(Julia Dratel/University Theater)

“…that Proper Inner Creative State, is rare / It is so seldom that an actor dares / to be a human being in front of you / It’s often just by chance.” This is the explanation of the slippery task of acting provided by Stanislavski #5 in Mickle Maher’s adaptation of “An Actor Prepares,” which had its premiere last weekend at the Logan Center for the Arts. In the play eight, actors, four of whom are UofC students, dare to portray the author of the classic guide to acting.

Stanislavski wrote his book “An Actor Prepares” to explain his “system” for making acting a living, emotional craft—in other words, to make it honest. Maher’s play is written in rhymed verse, something that he finds brought the work closer to that honesty. He explains,  “It just felt wrong to have Stanislavski talk about truth and theater and artifice and belief in some ‘realistic’ biopic vernacular.”  In Maher’s play, the audience discovers early on that the work is no self-indulgent theatrical inside joke; it provides a place and a set of emotions to the stereotypical etching of Stanislavski imagined by his readers.

“Emotion memory,” Stanislavski cannot resist explaining to the audience, “is a bead inside a box… Our past / is precious and is, naturally, of vast / importance to the actor. But it’s passed.” Maher’s play calls up a past, a person, and a process that aren’t imagined at all. It brings to life the real world of 1935 Moscow, Stanislavski as more than a mythical figure, and the way to make acting into necessary truth.

Much of the cast remembers Maher’s decision to fit Stanislavski’s long written work into a 90-minute night. This is evident in the show’s urgent pacing, as Stanislavski forces himself to explain in words a system which he himself believed “must be studied in the work of practical execution.”

He has help in this task. Just as the original book used a Socratic dialogue of characters as its illustrative device, the eight Stanislavskis take part in exercises which put the theory into practice: imagining a madman at the door or the sensory recounting of a trip to a store—where, to the famously chainsmoking Stanislavski’s despair, the cigarettes purchased were merely imaginary—and so on. The shifts in scenes are marked by stark changes in lighting and dramatic surges of music involving violin, cello, and one particularly powerful use of a Russian chorus.

These dramatic exercises stand out as delightful challenges to the seasoned actor and remind the elder Stanislavski of what he loves about the craft. The practice, however, becomes horrific when Stanislavski’s own memories and fears begin to pervade the circumstances; he sees his nephew and his old pupil Meyerhold murdered—as they truly were—for unspecified crimes against Soviet Russia.

The horror of these deaths is sometimes shaking and sometimes diluted, often giving the impression of something underexplored. But the doubt that Stanislavski feels about his work and his politics enlivens what could have been a self-referential piece of theater with human emotion—with need, regret, and nostalgia. The play’s eight characters bring to the piece what Maher also says has been a benefit of working with students, as he has throughout the creation of this play—eagerness and newness: “they haven’t seen it all before.”

Maher, a founding member of Theater Oobleck in Chicago, finds that playwriting “remains a solitary experience.” But he has benefited greatly from the workshops, classes, and rehearsal process this play has seen. And the students who have been a part of this process since the fall—or earlier, for those who took the class attached to it—have learned a great deal in return. As actor Jason Shain, a fourth-year in the College, puts it, the play is “a very simple request for people to just commit to being a real person.”

The actors each have their own processes of preparing to “commit,” including a focus-building game of catch with a ball of duct tape (“Ductball,” introduced by other Oobleck veterans). For actor Alexandra Mathews, a first-year in the colege who plays Stanislavski: #4, prepartion entails a meditative period which she sees as a transformative “molting” of her usual self, helping her to more convincingly inhabit the role. The immensity of work done to make this play a real examination of both acting and the experience of “real” life in terrible circumstances, frustration over both writer’s block and the loss of friends and youth, has paid off.

Halfway through the play, the “real” Stanislavski slips irresistibly back from bed to tell the audience of “memories…eager always to fly on where we / cannot,” and a chill Russian wind heard in the theater seems to whisper the truth: that this line speaks, not only of the mind, but to the art of theater. This play stands in for the power of acting itself: the remarkable practice of showing life.

“An Actor Prepares” runs for one more weekend. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. April 26-28. Thursday-Friday, 8pm; Saturday, 3pm and 8pm. $6. (773)702-9315. taps.uchicago.edu

With a well-established local reputation for quality opera, it is surprising that the SSOC is only in their fourth season. The group was founded by Dr. Marvin Lynn, who is no longer with the opera. Today, SSOC has a simple and clear vision, as Johnson explains, “to spread high caliber music to South Side Chicago. We want to give artists an opportunity to perform with minority groups, and we want to work with the youth.” Elsewhere, there are not many opportunities for African Americans in opera, a field traditionally dominated by those of European stock. To stir change, the Company presents three programs a year: two free performances and one gala event, all at the South Shore Cultural Center.

Although they primarily perform scenes from classical American operas, the SSOC often includes an eclectic repertoire ranging from musical theatre, such as “Porgy and Bess” by Gershwin, to traditional African-American music. On June 23, students who are of college age will be performing a selection of musical theater pieces in the Company’s “Showcase of Our Young and Emerging Artists.” Although they have many veteran singers, most of whom reside on the South Side, the SSOC doesn’t have a fixed group of vocalists. In addition to auditions, such showcases aim to draw new talent to the group.

