We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!
Posted by DCA Theater on November 16, 2011 in July-December 2011 Season, Peer Gynt
Submitted by Darren Callahan, Associate Member of Polarity Ensemble Theatre currently presenting Peer Gynt
Henrik Ibsen’s classic play from the mid-19th century, Peer Gynt, was never meant to be performed. It was written well beyond the stagecraft of the time and its vision, scale, and style, were all too big to be realized. Only the most daring theatrical magicians would even dare try, 150 years later, to bring the organized chaos of this Norwegian classic romp to the American stage. Did I say daring? I meant insane.
Raising an American Wilderness
Posted by DCA Theater on November 15, 2011 in July-December 2011 Season, Peer Gynt
Polarity Ensemble Theatre has been hard at work in the DCA Storefront Theater building the set for Peer Gynt, which goes into previews tonight and opens Friday. The play’s setting has been recast into America. As Richard Engling, PET Artistic Director, says in his program notes, “This production is very American. The rise and fall of Peer Gynt is like the arc of America’s fortunes. America rose from a scrappy trickster to an imperial power and now things are looking a little shaky. We wonder what’s next. Peer Gynt holds up a mirror to the American psyche—particularly that of the American male and the lust for money and power that lurks in our darker side.”
Assembling a performance
Posted by DCA Theater on November 11, 2011 in July-December 2011 Season, DanceBridge Showcase Fall 2011
Submitted by Annie Maurer, Millie Kapp and Matt Shalzi, participants in DanceBridge Fall 2011
On Saturday we began our first attempts at assembly. We divided the rehearsal into three parts—giving each person a chance to make changes to the same material. We each took turns watching from the same place in the room while the others performed their parts in the section. Matt cut out dead-ends among the hairs and specified timing. He placed a small curtain between Annie and Millie as one lowers a sword into a hole to the timing of the other’s interspersed water splashes. Millie made the “setting up” of a sculpture a dance. And the “taking down”, a reverse dance. Annie began to make an interlude between two parts. In this interlude Matt tries to bury Millie but Millie rises from the dead to get back at Matt. Annie laughs because Millie looks like a cartoon Frankenstein. Millie likes to be funny when Annie laughs.
Sometimes, we get too serious about our work and it stops being alive. We always like what we see/do in the warm-ups the best. How can we make enjoying something a serious endeavor? How can we write/reflect on our work in a way that expands and alters our understanding of it rather than trying to explain it? Explanation is good. But it is not everything.
Mudra Motion
Posted by DCA Theater on November 8, 2011 in July-December 2011 Season
Thank you to everyone who attended Monday’s event featuring Natya Dance Theatre in the Chicago Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theater. This performance was a part of Natya Dance Theatre’s Reach Out and Connect Series.
Take a look at this video of the final dance performed at the event…
Magic and Mentalism at the Storefront Theater
Posted by DCA Theater on November 4, 2011 in July-December 2011 Season, The Spirit Play
Last week, DCA Theater hosted Contacting the Spirits: Magic and Mentalism in the 19th century. Presented in conjunction with The Strange Tree Group’s world premiere production of The Spirit Play, the lecture focused on mentalism and spirit mediums in 1870s Chicago and included a magic demonstration. Local historian and author Ursula Bielski, founder of Chicago Hauntings, Inc., was on hand to share and answer questions about mediums and the Spiritualist movement, while magician Brett Schneider, who also designed the illusions in The Spirit Play, dazzled the audience with his knowledge and tricks.
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