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Forty-Two Stories – City Lit Theater – April 17, 2017

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Last year I took a class at the Newberry Library on writing one-act plays. I’ll let you know when I get around to finishing mine. I wrote the first few lines about twenty years ago, around the time I also thought of titles for two books I haven’t written yet. I’ve been busy.

My teacher for the class at Newberry was Doug Post, a local playwright. I went with a date to see a preview of his play, Forty-Two Stories, at the City Lit Theater. The theater is located on the second floor of a church, which is only a problem if the elevator isn’t working and you go with someone in need of a hip replacement, like I did. I would have turned around and gone home if it had been me, but she was a trouper.

The play is a dark comedy about life in a Lake Shore Drive high-rise condo building. I’ve lived in high-rises, but don’t really like them, so I consider my twelve-story building to be a mid-rise, whatever the fire department definition might say to the contrary – something about whether their ladders can reach all the floors.

Doug was sitting right behind us during the show, whispering back and forth with the director. I wanted to eavesdrop but felt compelled to pay more attention to the play itself since a friend of mine, coincidentally, had a major role in it.

A couple days after seeing the show, I happened to run into the head of maintenance in my building and mentioned the play to him. He proceeded to regale me with stories from his days working in high-rises. His stories didn’t have the edginess of Forty-Two Stories, but were just as unbelievable. Maybe I should write a play based on his experiences. I’ll put it in the queue.

Big Red & the Boys – Theater Wit – December 11, 2017

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Meghan Murphy is Big Red. Her website says “If Lucille Ball, Bette Midler, Bonnie Raitt, Rita Hayworth and Etta James had a baby, her name would be Big Red. Now who doesn’t want to see THAT?!” I wanted to.

My friend Karen accompanied me to the Theater Wit to see Big Red and the Boys with the expectation that we would be the only two straight people in the audience. We weren’t. Maybe not even the two oldest. We’re usually either the oldest or the youngest in the crowd. It was, to say the least, an eclectic audience. I turned to Karen when I saw a family enter, one that included a preteen girl, and said “How can they bring a kid to this show?”

The show, Get Your Holiday On, was, as expected, rollicking, bawdy, good fun. Near the end of the show Meghan noticed the young girl in the audience, and, in a moment that seemed to be real, not part of the act, rhetorically said “There were children in the audience?”, before shrugging it off to the delight of the crowd, including the parents.

We both loved the show and may make it yet another holiday tradition (see comment on the Q Brothers), but what really impressed Karen was Meghan’s ability to navigate the show, with all its dance steps, while wearing three-and-a half-inch spiked heels. How is it that women can measure heels from a distance? It’s for insights like this that a partner in crime is invaluable on forays into unchartered territory.

So now we have tickets to see Meghan, along with Danni Smith and Cassie Slater in “We Three: Loud Her. Fast Her. Funny Her.” at Steppenwolf Theater of all places. The title is promising. Stay tuned.

Museum of Science and Industry – Robots – January 3, 2018

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There was no way I was going to miss the special robot exhibit at the museum, even if it meant navigating a sea of children. I love the underground parking at the museum and though, having arrived in the early afternoon, I had to go around and around searching for a space, my downward journey led me to park on the level where the main entrance is – bizarre justice.

The robots were great, although I witnessed one draw a game of tic tac toe with a child when a winning move was there for the taking by the robot.  I’m not sure whether this was good public relations, faulty programming, or misguided mechanical parenting.

I also witnessed the robot blackjack dealer pull a card off the bottom of the deck. Okay, not literally, but all three human players were sitting on 20, when the robot came up with 21. Very suspicious.  Good thing they weren’t playing for money, although there was an extra charge to see the robot exhibit.

There was another station where you could build your own vehicle out of various colored attachable blocks, one type of which included a battery to power the vehicle. I tried in vain to manufacture a mobile unit, even enlisting the help of a young mother whose child’s work far exceeded my pitiful efforts.  She was sympathetic but unable to help, being clueless herself and unable to gain her child’s attention long enough to explain the process to us.  Tail between my legs, I moved on.