This past February, the Company collaborated with the Chicago Parks District, the composer Jonathan Stinson, and librettist Alan Stinson on their opera-in-the-works, “March on Washington,” for their Black History Month program. This new opera follows Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and others from a civil rights meeting scene at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, to a confrontation with President Kennedy at the Oval Office in Washington. The Company’s most talented were showcased in these short segments from the show, which feature works ranging from traditional freedom songs to classical arias. This show, still a work in progress, will hopefully be complete for the 2013-14 season to mark the 50^th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.

The SSOC is determined to offer young African-Americans with vocal chops a new path. Johnson, who played civil rights leader John Lewis in “March on Washington,” says, “I think that people would be really pleased in attending any of our performances because of the range of what we present on the stage. Each of our programs has been very high quality. It is a wonderful evening. And you can’t beat the value.” Although opera tracks aren’t reigning on the Billboard Top 100 lists, there is no doubt that the SSOC offers a great deal of training, relevancy, and community to the young South Siders that attend their rehearsals. Johnson repeatedly mentions the importance of spreading opera to minorities, “but,” the tenor says, lowering his voice, “I really want to stress that the bigger goal is to promote good, quality music.”

Showcase of Young and Emerging Artists, South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr. June 23. Saturday, 7:30pm. Free. southshoreopera.org.

(Jane Fentress)

Roy M. Cohn is not a homosexual. As the high-powered lawyer explains in part one of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” yes, he sleeps with men, and, yes, he appears to have AIDS (heretofore to be referred to only as “liver cancer”), but, he says to his doctor, “Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me?”

The implicit question of this new production of Kushner’s Tony Award–winning 1991 play is whether, twenty years later, Roy Cohn’s words still hold meaning. The play is set in 1985, a crucial year: AZT is still in clinical trials, thousands of young men are dying in the AIDS epidemic, and it is the height of the Reagan era. Twenty years later, AIDS does not evoke quite the same terror, few people have heard of Roy Cohn (who really did exist), and gay marriage is legal in several states.

On the other hand, homosexuality is still frequently ridiculed, disparaged, and condemned by many in the population-at-large, including a serious presidential candidate.

The fact that Court is timing this production right before a presidential election is no coincidence; Tony Kushner himself specifically asked the theater’s artistic director, Charles Newell, to stage this play right now. Having worked with Kushner on two other productions at Court—“Caroline, or Change” and “The Illusion”—Newell readily agreed.

The two-part, seven-hour-long play, subtitled “a gay fantasia on national themes,” follows three intersecting narratives: the story of Prior Walter, who gets AIDS, loses his boyfriend, and starts receiving messages from an angel; the story of gay Mormon Republican lawyer Joe Pitt and his Valium-addicted wife; and a highly fictionalized version of slimeball lawyer Roy Cohn’s life story.

The play is as complex and difficult to stage as it is long: multiple scenes occur at once; miracles shake the stage like an earthquake; and characters have vivid dreams and hallucinations, sometimes stumbling into one another’s hallucinations without explanation. As such, Newell’s direction faithfully follows the playwright’s instructions regarding minimal scenery, rapid scene-shifts, and no blackouts. The goal was to “create simultaneity and effortless cross-cutting, and flow from one production to the next with the least amount of time spent on scene changes,” Newell explains. Or, to put it another way: “Don’t stop for nothin’!”

The set is brilliantly designed with that purpose in mind. Behind the stage there is a platform intersected with two vertical lines, creating two stage levels, or six different openings, for the actors to work with. There are two balconies on one side of the stage, and a large, heavy wooden bed in the middle separates the stage into two sections. A scene can take place in Antarctica on one side of the stage, while on the opposite side of the stage the action is simultaneously occuring in New York City.

When a hallucination needs to disappear into thin air, the actor simply stands back, the lights flash over the doorway, and there is a whooshing sound. The sound and light design manages to create the theatrical illusion of instant teleportation, without trapdoors or smoke-and-mirrors.

The intimacy of the Court Theatre is also a boon: spectators in the front row could have reached out and touched the actors. The show is epic in many ways, and yet that intimacy can often make you feel, sitting just a few feet away from the stage, as though you are eavesdropping on an intimate conversation.

The only major piece of furniture is the thick, awkward wooden bed on center stage. Actors had trouble moving around it, and at first it only seemed to be in the way, a foreboding and anomalous presence. Later, when Walter is diagnosed with AIDS, the cumbersome prop becomes his hospital bed and its significance becomes clear.

Production dramaturge Deborah Blumenthal explained that many productions of the play involve huge, elaborate sets in an attempt to “compete with the movie.” Here, however, they have decided to “focus on the text” itself, and the simple set successfully allows the ideas of the work to take center stage; fitting, for a play that is primarily a play of ideas and a critical assessment of American values.

Production dramaturge Drew Dir explains that many of the scenes of magic and dreamwork do not try to hide the fact that they are theatrical illusions. When the angel flies above the stage, for example, the wires holding her up are clearly visible.

“Tony Kushner is a student of Bertolt Brecht, who advocated a theater in which the theater’s means of production were exposed, so that you would always be aware that you were watching a play, a fiction,” says Dir. “For Brecht—and Kushner as well—it’s more important for the audience to keep its critical mind active than for the audience to lose themselves in emotion or spectacle.”

So, while the plot focuses on the “gay fantasia,” the real soul of the work is in its treatment of “national themes.” Audience members may respond differently to some of these themes than they would have when it was first released. Cohn’s line that “American has no use for the sick” is particularly resonant in the wake of the healthcare debate.

