Author: Kevin Curran
A List of Dates
Fight, Flight, and Freeze – The Agency Theater Collective
Hannah Tar’s one-person show centers around about dozen important dates in her life and how they all connect to each other. I’m not spoiling things by saying that several involve sexual assault and domestic violence, since they give a similar warning at the start of the show.
Read MoreWe Should Totally Hang Out Sometime
Amicable – Theatre Above the Law
Amicable, Theatre Above the Law’s final show for its third season, finds a group of six people on a Metra train. Each seems to coincidentally know or have met one or two of the other people on the train. One pair of friends or one pair of exes running into each other on their morning commute is a common coincidence. But every person on this train making one of these connections, sometimes more than one? Something strange is going on here…
Read More
In My Day…
The Undeniable Sound of Right Now – Raven Theatre
Kids today. With their haircuts and their music.
Read More
Going Off Road
Mad Beat Hip & Gone – Promethean Theatre Ensemble
I have a confession to make. I have never read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. It didn’t make it into a reading list in high school or college, and I think that’s the window for reading it. After that, it’s just never going to float to the top of my perpetually lengthy To Read list. Like Mark Twain once said, a classic is a book everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read.
Read More
Two Shows for the Price of One
Two Days in Court – City Lit Theater
One act shows don’t get much love in modern theater. The average theater-goer expects at least the average length of a movie for the price of their ticket. Even most shows that lack an intermission are usually more than one scene presented without that intermission rather than an entire show presented in one short burst. City Lit has solved this problem by presenting two such shows in one evening with a common thread, with both centering on court room dramas.
Read More
Turning into Your Parents
I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard – First Floor Theater
They say you are supposed to write about what you know. That’s probably why so many plays (and movies for that matter) are about writers and writing. If nothing else, writers know about that.
Read More
Just Another Day
Utility – Interrobang Theatre
Amber and her family live in a small town in East Texas. Like many families, they are perpetually just short of making ends meet. Amber works two jobs but is still always trying to pay off last month’s bills. The play finds her trying to balance providing a life for her children that she wants them to have, while deciding if she should give her well-intentioned, but less than competent, husband another chance.
Read More
Family Resemblance
Iron Kisses – Theatre Above the Law
I think everyone remembers where they were the first time they hear their parents’ words coming out of their own mouths. It eventually happens to us all. Some turn of phrase we associate with them, maybe some well-worn piece of advice or the thing your parents said to you that you swore you would never say to your kids, will fall out of your mouth with exactly their cadence and intonation. It almost feels like they were speaking through you, as if it weren’t really your voice. Theatre Above the Law’s new production of Iron Kisses takes the phenomenon to new heights by casting a pair of actors as siblings, but also casting both siblings at various times as both of their parents.
Read More
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
Herland – Redtwist Theatre
Herland, a new play getting its Chicago premiere at Redtwist, is the story of three friends who decide that rather than shuffle off to a sad retirement community, they are going to form one of their own. Their defacto leader, Jean, converts her garage, the previously off-limits rehearsal space for her ex-husband’s Bruce Springsteen cover band, into her office and the headquarters of their planned retirement community. She hires an intern to help them, primarily by being more comfortable with technology. The name of the play is taken from a 1915 utopian novel about a world with no men.
Read More
Leaving on a Jet Plane
2 Unfortunate 2 Travel – Prop Thtr
Seeking to escape the outcome of the Election that Shall Not Be Named, Jack takes off on a tour of the world. Returning with a diary full of his journeys, he turns the portrayal of his travels over a group of six women to bring the stories to life.
Read MoreRECOMMENDED SITES
