Performing Arts Search
The Hunting of the Snark
Through 5/28: Sun-Tue 8 PMTheater & Performance
Lewis Carroll's 1874 poem, about a boatload of ill-prepared would-be huntsmen tracking a never seen but possibly deadly creature, may be a heavily coded memorial to his uncle, a lunatic-asylum inspector killed by a patient a few months before the poem's creation. Or it may be pure nonsense. Whatever it is, its exacting rhyme scheme creates a giddy tension between formality and fancy, giving the cryptic work its power. Director Josh Sobel packs ample Carrollesque fancy into Strawdog Theatre Company's 50-minute adaptation, his childlike 12-person cast embarking on spontaneous adventures and inventing ingenious images out of suitcases, bits of rope, and handheld lights. But they play the silliness, never the seriousness—forgetting that Carroll himself delivered whimsy with an unwavering poker face. —Justin Hayford $15
Shaping Sound
Tue 5/28, 8 PMDance
Choreographers and dancers combine music and movement in a unique form of visual art. $39-$89
Sexomedy
Wed., May 29, 7:30 p.m.Theater & Performance
Melissa DuPrey understands what few of us are willing to admit: sex is fucking hilarious. In her comic monologue Sexomedy, DuPrey shares her most embarrassing—and hairy—sexual experiences. Reader contributor Justin Hayford writes that "DuPrey's clear-eyed comedy is as necessary as it is transgressive."
$15
Sexomedy
Through 5/29: Wed 7:30 PMTheater & Performance
Forty-one years after the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, a publicity-seeking moron can still get serious attention by equating contraception with sexual deviance. So God knows what sort of uproar Melissa DuPrey may create with this candid, hilarious, hypersexual monologue. DuPrey spends 60 shame-free minutes chronicling every action, fantasy, and object that gets her off—including the office copier. She details her glorious bodily imperfections (e.g., hairy B-cup breasts that are "80 percent nipple") and laments the men who make her "pussy frown" (such as the one who approached her hairy asshole as though hacking through underbrush). In a culture that perpetually cloaks the specifics of sexual pleasure under euphemism and moralism, DuPrey's clear-eyed comedy is as necessary as it is transgressive. —Justin Hayford $15
The TomKat Project
Through 5/29: Wed 8 PMTheater & Performance
If any anecdote sounds too incredible to be true in this ambitious and thoroughly entertaining examination of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes marital saga, writer Brandon Ogborn is here to clarify: a sign reading "This is VERBATIM dialogue" is held up during some particularly implausible scenes, which in addition to the titular pair may involve Scientology honcho David Miscavige, Holmes's family, Oprah, or any of about 50 others. Director Elly Green's keen and restrained troupe—Walt Delaney, in particular, nails Cruise's enigmatic, aloof energy—uses both specificity and irreverence to sift meaning from tabloid fragments and express them as pop-culture writers already know they should be: high theater of the absurd. —Dan Jakes $15
The Bachelors
Wed 5/29, 7 PMTheater & Performance
The staged reading tells the story of two men in the 30s that form a relationship and a life together, based on the original staging by David Zak. $10
Hump Night
Through 5/29: Wed 7:30 and 10:30 PMImprov/Sketch
Kevin Mullaney hosts this improv-based variety show, which features local comedians and musicians. pay what you want
I Shit You Not
May 30, 8 p.m.Stand-Up
Comedy show telling stories of various bodily malfunctions and other tales of comedic disgust. $5
Dada Gert
Through 5/31: Thu-Fri 7:30 PMDance