“We’re a classic theater company, so by producing this play we’re implicitly taking the position that we believe ‘Angels in America’ to be a classic,” says Dir, “and we’re willing to take a gamble that in one hundred years, people will still be studying and performing it.”

Interestingly, Court Theatre plans to have two special performances of part one of the play for local high schools. It’s difficult to predict what high school students will think of the extremely long and self-consciously intellectual play (one character offhandedly calls himself a “neo-Hegelian positivist”), but it is not hard to predict that they will identify with it. The demographic with the highest rate of HIV infection is no longer gay men; today, it’s teenagers.

The play does sometimes drag during its seven-hour length, and only a few of the actors really stand out: Rob Lindley as the sarcastic and vulnerable Prior Walter, and Larry Yando as the delectably villainous Roy Cohn in particular. Nevertheless, this production succeeds in thrilling, upsetting, and challenging the audience. The play is, above all, an examination of what America stands for; what its future is; and what happens to the sick, the infirm, and the outsiders who lag behind in a system that, for better or worse, forever rushes forward.

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through June 3. Wednesday-Sunday, times vary. $35-$65. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org

Claire Hungerford/Ethan Tate

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The sound of children sets Fenn House apart from its neighbors. A sunny Friday afternoon on a week when schools are out for spring break elicits inevitable shouts and laughter from children pouring out of the house. They duck in and out of a  wooden makeshift lean-to erected on the front lawn, a tribute to 1968’s Resurrection City in Washington D.C. and 2012’s Occupy movement in Chicago.

Currently, the space is home to the Southside Hub of Production (SHoP). Just as the modest wooden structure in the yard at 57th and Woodlawn brings together events from different times and places, SHoP was intended from its beginnings in October 2011 to provide a meeting point for differing perspectives. “We wanted to pull people of different backgrounds and ages and social backgrounds, drawing them into one space so that they might make connections they didn’t think they could make before,” Laura Shaeffer, SHoP’s creative director, explains.

To that end, SHoP has carefully cultivated a relationship with artists and residents of Hyde Park. No stranger to the neighborhood’s art community, this relationship was built upon SHoP’s previous guise as the Op Shop, a nomadic project which moved from storefront to storefront throughout the neighborhood. Shaeffer describes the valuable lessons learned through Op Shop’s four iterations.

“Because they were on four different corners on four different streets, you really got to know the demographics and how they do shift between blocks,” she says. “I learned so much about my community and my neighborhood through the Op Shop, and I thought it was very successful.”

She continues, “On the practical level, though, one seeks some kind of stability, and it became very obvious to me that the ideas that were the focal points of our projects needed a longer time to develop. To have a communitybuilding center, you really need longer than one month.”

Traditions and projects which have benefited from having a permanent space in Fenn House include weekly Sunday night potlucks and a small thrift store which, stocks everything from personally drawn postcards to luxurious men’s coats.

SHoP’s current arrangement, however, will soon be coming to an end in the summer with the expiration of their lease from the Unitarian Church. For Shaeffer, this new uncertainty about her own artistic future is both exciting and nerve-wracking.

On one hand, she explains that moving away from the current location allows for the next stage in the evolution of her long-term artistic project. In her view, projects like SHoP need to change with the needs of a community. “I really do treasure the freedom in being able to revisit something from a different perspective,” says Shaeffer. “There’s a freedom in not having a manifesto, and instead being responsive to the community.”

Yet, it is uncertain that the organization will find its next location in Hyde Park. They are in talks with Alderman Willie Cochran for a possible move to an open lot in Woodlawn—a change that would pose new questions for SHoP.

“When you go to a new neighborhood, you’re committed to understanding and learning about it. Woodlawn would be very different in feel and demographics, history and politics, and so we would require a new relationship with the community,” Shaeffer says. Even though her community art would have to adapt to these new surroundings, she insists that she would welcome a challenge of this nature.

What seems likely is that the new project will be centered on children and the ways in which they engage with artwork. For her next project, Shaeffer envisions a junkyard playground, a concept adapted from Denmark in the wake of the Second World War. Though a vacant lot in Woodlawn is a far cry from the rubble caused by global war, she still sees a great potential in children learning about subjects like woodworking. Ultimately, she hopes the children can put those lessons into practice by building something themselves.

This would, however, be old territory for Shaeffer and her partners in SHoP. The educative possibilities of art are already at the forefront of their installations, and much work has gone into making their current Fenn House a space for play. Time and again, this passion for engaging with children and families shines through when Shaeffer speaks. Much of this can be attributed to her own dual responsibilities as an artist and a parent, a tension which she wanted to solve in setting up SHoP.

“SHoP was always meant to be an intergenerational space, focusing a lot on the family. It’s a space where you can come with kids, or where you can even come as an older person to interact with children,” she explains.

“We need to be artists and parents at the same time and we cannot separate that,” she continues. “It’s enlivening to come into a space that is full of voices and cries. It’s fairly chaotic sometimes! But it’s orchestrated chaos.”

It is thus unsurprising that Fenn House is nearly always filled with the sound of giddy children dashing about. While their current space is well-endowed with plenty of space and a large, welcoming yard, there is the distinct possibility that the next location will be much smaller. To Shaeffer, such a transition wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

“We’re in a mansion now, and maybe I won’t need a mansion when I move!”

