Performing Arts This Weekend
The Brig
Through 5/26: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PMTheater & Performance
Kenneth H. Brown's meticulous depiction of a day in a Marine prison camp caused a sensation when it premiered at New York's Living Theater in 1963. The guards' unrelenting, systematic dehumanization of their fellow Marine prisoners is appalling, especially since the abuse seems intended to instill loyalty to the Corps. And Brown's near-total eschewal of plot—the maltreatment goes on until it simply stops—removes any comforting fictive filter between audience and action. Wisely, director Jennifer Markowitz does nothing to make her Mary-Arrchie production enjoyable. Her actors endure an hour of exhausting physical drills while we watch from various uncomfortable locations. As movement theater, it's grotesquely beautiful; as a glimpse into the darkest recesses of male psychology, it's sickening. —Justin Hayford $25
If You Split a Second
Through 6/2: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Tue 5/7, 7 PM, and Sat 5/18, 3 PMTheater & Performance
Premiering at Pegasus Players, Dana Lynn Formby's play contains plenty of interesting elements: six characters played by two actors, an intriguing premise (one character alters everyone's destiny when, in a fit of anger, he kills his brother-in-law). There's even an intellectually challenging underlying question: How much control do we have over our lives when a split-second decision can change everything? What a shame Formby is never able to pull all this together into a moving, coherent story with relatable characters who grow over the play's two hours. This despite Ilesa Duncan's strong direction, and, in Stephanie Chavara and Dylan McGorty, a cast adept at quickly and gracefully transforming from one character to another. —Jack Helbig $25
Closing Time and The Imminent Future
Through 6/30: Sun 8 PMTheater & Performance
Closing Time is a noir crime drama; The Imminent Future follows two friends traveling through postapocalyptic America. $8-12
Uptown Poetry Slam
Sundays, 7 p.m.Spoken Word/Poetry Slams/Open Mikes
Featuring open mike, special guests, and end-of-the-night competition. $6
Skinprov
Open run: Sat midnightImprov/Sketch
Unlike its all-female sister production, Late Night Tit-Bits, this all-male combination improv and strip show features no burlesque. In fact, it's a stretch to say the guys even do striptease. Nonchalantly removing one piece of clothing at a time over the course of several quick, usually nonsexual two-person scenes, they get down to bare buns as unseductively as possible. Yet they're not going for man-boob or tighty-whitey laughs, either. Though these guys aren't the Chippendales, they're in pretty good shape, and a few are downright hunkish. The result is an awkward situation where the nakedness and comedy distract from each other, discouraging us from fully enjoying either one. --Ryan Hubbard $7
Triple Feature
Open run: Wed 8 PM
773-561-4665Theater & Performance
Three original 20-minute shows. $5
Homolatte
First and third Tue of month, 7:30 PMSpoken Word/Poetry Slams/Open Mikes
With Scott Free, featuring gay and lesbian spoken-word artists.