Annie Arnoult Beserra, head of Striding Lion Performance Group, fell in love with Valeska Gert in 2005, when, as a grad school student, she saw recently released archival footage of Gert's dance solos. "She was so raw and riddled and vibrant," Beserra says. "There was such life in her embodiment of horrors." Born in 1892 in Berlin, dancer-writer-composer-singer-actress. Gert was blacklisted by the early 1930s, for the crime of being a Jew making avant-garde art. That was far from the end of her colorful career, but Beserra chose the Weimar era as the setting of her new, promenade-style, hour-long Dada Gert. Captivated by Gert's "100 percent blend of dance and theater," Beserra created a piece that isn't always easy to watch—the seven performers make faces, scream, and strike grotesque poses. But Dada Gert vividly portrays both the artist and the forces that worked against her. Projections of archival photos and videos set the scene, as does the music, featuring Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, and Gert herself. Repeated movements—a bounding Charleston, or hips thrust forward with hands splayed near the crotch—knit the piece together. Thirty-five years after this self-declared witch died, Beserra brings her vibrantly to life. —Laura Molzahn $10-$20
Falling Man
Through 5/31: Fri 9 PMTheater & Performance
In five monologues by Big Love creator Will Scheffer, gay men recount falling in love, and in each case the love is remarkable for its flammability; fire analogies pervade this production. In "Alien Boy," Glenn Abel portrays a hyperintelligent 13-year-old Jewish boy who hopes the "devastatingly attractive Nazis in the movies" will save him from his sexuality. Eric Frederickson, as a veteran hustler ruminating on the night Tennessee Williams's soul leaped into his body, gave a positively ticklish rendition of the playwright's southern cackle and drawl in "Tennessee and Me." Andrew Hodson, as "Jeffrey Dahmer," could just as well have been "punk Hamlet channeling Christ." Nonetheless, the rest of the cast have enormous success kindling the spark of a queer personality into memorable characters. —Jena Cutie $20
The Improvised Sondheim Project
Through 5/31: Fri 10:30 PMImprov/Sketch
Last spring, five Second City faculty members inaugurated a troupe devoted to Stephen Sondheim. The mission? To dream up Sondheimesque musicals on the spot. One year later, the gambit has paid off. Their tribute trades a stable plot for riffs on characters and themes; their lyrics testify to their knack for internal rhyming. "Birthday" was the audience suggestion on the night I attended. The opening fanfare rapidly devolved into a cacophony of voices. After the prologue wrapped, the players introduced the show's central cog, Geraldine, a fresh-eyed high school dropout from Ohio who's trying her luck on Broadway. In Sondheim style, there's an absurd conceit: she intends to make it on the street, not onstage, handing out flyers—a job with more potential for rejection than a Broadway career. —Jena Cutie $15
Chicken Little
Through 5/31: Mon-Fri 10:30 AMTheater & Performance
A children's tale about a young chicken who believes the sky is falling and gathers his friends to tell the king. Showtimes vary. See website for full schedule. $12
Tashie's Choice
Through 5/31: Fri 7:30 PMTheater & Performance
Tashie begins her life story from the vantage of an opinionated four-year-old Missouri girl. Nurtured by Montessori preschool, gushing about her "boyfriend," her first modest awareness of taboo comes when she realizes she can't wear her favorite pajamas outside even though they make her feel most alive. An absurd home life and prohibitions at her new Lutheran Synod elementary conduct Tashie through a series of obsessions and humiliations. She emerges a self-proclaimed misfit—a "Greek ape in a Lutheran zoo"—obstinately independent and secure until tragedy strikes. Natasha Tsoutsouris's self-deprecation is comically evocative—in a too-tight theatrical costume, she's "a sausage jammed in a mitten"—but her vulgarity seems forced, and too often her growing pains focus on what she wore in the world as much as what she thought about it. —Jena Cutie
Next Up 2013
Through 6/16Theater & Performance
Wouldn't it be awesome if, 15 years into the future, you could brag to your fellow theater geeks that you were there when John Michael DiResta, Erin Murray, and David Prete directed their first plays? These three recent Northwestern MFA grads will be featured in Steppenwolf's Next Up 2013 repertory.
$20 per performance
1624 N. Halsted St.
Old Town
312-335-1650