Underneath these tangled issues of location, neighborhood, and community lies the central question: What is home? It is a question she has sought to answer through the art on display at the Southside Hub, most notably in “This House Is Not a Home,” an installation which opened at the end of February. “We wanted to talk about home, and then broadening that to what makes the feeling of being at home, even if that home isn’t necessarily a physical structure,” she states. “Places like prison become your home but are not your home at the same time, so we wanted to open it up as broadly as we could.”

The pressures of being an artist and having a family at the same time also came to the fore, she says, because “some of the people in the show talked about how to be an artist and a person who has a family, and how to involve your children in that creative process.”

It therefore becomes clear that her immediate artistic interests are deeply intertwined with the larger fate of SHoP, and her life more generally. It is only fitting, then, that the last show before their move away from Fenn House will be anchored by the idea of leaving.

“The last show we’re going to title “On How Much Things Matter,” and it’ll be about ends,” she says. “We do not want this to be heavy and somber, but we wanted to end with thought and reflection on endings. What we leave behind, what we take with us, how we leave spaces.”

To leave, however, one needs a destination. Shaeffer is still unsure where that will be, and how a move away from Fenn House would be financed. She offers up a variety of possible routes, ranging from the realistic to the relatively far-fetched.

“There’s the possibility that an angel sweeps down and decides that he needs to buy this building because the Southside Hub is serving the larger community and bringing people together through the arts,” she says hopefully. “Or there’s the possibility that ten people decide to invest in this space because this building isn’t going to lose its value and it’s a good investment.”

Yet, regardless of the outcome, she remains optimistic. “Otherwise, we all leave and pack up, enjoy the wonderful year and know it was a great ending. The lease is up on July 31st, and I’m very sure everything will be clear by mid-July.”

Rachel Wiseman & lindsaybanks/flickr

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The dusty green and yellow “Ramova” marquee straddles a now unused entrance at the corner of 35th and South Halsted. Inside the Ramova Theater, founded in 1929, the Spanish-style auditorium gives way to what was once a midnight blue ceiling, studded with stars that glittered as Charlie Chaplin graced the silver screen. When the marquee was less dusty, childhood classics like Bambi and famous American blockbusters like Jaws played under that night sky until the Ramova closed in 1986. In 2001, the city took over the building—seemingly the final nail in a coffin containing a piece of Bridgeport’s history.

But Bridgeport resident Maureen Sullivan is striving to regain control. Born and raised in Bridgeport, the friendly yet fiercely committed Sullivan remembers her weekly trips to the Ramova Theater to watch the latest releases. Like countless other Bridgeport and Chicago residents, the Ramova is central to Sullivan’s childhood recollections, a treasured memory that has stayed with her since her youth.

“Almost everyone who has lived in the neighborhood during the last few decades has been inside the Ramova,” said Sullivan. “The theater was a focal part of this extremely vibrant life in Bridgeport that no one ever forgot, even after it was shut down.”

The vibrancy Sullivan speaks of harkens back to the 1970s, when Mexican, Chinese, and Lithuanian-Americans transformed Bridgeport into a multi-ethnic community, a place that for many constituted the quintessential Chicago neighborhood. Nowadays, the area has been a political and cultural hotbed, enticing more and more young college grads looking for affordable, safe housing.

Yet despite the influx of new residents, the stretch along South Halsted near the Ramova is somewhat bleak. Starting as far back as seven years ago, the city government began tearing down buildings near the Ramova, erasing much of the block’s former grandeur.  Though new construction projects—like the block-long condo development on 35th street—replaced the old buildings, empty lots still dot the area, and city officials remain unsure about the future of any further development.

Alarmed by the city’s intervention, Sullivan was determined to prevent the Ramova’s demolition in order to protect Bridgeport’s cultural history. In 2005, Sullivan started a petition to fight for the theater’s survival, aiming to safeguard a building that holds so much cultural value for the city and sentimental value for many Bridgeport residents.

What began as a petition grew into a full-blown initiative to not only restore the Ramova but to turn it into a hub of Bridgeport culture. With approximately 4,000 signatures on the petition by both neighborhood residents and backers outside of Bridgeport, Sullivan had gathered enough support for her case to fight for the Ramova’s restoration and reopening.

“The trick was to just keep beating the drum,” Sullivan explains. “We kept pushing the possibility of saving the Ramova out in the open and more people started to remember their days at the theater and how crucial the Ramova was to the arts scene in Bridgeport.”

Sullivan stresses that the nostalgic pull of the space is central to the restoration effort: “The Ramova was the center of entertainment and a lot of childhood memories for people in Bridgeport, and residents bring that up all the time because those memories really matter to them. It was actually a key issue at the alderman debate last year, which goes to show how many people are willing to fight for the Ramova.”

Despite widespread public support for the Ramova’s restoration, obstacles began to appear and push back the project. The economic downturn in 2008 prevented Sullivan from obtaining the necessary resources for a restoration initiative—leaving the project in the planning stages, where dreams can grow and shrink, but nothing physical moves. Furthermore, the city expressed its wish for a private party or non-profit organization to direct the restoration, meaning that city officials and funds would have minimal involvement with the project.

In light of these difficulties, Sullivan redirected her efforts into creating a cohesive support base. This base is the Friends of South Halsted, a non-profit focused on the cultural and commercial renewal of not only the theater but the whole nearby stretch of South Halsted.

