extra connection,” ingenious portrait of a day from the expectations of traditional theatrical she says. “We come up with ideas of things you in the life of four young black performance.” can’t buy anywhere. There’s a layer of rawness. women discovering life’s There’s a collaborative nature to it.” She finds that uncomfortable truths in “We understand all these designations but they’re in her company’s shows, there is little separation New York City. Opens not always necessary,” explains artistic director between the audience and the actor. For both December 1864
parties they try to create an inclusive and Lilley, in her work at the Runaways and also at is allowed to do what and where.” open environment. Pop Magic, has often devised and worked within her group of artists-actors to create a Nothing Without A Company found that DIY Pasculli believes that DIY theater is a culture, show. “In my early work, I saw myself more as venues often have accessibility issues. For the a way of working and living that moves toward a director with found text, with actors who future of DIY theater, Hannah Ii-Epstein hopes a holistic approach. “This includes the self as helped create it,” she says. that space and tools can be acquired more an individual, as a vibrant being, and the easily. Anna Rose Ii-Epstein finds that it is audience, who wants to be included in Anna-Rose Ii-Epstein similarly describes how possible to transition to a high-scale space more of the experience than just the finished different members of Nothing Without A though there are complications if a company product,” he says. “Rather than just show you Company may think of a concept, get in a wants to remain truly independent. the best parts of a performance, DIY includes space with collaborators and work on a you in the process. DIY theater artists try to structured improvisation of the concept. “DIY doesn’t feel sloppy at all, but rather raw create a theatrical space but they also manage and intentional,” Pasculli says. “We need to to involve the audience through an artistic Rabid Bat Theatricals is a group of artists who mess up some of the institutions before we process and lifestyle.” put their passion and love into creating theater can rebuild them. And the way communities that is “accessible, entertaining [and] communi- ping off of each other, there’s a cross discipline Pasculli notes that the space for different roles ty-forming.” The ensemble members collabo- and cultural inspiration happening.” for artists is more flexible in DIY theater as rate openly through their work, though they see opposed to traditional storefront and black themselves more as a group of friends working The act of DIY theater itself can be seen as box theaters. on a passion project, rather than an institution. subversive, as a political statement. To study theater traditionally only to forego the path to“In traditional models, there is this intense Rabid Bat Theatricals seeks out spaces where convention, producing instead often non- specialization of artistic roles,” he says. their audience members will already be. Their lucrative work minimizes the priority of money,“Your job is economically efficient and clearly relationship with Chicago Park District has a factor of considerable consideration in defined when you walk in the door. A more allowed them to perform in parks for people the theater world. “The content of the work non-traditional model of collaboration allows who didn’t expect that they would be seeing a doesn’t have to be political at all,” says Pasculli, for a crossover between production, collabora- show. The goal has been to make theater “The form itself is political. The act of doing it is tion and artistry. It changes how we think more accessible. the revolution.” about ownership.” “If you look at theater in the twentieth century, There is no single agreed-upon definition ofThough there may be discrepancies about much of it was reserved for a specific DIY. And yet, the collective nature of it, the what space means to individual DIY theater subsection of class, race and cultural non-traditional approach to staging and the artists, there seems to be a consensus on how background,” explains ensemble member Ned desire to involve each artist and audience they approach the artists they work with and Baker. “I hope that people will continue to member in the creative process, echoes the audiences they perform for. challenge strict rules and expectations on who through its practitioners.
Newcity DECEMBER 2017 Life is BeautifulBy David Alvarado66
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