“Bat Boy: The Musical” is a play based on a recurring feature in the Weekly World News tabloid about a boy who grows up in a cave isolated from mankind with bat-like features—sharp, pointy ears and fangs—until he is discovered in his hideout. The plot of “Bat Boy” is very much like that of French author Michel Tournier’s 1967 novel, “Friday or The Other Island,” a spin on the original “Robinson Crusoe,” where Crusoe finds an uncivilized human being who can’t communicate (he can neither talk nor read), gives him a name, Friday, and chooses to “raise him” as a man. Read the rest of this entry »

A pale beam of light washes over an elevated throne, lending it a sickly glow that cuts through the darkness. We will see many swords, but appropriately, this glistening prize is the only object remaining onstage throughout the grotesque affair. It is both the catalyst for the ensuing butchery and its silent witness. Slowly the players emerge, and fall into stylized stances around the throne, as a menacing, hunchbacked Richard addresses the audience in his famous monologue: “Now is the winter of our discontent…” Read the rest of this entry »

College was supposed to be a land of both social and academic opportunity. To a large extent it is, even at a work-intensive school like the University of Chicago. But how exactly these opportunities present themselves, and how ardently we protect them and involve ourselves, is a more complicated tale. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were to approach Sean Graney out of context, he could pass quite easily as another nerd here at the University of Chicago—if one could ignore the soul patch and bald head for a moment. As I was fumbling around with the tape recorder, the easygoing director, dressed in a hoodie, whipped out a four-by-four Rubik’s cube. “I can do a regular one in about 1:20, but this one is harder to figure out,” he explains. “In high school, I didn’t do sports or anything else…so that’s how I got involved in theater, and I just fell in love with it.” Read the rest of this entry »