While the theater itself holds most of the personal significance that drew in the initial support from the Bridgeport community, outsiders slowly began to recognize the theater’s potential as a focal point for the neighborhood’s wider redevelopment. The power of this vision spurred the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) to get involved in 2010.

Robert Chaney, an undergraduate student at IIT, identified the Ramova as a fitting project for the institution’s Interprofessional Projects Program (IPRO). The Ramova’s restoration offered an excellent opportunity for business, architecture, and arts-oriented IPRO students to receive hands-on experience in their fields by contributing to Bridgeport’s cultural development. After approval from the program coordinators, Chaney and Sullivan teamed up. Students began creating floor plans and working to attract local businesses while Sullivan promoted the cause through “Save the Ramova” fundraisers.

Sullivan’s efforts finally motivated city administrators to contact restoration and theater operations specialist Ray Shepardson, best known for his refurbishment of the Loop’s glittering Chicago Theater.

“When I select which theaters to preserve, part of my criteria involves the theater’s historical importance to their surroundings and the local community’s initiative in getting it back on its feet,” Shepardson explained. “In the Ramova’s case, Maureen’s [built up] that energy already, so my job is to draw up plans that detail what changes to the theater itself will take place, and how it will become economically viable enough to help the community grow.”

Sullivan, Shepardson, and the students aim to develop a creative environment that captures Bridgeport’s past and returning vibrancy, with the Ramova as a symbol connecting the old with the new.

While the run-down theater undergoes renovations, they hope to likewise create an energetic commercial environment along South Halsted by persuading local business owners to set up shop near the Ramova. There’s a big hole to fill—The Ramova Grill, the 82-year-old chili parlor in one of the storefronts attached to the theater, recently announced it is closing on the 14th.

Between the renovation’s economic and cultural aspirations, the end goal is to persuade Chicagoans inside and outside Bridgeport to explore the neighborhood.

“While Bridgeport is still a tight-knit neighborhood, it’s not as close as it used to be when I was growing up because people are going out of the neighborhood for entertainment and shopping,” said Sullivan. “Part of our objective is to keep people in Bridgeport and show them that there is fun to be had in the neighborhood.”

She continued, “It’s very hard to build a neighborhood’s sense of community if the residents are constantly leaving for opportunities outside. So we’re trying to use home-grown economics to revive Bridgeport’s past history as a commercial, entertainment, and artistic hotbed.”

While the Ramova of years past was focused on the silver screen, the Ramova of the future will be a multi-purpose arts venue. The new theater will have its lobby transformed into an art gallery while the auditorium will be a music venue.

The team is ever closer to officially beginning the restoration project. Shepardson and a new cohort of IPRO students continue to draw up building plans, estimate the final costs, and sell the area’s commercial potential to local business-owners. Although prospects have taken a positive turn, Sullivan still organizes Save the Ramova fundraisers to gather even more public support. Her efforts are bearing fruit, as the Ramova’s restoration was one of the top three discussion priorities at a Cultural Plan for Chicago meeting this past week.

While official funding is still hard to come by and the restoration is still under preliminary planning, the team has high hopes that the Ramova marquee will soon glimmer.

Giau Truong

“You have all these archetypical characters, and you look at them and wonder how they became what they are,” says Jeremy Menekseoglu, referring to the timeless tale of Peter Pan. J.M. Barrie’s story has been adapted and revised many times since its initial publication in 1902, but whereas most versions of the story are geared towards younger audiences, Menekseoglu has taken a slightly darker approach in “Peter Pan’s Shadow.”

Envisioned as a trilogy, “Part 1: Neverland” is currently in production at Dream Theatre. The theater, no stranger to the macabre, has put on a play that subverts archetypes and traditional expectations, disturbing viewers with the violence of familial and gender relations. Unlike its source material, “Neverland” is no children’s story—or, if it is, this adaptation shows us that the best children’s works possess deeply unsettling elements.

The opening scenes, set in London’s Kensington Gardens, quickly establish the play’s shifting balance between childish playfulness and emotional intensity. Peter Pan is an arrogant, often sadistic figure that domineers the fairy Tinker Bell, who is deeply in love with him. Routinely assuming fictitious roles where Tinker is his servant, in one scene Peter declares himself “Butcher Pan” after wresting a knife from Tinker that she had nabbed from the local butcher.

Such absurd episodes in the play, which could function as comic relief, instead highlight Peter’s desire to control those close to him. As Peter and Tinker’s relationship moves into more serious territory, Tinker reveals her long-standing unrequited love for Peter, a love that he is too self-absorbed and puerile to return. Here, Peter’s adventurous immaturity is never charming, as it is in other adaptations of the story; instead, he avoids responsibility to ward off pent-up despair and loneliness.

In part because “Neverland” sets up the dramatic arc of the trilogy—parts two and three will be put on in May and July, respectively—the early sections of the play are weighed down with exposition. After having run away as a little boy, Peter returns home in search of his mother. Inspired by a production of “The Pirates of Penzance,” Peter instead decides he wants to become the Pirate King, and along with his younger sister (who is unaware that he is her long-lost brother) gets flown away to Neverland.