I took in some of the long-time exhibits. One can’t go to the museum without seeing the trains.  And though I didn’t intentionally go to see the submarine, I found myself, for a few minutes, wandering aimlessly through World War 2, unable to find my way out, as if trapped in a Kurt Vonnegut story.

I eventually prevailed, and, on my way out, saw the sign for the Pixar exhibit coming in May. I’ll be back!

Silent Sky – First Folio Theater – April 21, 2017

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There probably aren’t that many places where you can see a play in a Tudor mansion on an estate in a forest preserve, but somehow I happened across Oak Brook’s First Folio Theater. We got there early because I had no idea where I was going and hate being late. I didn’t get lost, so we had time to explore the mansion. It needs some rehab, but it’s a pretty cool place. I was disappointed, however, by the fact that the free pieces of chocolate at the ticket desk were for subscribers only. Really! They couldn’t spare a couple pieces to help entice us to come back? Don’t they know how important the availability of chocolate is to every major life decision?!

Even without the aid of chocolate, we had no trouble staying alert during Silent Sky, a wonderful play about Henrietta Swan Leavitt, an astronomer at Harvard College Observatory in the early 20th century, who, along with other female colleagues, referred to as computers (just as at NASA as depicted in the movie Hidden Figures), made discoveries through the use of astronomical plates despite never being allowed to use the observatory’s refracting telescope.

Not so coincidentally I suppose, on November 4 I saw Dava Sobel speak at the Chicago Humanities Festival regarding her book, The Glass Universe, on the same topic.

The First Folio Theater also has an outside venue where they put on Shakespeare in the summer. I have mixed feelings about attending one of those performances. I generally prefer my Shakespeare skewed, as in Something Rotten (a wonderful romp that I’ve seen in New York and Chicago). And as much as I like to enjoy the arts outside, I’m not completely comforted by their promises that ‘biweekly mosquito abatement is conducted to ensure your comfort, and free repellent is offered at the site” and that their “well-lit Portapotties are cleaned often.” On the other hand, their summer concession stand carries chocolate.

Chicago Ideas 2017

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I went to see four Chicago Ideas programs in 2017. Chicago Ideas used to be called Chicago Ideas Week, but then they started having events throughout the year, though still concentrated during a week in October. The constant at Chicago Ideas programs has always been that, at the beginning of every program, they ask everyone to say hello to and chat briefly with a stranger sitting next to them. This makes seat selection crucial.

In April we saw Alec Baldwin discuss his book Nevertheless: A Memoir, which turned out to be a surprisingly interesting read, which was a good thing because we didn’t get much from the interview, held at the Athenenium Theater, where, at least in the balcony, the acoustics were horrible and we could barely hear.

An October event included professors of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics, Neuroscience & Business, BioNanotechnology, and Cognitive Neuroscience discussing things like tissue engineering. Does all that sound neat or what? I considered a career in science, but I hated lab classes, which helped inform my serpentine path to a college degree in Psychology without ever taking a lab class, and which probably explains why I don’t cook. Part of the presentation covered Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, whose acronym, CRISPR, made me think I had accidentally signed up for a cooking class.

The third event was rather sobering. I still haven’t seen the movie Concussion, but now that I’ve seen Dr. Bennet Omalu and others in person discussing Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), I don’t need to see Will Smith do his impression. And, I’m going to be more careful about bumping my head on open kitchen cabinet doors. Another good reason to avoid cooking.

In March I saw Blue Man Group cook up their special brand of entertainment, which acted as a precursor to an October Chicago Ideas lab behind the scenes of the Group, though only figuratively, as we sat in the regular seats while watching and listening to the performers, sans makeup (or are they really blue and were wearing makeup to look normal for this presentation – hmmm), describe and demonstrate to us how they interact speechlessly during a performance to create their unique show, much like any jazz band whose faces happen to be blue.