EXPERIENCEKetan Patel

MBA 595 – Got Creativity?

February 16, 2011

WHERE? THE FLAT IRON ARTS BUILDING

STUDIO 332

Ticket counter

Collaboraction: Entrance, platform

seating

Bar

PROGRAM GUIDE

AMBIENCE

WHAT? – REVERB SKETCHBOOK

HOW

Unique costumes and wardrobes Simple sets Audio visual – screen and projector Some props 8 sketches with two 5-minuter intervals in

between sets of 3 sketches Comedy, Satire, Witty, Brilliant, entertaining 2 sketches could be eliminated – Fat Charlie

and Hitler’s Untimely Death - annoying

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES ARTICLECollaboraction has been on the move for most of its existence, shifting stages from the Chopin Theatre to the

Steppenwolf Garage to a West Loop restaurant and beyond. Now, this playfully hip and experimental operation has come to rest in a more permanent home in the Flat Iron Building, that maze of galleries and studio spaces in the bustling Wicker Park neighborhood.

And to celebrate its new home, as well as the 10th season of its Sketchbook project — the company’s always-lively annual showcase of short works that runs the gamut of styles and subject matter — it has devised “Reverb.” It is an eclectic anthology of eight favorite pieces from years past, all energetically “re-directed” by Anthony Moseley. Six of the eight are truly worth revisiting. A good score.

Lisa Dillman’s “Yeti Dreams” (a yeti is an apelike creature from the Himalayan region) is laugh-out-loud funny as it chronicles, in the most hilarious terms, the love affair between an ordinary young woman, Christine (Laura Shatkus is wonderful here), and the big, hairy, primal beast she finds wandering around her backyard. Christine lures the beast to her door by laying down a path of Pringles, and they have great sex. But not surprisingly he eventually morphs into a more civilized guy, and with that comes a certain loss of passion. Such is life, and the nature of male-female relationships, all delineated in less than 10 minutes.

Drew Dir’s “The Lurker Radio Hour” also deals with romance in an exceedingly clever way. Set in an old-fashioned radio studio, it features an Orson Welles-like actor, Stever Larker (James Zoccoli nails the type), who enacts a melodramatic, quasi-autobiographical story in the wake of his busted marriage. His obviously enamored assistant Alice (Amy Speckian is utterly beguiling in her wide-eyed yearning as she works the many sound effects of her Foley table and even riffs on a saxophone) does everything in her power to entice him.

Ellen Fairey’s wistful tale “Tuning in El Paso” gives us a girl, Edie (the lovely Lillian Almaguer), whose parents are estranged. She and her depressive mother left Dad back in Michigan, and now Edie spends her days watching her Texas neighbor Mr. Garcia (Dan Stearns), whose wife has left him, and who is probably just as lonely and sad as Edie’s own dad back home.

A decidedly more adult (literally end-of-romance) tale can be found in Stephen Cone’s “I’ll Never Tell You.” Here, a man (HB Ward is bluntly terrific) sits beside the embalmed body of his wife and makes a full and graphic confession of his sexual infidelities. The whole thing is at once hilarious and pitiful and tawdry, and it comes with an ending that adds quite a ghoulish and brilliant twist.

A more technology-oriented end-of-romance tale comes in the form of Ira Gamerman’s witty “Dated: A Cautionary Tale for Facebook Users,” in which a jilted young man (Dan Krall is right on target here, bathrobe and all) recounts his passage from boyfriend to “unfriended” and beyond.

The curtain raiser for the program is “The Deep Blue Sea,” by Keith Huff, whose full-length play “A Steady Rain” earned fame and fortune on Broadway a couple of seasons back. A strange and poetic little meditation on love, sacrifice and wonderment, it captures two deep-sea engineers (played by Alice Wedoff and Stearns) in a love-death moment.

Andrew Hobgood’s “A Domestic Disturbance at Little Fat Charlie’s Seventh Birthday Party” is a shrill and tiresome tale of a dysfunctional family. And Andy Grigg’s program closer, “The Untimely Death of Adolf Hitler” — about trying to stop calamitous episodes of history and getting something even worse — is annoying sci-fi stuff mixed with simplistic philosophy. But these are two annoyances in an otherwise zesty evening.

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/weiss/3858331-452/collaboractions-hits-resonate-more-than-misses-with-reverb.html

MAZE OF GALLERIES

FINAL THOUGHTS

Very different from traditional theatre shows Casual environment in relaxing atmosphere Lot of socializing among spectators Simple yet very fitting sets and props

Deep blue – truly made me feel that us, the spectators were

Draws audience in – very small area of stage