A welcome dose of lighthearted humor and energy is injected after the intermission with the introduction of Captain James Hook (a merciless killer, though a bit of a dunce) and his witty and perceptive first mate Smee. The play soon takes a more serious turn, however, and its sexual and dark psychological undertones grow stronger. Peter’s revelation to his sister that they are siblings causes her to transform into his shadow, and though an innocent and well-choreographed scene of shadow mimicry follows, we learn that the shadow now seeks revenge against Peter. By the end, Tinker’s love for Peter descends into further self-sacrifice. Wendy enters the play in the last scene, surprising Peter (and Tinker) with her daring forwardness.

“Neverland” is minimally staged, with only a few props in each scene, but a projector behind the stage casts a variety of background images stylized to resemble  children’s book illustrations. At one point, Hook and Smee are silhouetted behind the projector, absent but for the shadows they cast. Elsewhere, characters move around throughout the audience, immersing viewers in the fantastical aura of the performance.

Mishelle Apalategui, who plays the nominal hero, is particularly effective as Peter in motion, squatting and darting like a limber athlete about the stage, and Annelise Lawson’s Tinker is a complex, if wide-eyed damsel in distress. At times, the more dramatic moments feel strained beneath the weight of emotion. Yet the unexpectedness of these scenes keeps the play disturbing without sinking into melodrama.

For all that, the play intrigues, and those interested in more subversive works will be moved by this performance. The next two plays in the trilogy should plunge more deeply into the dark, amplifying what was the strength of this first installment: shaking  perceptions of the boy who does not want to grow up.

Dream Theatre, 556 W. 18th St. Through March 4. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 pm. Sunday, 7pm. $18. (773)552-8616. dreamtheatrecompany.com

The process of adapting “Invisible Man” for the stage began some years ago when film director and screenwriter Oren Jacoby paired up with Christopher McElroen, a New York-based stage director. The work posed challenges for the two early on—getting the rights to the novel from the Ralph Ellison Trust was not easy. Because of Ellison’s qualms about letting out his work for adaptation, the trust has closely monitored use of the book.

The script is composed only of direct quotations pulled from the novel, which was published 60 years ago this year. Though the work’s first-person narration has been pared down considerably, it has been a battle to whittle down the script to a manageable length. The show runs for three hours with two intermissions, which seems long until you consider that for most of last year, Jacoby, McElroen, and Court staff traveled around the country hosting readings, cutting chunks of the script each time.

The first of these readings was held in November of 2010, and the idea of adapting “Invisible Man” immediately struck a chord with Court and its audiences. “The show represents an intersection of Court’s recent mission—new adaptations and African-American stories,” says Court dramaturge Drew Dir. According to Dir, this story should be especially interesting when told in Hyde Park, both a South Side cultural hub and Barack Obama’s home base.

Both the novel’s content as well as it form proved difficult to rework—its non-linear, first-person narration of the title character’s journey from aspiring professor to radical spokesperson for “the race” is difficult to present onstage. The flashback, the voiceover, the memory, which are all vital elements of Ellison’s prose, might be better suited to the silver screen, where it is easier to rapidly switch between images. Court has taken on the challenge, and the product comes very close to a screen-like adaptation, even if at times the visuals come off more assaulting than arresting. The production is clearly meant to astonish and entertain—the sheer mass of lighting and projection effects make the small theater space shimmer like Times Square.

The design is difficult and intense, incorporating many intricate movements of partial walls and floor props. The effect is a little odd—the design is so technical and sophisticated that it feels slightly over-executed. The director and the designers,  brought in from New York, have had over a year to stew on the project, so every detail has been calculated and checked over. The whole technical component, dubbed “aggressive” by Dir, is so powerful it’s almost blinding. The unfortunate result is that it’s powerful enough to overshadow the acting, which often manages to hit right on target, especially considering the number of roles each actor must play—there are ten actors and twenty four characters. Invisible Man, played by Teagle Bougere, has more lines than you can shake a stick at, and he delivers them flawlessly and with poise. The actor playing Ras the Destroyer and the university president is also a standout.

What’s next for Jacoby’s “Invisible Man?” Dir says that there are many different productions to come. “The book has never not been relevant…we want to reexamine “Invisible Man” in a new epoch,” he states, sharing the sentiment of many other theatres around the nation. The script is expected to develop beyond this stage and emerge within a few years as a more polished work—hopefully with fewer flashing lights. And in case you’re wondering, Court’s master electrician proudly delivers the number of bare bulbs onstage in Court’s design at exactly five hundred thirty-five.

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through February 19. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org

Tyler Leeds

Bruce Taylor began the first day of class by asking his nine students why they were given their first names. “I was named Joy,” responded one student, “because my daddy said I brought joy into his life.” After two beats of respectful silence a single giggle escaped from someone’s mouth. The class erupted in laughter. Taylor moved on to the next student.

“My grandma and my mom named me Ashley because they didn’t want stereotypes thrown upon the family,” answered another student. “Instead of being called a black name, they chose a common name so that unless I told someone my race no one would know.” This time no one laughed. Instead, a few hands crept toward the book lying on everyone’s desk—Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Taylor was unfazed, and moved on to the next student. Ashley’s response was exactly what he was looking for.

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The students all came from King College Prep in Kenwood, one of Chicago Public Schools’ selective-enrollment high schools. They had come to a classroom on the University of Chicago campus to participate in an enrichment program called Living Bookshelf. The program, created by Taylor, attempts to push student engagement with the arts beyond plot quizzes and reviews. In Taylor’s classroom, the students were pushed to emotionally identify with Ellison’s work. In preparation for their first session, the class attended Court Theatre’s production of the “Invisible Man”—the novel’s first theatrical adaptation.

