Dorchen and Anastaplo square off on “Strauss”

Posted by DCA Theater on June 30, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, Strauss At Midnight

Professor Joel Rich and Playwright Jeff Dorchen

Professor George Anastaplo

In association with Theater Oobleck’s production of Strauss at Midnight, DCA Theater hosted a panel discussion on some topics of the play. The evening centered around comments from playwright Jeff Dorchen and University of Chicago/Loyola University Professor George Anastaplo and was moderated by University of Chicago Professor Joel Rich. Several “Strauss” cast members including David Isaascson (Saul Bellow) and Troy Martin (Allan Bloom) contributed to discussion, as did other Oobleck company members and the general audience of about thirty.

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Theater Oobleck opens “Strauss at Midnight”

Posted by DCA Theater on June 12, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, Strauss At Midnight

After the sold out opening night performance of Theater Oobleck’s Strauss at Midnight, the audience joined the cast and crew for food, music and drinks on the Storefront Mezzanine.

Special thanks to ROTI Mediterranean Grill for catering; our generous beer sponsors Three Floyds and Goose Island Brewing Co; and DJ Josh Werner who created a great atmosphere for the party.

If you missed out on the Theater Oobleck reception, join us on Thursday, August 27 for the opening night performance and reception for Caffeine Theatre’s Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.

Actors Scott Hermes and D’wayne Taylor with Oobleck friends

DCA Theater staff chats with Mark Sutton

STRAUSS AT MIDNIGHT: Post Your Review

Posted by DCA Theater on June 11, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, Strauss At Midnight

June 11, 2009 — July 19, 2009
Storefront Theater

Theater Oobleck visits Oscar Madison’s apartment in order to explore such “Odd Couples” as liberty and tyranny, love and hate, man and superman. When a time-traveling tourist on a prehistoric safari accidentally kills a butterfly, Oscar and Felix’s poker table becomes the battleground for human civilization. Incorporating Saul Bellow, Niccolo Machiavelli, and University of Chicago Neo-Con godfathers Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom, this world premiere takes Neil Simon’s most famous play into Tom Stoppard territory and considers a society where the super-privileged can redesign the fabric of time and space.

What did you think about the show? Share your comments here.

What is this play about?

Posted by DCA Theater on May 19, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, Strauss At Midnight

Written by Jeff Dorchen, playwright

Jack Lemmon as Felix and Walter Matthau as Oscar in “The Odd Couple”

You don’t need to read Leo Strauss, Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom, Machiavelli, or see The Odd Couple or In the Heat of the Night to enjoy Strauss at Midnight, anymore than you need to read Shakespeare or Marlowe in order to enjoy Shakespeare in Love, or Sade to enjoy Quills, or On the Origin of Species to appreciate the drama of Inherit the Wind, or to have played seventy-six trombones to enjoy The Music Man. It may add to the experience, but it’s not at all necessary.

This play is about the ongoing struggle between two forces: those who condemn us to repeat history, and the rest of us. The rest of us are represented by the world of “The Odd Couple,” and those who condemn us to repeat history are represented ultimately by Leo Strauss and his disciple Allan Bloom.

Saul Bellow is the artist caught between the forces of his social environment and the inevitable gravity of the artist’s moral truth.

An anecdote and additional reading

Posted by DCA Theater on April 21, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, Strauss At Midnight

Written by Jeff Dorchen, playwright

An anecdote about the genesis for Strauss at Midnight:

Bill Cusack, a former member of Tim Robbins’ Actors’ Gang theater company, took me to see Tim’s crappy play about the then-and-still current Iraq war, “Embedded.” The play wouldn’t have been quite as annoying as it was had it not included a scene or two in which the inner circle of the Bush administration shouted, “All hail Leo Strauss!”

There was absolutely no indication who Leo Strauss was or what he had to do with the action or meaning of the play. There was certainly no indication Tim Robbins knew anything about Strauss or what he might have to do with any type of policy of any sort whatsoever.

I found that situation embarrassing. If Strauss had something to do with the extremism of neo-conservatism, then some kind of didactic art could surely be created to explore it, even if only on an agit-prop level. I’m no expert on Strauss. My sense of his place in the current discussions of right and wrong statesmanship is attached to many ideas I’ve explored in other plays: ideas about privilege, situationist ideas about power distribution, the relationship between art and popular culture, etc. You know, all that Oobleckery.

If nothing else I would like to think of Strauss at Midnight as a corrective to the abuse of Brechtian strategy and general good sense represented by Tim Robbins’ hack job.

The more I explored the relationships in the play the more it became about Jewish authorship - as well as fake Jewish authorship (represented by the Protocols). That the Protocols were plagiarized from a play about Machiavelli in Hell just seemed too loaded with meaning to be ignored, especially given Strauss’s opinion about Machiavelli’s pivotal role in the development of modern humanist values.

Strauss originated, in my opinion, the only intellectually substantial challenge to Western humanism since Nietzshe, who seemed a lot more ambivalent about his challenge than Strauss ever was about anything. Given Strauss’s importance, and the international catastrophe attributed by some in part to his political philosophy, it would seem to me Liberalism could do a lot more to stand up for itself than let Tim Robbins drool his boogery way across the stage.

So there’s some background, which doesn’t include anything about The Odd Couple, but that’s its own kettle of fish.

Click “Read more” to view a copy of the reading list Jeff sent to the cast to prepare them for Strauss at Midnight

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