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.