After four two-hour sessions of discussion and collaboration, the students will have produced their own creative response to Ellison’s novel—a two-scene musical theatre piece exploring the identities of two secondary characters. Mary Ann Ivan, a veteran of Broadway musical pits, will be flown in to compose music to accompany the lyrics the students write. Taylor will then hire professional actors and singers to perform the scenes on stage at Court Theatre as part of the Hyde Park Bank High School Performance Festival on February 24. But before lyrics can be paired with notes, the students have to do some work.

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While Ashley’s response quieted the room, Taylor was just beginning to warm up. At age 65, Taylor is a spry man. He has a mess of grey hair and a full mustache. He speaks with the intonation and cadence of someone used to an audience. As his students sat along narrow tables that formed a hollow rectangle, Taylor ran about in the middle. He never waited for his students to raise their hands. Instead, he would rush up to whoever hadn’t spoken in awhile. He would lean across the table and look them in eye and ask, “What do you think?” If they took too long, he would reach across and poke the students gently in the head. Their stunned expressions and indignation didn’t change the fact that Taylor’s enthusiasm was infectious.

Taylor’s first question was intentionally pointed—the history of one’s family and culture are often expressed in one’s name. Taylor’s class contains nine African Americans from the South Side, and he was seeking an emotional avenue into Ellison’s text. “Invisible Man” is the story of an African-American man leaving the South for New York City during the turbulent inter-war years.

After Ashley’s remark, everyone could make out the connection between their own lives and the novel. But how clearly did they see it? While Taylor allowed the power of Ashley’s words to linger in the classroom, he is still, like many great educators, quite demanding. Taylor began to drill his students on the basics.

“Our understanding must begin with context,” Taylor declared. “What is the context of this work?”

“Racism. Those were racist times,” said one student, half as an answer and half as a question.

“Correct, but tell me more,” Taylor pressed. “Tell me specifically. Jim Crow laws have a lot to do with the context of this work. Now, which Jim Crow laws offend you the most, and which offend you the least?”

Taylor marched around the room, passing from student to student. They all had the chance to demonstrate their opinions, with Taylor supplementing their knowledge of history along the way. In this manner, the students not only strengthened their understanding of the text, but also the connection between Ellison’s reality and the South Side today.

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Taylor has a long history with theatres. In the mid-1970s, Taylor was the production stage manager for the Seattle Opera. Under the Carter administration, federal money became available to arts organizations that were willing to bring their programming to public school students. This is where Taylor got his start as an arts educator. To prepare students to experience opera—never an easy task—Taylor was sent to prep classes on what to expect before arriving at the theatre. According to Taylor, “I had done almost everything anyone can do in a theatre, but I found I really enjoyed [teaching] and that I did it well.”

From this beginning, Taylor conceived of a post-viewing session to help students refine their understandings of the performances and to discuss their reactions. But Taylor knew arts education shouldn’t simply work to increase his student’s appreciation of work. He wanted his students to love art with the same intensity he possessed, but he also wanted them to get a job so that they could continue to appreciate the arts. As a result, Taylor claims it is his job to “get kids to really use in their own lives what we in the arts use in our profession. So I thought to myself, ‘What are the habits of mind that artists develop? How do we think? How do we create? How do we work together?’”

The seed of Living Bookshelf was planted, but Taylor still needed inspiration. During this time, Taylor came across the Foxfire Magazine. Created in 1966, “Foxfire” is one of the most prominent examples of 1960s experiential education.

Based out of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private high school in Georgia, “Foxfire” was a student-produced publication that documented the cultural history of the declining Appalachian culture. A collection of the articles was published as a book in 1972, later becoming a national bestseller.

“After reading the Foxfire book,” says Taylor, “I asked myself, Why couldn’t kids do that in the arts?” As a result, Taylor began a program entitled “Creating Original Opera.” As in Living Bookshelf, students were tasked with not only understanding a work—in this case, an opera—but also producing an artistic response to be performed. According to Taylor, “Creating Original Opera” was conducted in over 1000 schools across twelve countries.

But “Creating Original Opera” was always seen as a supplement to his students’ education. While Taylor may wish otherwise, operas never play a central role in primary education. In today’s world, the reaching of national standards in the language arts and mathematics controls school funding. Taylor had to adapt.

“Common Core State Standards dominate primary education. They have been adopted by 46 states. And so I looked at the Common Core requirements, and I thought that I could slightly modify what I do to meet these new requirements,” says Taylor. Living Bookshelf is Taylor’s attempt to meet state education requirements through the arts.

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Taylor recently left the East Coast for Chicago because his wife found a new job. “She makes way more money than I do, so I had to move with her,” he says. “I moved here without a job. I still don’t have a job, but arts education is what I do, so I don’t care if I get paid to do it or not. I like to think that I am my wife’s contribution to the arts.”

Once in Chicago, Taylor got in touch with William Michel, executive director of the UofC’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. Taylor’s current incarnation of Living Bookshelf is being offered through the UofC’s Arts and Public Life Initiative. Taylor had no plans to work with “Invisible Man,” but took advantage of Court Theatre’s production. According to Dara Epison, program coordinator of University and Community Arts Collaborations, “The fact that the students chosen to work with him would have the opportunity to perform their work on Court’s stage with professional actors was simply a result of the stars aligning properly and Court being incredibly supportive.”

