Bernard Shaw: Plays Unpleasant

Posted by DCA Theater on May 11, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, Ghosts, Other

On Thursday, May 7 DCA Theater hosted Bernard Shaw: Plays Unpleasant presented by the Birmingham Committee of The Chicago Sister Cities International Program.

Actor’s Equity Association actors Joseph Bowen, Kevin Fox, Jack Hickey and Kathy Logelin presented scenes from Widowers’ Houses under the direction of Robert Scogin, Artistic Director of ShawChicago. Widowers’ Houses (1892) was the first play by Nobel Prize in literature winner George Bernard Shaw to be staged. It is one of three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898.

Following the scenes Professor Joel Kaplan (freelance writer and theatre historian based in Birmingham, U.K. and Florence, Italy) gave an insightful lecture on Shaw as a socially-conscious playwright.

Prof. Joel Kaplan lecturing. Pictured in slide:
(left) George Bernard Shaw as young radical
(right) William Archer, fellow critic, playwright and one-time collaborator

GHOSTS: Post Your Review

Posted by DCA Theater on January 5, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, Ghosts

April 18, 2009 — May 11, 2009
Studio Theater
Presented by ShawChicago

ShawChicago returns to the Studio Theater with Henrik Ibsen’s compelling drama.  Mrs. Alving is trying to put a positive gloss on her late husband’s dissolute philandering life by creating an orphanage in his name. She is assisted in the project by Pastor Manders, who had persuaded her years earlier to remain tied to the sins of her husband for the sake of social approval. Her son Oswald’s return from abroad with a fatal disease, possibly the result of her unwise marital compromise, destroys her project and exposes a web of deceit, blackmail, possible incest, and death.