When Ron OJ Parson, resident artist at Court Theatre, looks in the mirror, he sees an athlete forever young in the guise of a middle-aged stage director. "The discipline you learn in sports definitely carries over into theater," declares Parson, who at fiftysomething still chases down fly balls in the Chicago Theater Softball League.

The Buffalo (NY).... Read More

It's not uncommon for Hollywood to shape movies around non-acting celebrities—swimming stories for Esther Williams, opera stories for Luciano Pavorotti—and in theater, the currently-running Death and Harry Houdini at House Theatre was created to showcase the company's resident illusionist, Dennis Watkins. The hero of Lookingglass Theatre's Rick Bayless In Cascabel, however, is a cook. Not just any.... Read More

Some people are just touched by God. They are amiable, kind, and relentlessly watchable onstage. One of our heroes in Chicago is the great Gene Weygandt. A man who got his start in theatre in Chicago and has moved his way up to performing one of the classic roles of our time, "The Wizard" in Stephen Schwartz's musical.... Read More

Humor based in male body functions have been a part of popular comedy for centuries—indeed, during the 1990s, the legendary Torso Theatre forged a reputation for plays featuring precisely such anal-infantile imagery—but the fashion nowadays is for women getting in touch with their grosser selves. Not just any women, either—in Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage, it's the chic.... Read More

In big custom-built theaters, rip-and-throw costume changes are implemented with the aid of hidden dressers, but the room that houses Timeline Theatre's production of Lucy Prebble's Enron is buried in the depths of a church community hall, its in-the-round configuration mandating that the nine actors who play more than two dozen characters frequently exit, only to dash.... Read More

When they come, we must be ready—and not with glib approximations. Our alien visitors will want to know everything about us. They will want honest answers—especially about theater. It's wrong to fool an inquisitive extraterrestrial. They came this far because they care.

As the not-so-top-secret Rockwell files disclose, past star trekkers have been especially interested in why we act.... Read More

It's one of those years. Everybody has a lot going on, and it's hard to get excited about the new seasons of our beloved theatre companies. Maybe we are jaded. We decided to take it to the street and meet up at a Quizno's with a couple youngsters who are the bright future of the scene.
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Collectors, stockpilers, scavengers and archivists all have their limits, but there was nothing to stop the wealthy and privileged Collyer brothers from saving everything, and so they did—living in a house with rooms filled floor-to-ceiling with miscellany acquired over fifty-plus years. Mark Saltzman is the most recent of many writers to find in this eccentric compulsion a lesson.... Read More

Signal Ensemble has become a watershed company here in Chicago. Since 2003, they have established themselves as the go-to place for new and exciting works - whether they were beautiful Midwest premieres of published properties or original works like the smash hit "Aftermath", a jukebox Rolling Stones extravaganza with more on its mind than just amazing rock.... Read More

They call it a "passion project." And if pain proves passion, they're pros. Though abandoned by their original producer, the young thespians of (re)discover theatre have begged and borrowed a lot--rugs, shovels, cars, chairs, tables, and more. Each now does the work of three, contributing their salaries from day jobs and rehearsing in a vast, unheated (but free!).... Read More

The widow Darby is heir to a vast ironworks empire, but rather than relinquish her leadership status through remarriage or delegation, she proposes to manage the business herself—no easy task in the mid-19th century, when men ruled the world of commerce. This independence is not to be shared with her daughter— nicknamed "Little Cog" by her late father—who.... Read More

Timothy Findley's Elizabeth Rex proposes a dialogue between Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth I, and the members of the Lord Chamberlain's Men—William Shakespeare's troupe—on a troubled night when the crown weighs heavily on its wearer. The underlying theme of their discussion, however, is the stress of denying your true nature: The monarch must be unflinching in her.... Read More

TheatreInChicago presents its annual list of the top-rated plays that were produced in the Chicago area in 2011. The list was compiled objectively from critics' reviews, based on the Highly Recommended to Not Recommended scale.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, 2011 was another good year to be a revival of a classic musical in Chicago. Of the twenty-five plays that.... Read More

How do actors act? We know that it involves memorizing speeches and moving around a stage, but what exactly do they do to convince us that they are somebody they aren't?

There are two fundamental ways to proceed when creating a persona: you can determine the character's psychological orientation and use it as a gateway to understanding their actions—Hamlet.... Read More

If the quarry in Joseph Zettelmaier's heist comedy was money, or gold, or diamonds, it would have been no problem—everybody knows that what they see onstage is just gilt paint and glass beads. Ah, but the treasure tempting a quartet of Star Wars fans to the Dark Side in All Childish Things is a warehouse filled with.... Read More

Does Martin McDonagh sit up nights, thinking up extravagant scenic stunts to make the theater technicians who must stage them likewise lose sleep? Scalding fry-pan torture for The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Desiccated human bones smashed with sledge-hammers for A Skull In Connemara. A kitchen stove shotgunned to smithereens for The Lonesome West. Feline corpses and blood-spray shootings.... Read More

Chicago is a pretty good place to be for the holidays. We have Christkindlmarket, a wondrously Teutonic market/fairground in Daley Plaza selling all manner of Christmas tree ornaments and ridiculously detailed hand-carved Bavarian wooden clocks. We have Michigan Avenue, lit up and festive and able to provide enough egregious shop-till-you-dropness for even the most insatiable suburbanite or out-of-towner..... Read More

At the gala 43rd Annual Equity Jeff Awards held at Drury Lane Oakbrook on Monday, November 7, "The Madness of George III," from Chicago Shakespeare Theater, took top honors for a play in the Large Theatre tier with a total of 5 awards, including Production - Play, Director Penny Metropulos and Principal Actor Harry Groener. In musical categories.... Read More

The champion of dramatic binges, we all know, is Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, where for nearly three hours, liquor is swilled in quantities to test the livers of the dramatis personae, and the bladders of the actors who portray them. Whether hearkening to the Dionysic origins of western theater, or simply providing a handy means.... Read More

Designers confronted with tiny storefront stages cheat all the time—substituting love-seats for sofas, armchairs for loungers, parson's stools for coffee tables—but a bed cannot be easily stretched or squeezed, especially when the play's significant action calls for the hotel-sized variety—a factor presenting no obstruction to the three theater companies this year replicating an array of transient lodging in.... Read More