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By the end of the first session, the students had had no problem identifying the two characters from “Invisible Man” that they wanted to explore. Selecting the character of Ras, who is loosely based on the Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, was especially easy. The students were intrigued by the man they interpreted as vengeful, strong-willed, and determined.

In between the end of class and the second session, held last Saturday, the students were tasked with creating a biography for Ras that explained his traits. Whether the result of Taylor’s careful prodding or not, imagination was in strong supply.

“Ras witnessed the murder of his family,” said one student, serious and soft.

“Yeah, his father was betrayed by a white guy involved in the Brotherhood,” whispered another.

As they traced out the source of his anger, Ras’s identity came into focus. He was a poet, and a few years had passed since the time of “Invisible Man.” Ras was now a participant in the Harlem Renaissance—another context for the students to explore.

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Most classrooms don’t work this way. Often, mastering the plot is what matters. It demonstrates a student’s ability to grasp and recall information, as that line of thinking goes. But while Taylor has adapted his project to state requirements, he believes foremost in protecting his students’ futures.

“Plenty of people have iPhones or iPads—if you want to know something, you just look it up,” he notes. “The students of today, if they want to succeed, need to learn how to think and create. They will be paid to be creative. The thing we have to prove, and I want to demonstrate with these kids, is that artists can contribute to student achievement. But we’re not going to succeed by having kids just act, sing, and dance. We have to have them get creative in a way they can apply to an academic subject.”

By leading his students through lyric writing, Taylor hopes to grant his students a command of metaphors—something required for state tests and successful communication. Placing these lyrics atop a melody will be no easy task, but the students still have a few more weeks to prepare. In the end, Taylor’s class will have created something new. This ability—creativity—is at the heart of Taylor’s mission.

“Because of the tests, teachers don’t ask students what they think, they ask what do you know, which isn’t so important. When you ask younger kids what do you think, they freeze. But the jobs out there today are conceptual and creative. The arts can help them think and create.”

One of the most impressive aspects of “Emergency!” was the way Beaty merged different styles of performance. Characters segued between thoughtful soliloquy, honeyed song, and slam poetry with a speed that could have been distracting, but in this case served only to further illustrate characters’ emotional states. Desperation was delivered in a low, moaning baritone. Anger streamed furiously in the rhythmic beat of spoken word poetry. Some segments were so apparently relatable that it wasn’t uncommon throughout the performance to hear an occasional whoop of affirmation issue from the back rows. Though “Emergency!’s” plot and characters are fantastic, its takeaways are real. Miraculously, all 40 characters’ viewpoints come together in the end to craft a message that spurs viewers to reconsider how they think about their history. “We can overcome,” he said, “if we change the way we see, see our past, see our possibility.”

These questions are left unanswered in Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s compelling adaptation of Homer’s classic tale of the Trojan War. “An Iliad” tells the story of the last few weeks of the war, when the Acheans Agamemnon and Achilles are fighting over a woman, Briseis. Achilles loses Briseis and refuses to fight in the war. As the struggle within the Achean ranks unfolds, the war wages on outside the walls of Troy.

The story is recounted in its entirety by only the Poet, turning the performance into more of a storytelling event than a traditional play. And, as a result, the vivacity and emotional range of the storyteller comes to the foreground. But while the original poem—or at least the version known to modern readers—focuses on the triumph of Achilles, “An Iliad” centers the attention on Hector, the defeated Trojan warrior. This simple shift in perspective—from an emphasis the experience of heroism, success and glory to one of defeat and death—exemplifies the adaptation’s powerful underlying anti-war message.

The play begins with the Poet listing significant wars, from Troy up to the current conflict in Afghanistan. This serves to confirm what this adaptation’s title suggests: this is “An Iliad,” not “The Iliad.” It is about every “Iliad” that has happened after the first one, and the many more that are to follow still. The storyteller says that the war only went on for so long because both parties, having already put so much time into it, could not leave without some final resolution. The Poet attempts to put the story in twenty-first century terms. He equates this type of mentality to being stuck in a long grocery line: you can see that there is a shorter one, but you feel obligated to stay in your line because you feel as if you have invested something in it.

But Peterson and O’Hare use more than modern analogy, language and tone to make the story feel relevant. Above all, they bring the epic back to its original and most effective form: oral storytelling. Presented with one man recalling a story from his memory and imagination, the audience becomes a collection of listeners rather than spectators, establishing a rapport with the actor and the play itself.

An Iliad also returns to its ancient roots of oral tradition by incorporating the original Greek verse into parts of the play. The conglomeration of ancient verse, lines of Robert Fagles’ award-winning English translation, and colloquial speech to spice up the formal prose, was the most striking example of the play’s intermingling  of the ancient, the old, and the new.

When a tale is passed through the oral tradition, the story changes with the storyteller, the audience, and the culture to which it is loaned. The story itself is ancient, but an attempt to preserve every element of the original epic poem would lose the uniqueness and malleability of the present moment that is essential to the oral tradition. That is to say, an effective storyteller knows how to relate to his audience. Timothy Edward Kane does a phenomenal job of captivating the audience and performing the role of the Poet. He is not only a storyteller, but also an enigmatic, dynamic personality who, in retelling the epic, carries on Homer’s great tradition.

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through December 11. (773)753-4472. $40-60 general/$10 students. courttheatre.org