“Give me one reason to stay here,” crooned Tracy Chapman in 1995, “and I’ll turn right back around.” A few years earlier, a 7-year-old named Duncan MacMillan embraced the spirit of this lyric as, in an attempt to pull his mother back from the brink of oblivion, he began keeping a list of the beautiful […]
Archives for June 24, 2019
Fight choreographer Casey Kaleba on prepping actors for whole-cast swordfights in new pirate musical Blackbeard at Signature
Casey Kaleba, of Tooth and Claw Combat Arts, has been a fight choreographer at Signature Theatre for approximately a decade, teaching combat arts for shows from Jelly’s Last Jam to Midwestern Gothic to Road Show to Miss Saigon. “Very often, it’s a simple thing. I’ll come in for a slap or a character has to […]
Energie. How Anthony Bordain sparked Mark Baughman’s latest rock musical on human transformation
Energie grew out of the two events I was thinking about over the last year or so. The first was Anthony Bordain’s suicide, and how he seemed to have touched so many people so deeply. He was unpretentious and had his faults and wrestled with his demons, which he fully acknowledged without apology. On one […]
Review: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Brecht’s warning about fascism at Scena Theatre
Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (trans. George Tabori) presents us with a familiar story: a churlish Chicago mobster slashes and wheedles his way to the top. This time, it’s the top of the city’s cauliflower game. In case that doesn’t ring a bell, Scena Theatre’s production offers up Brecht’s suggested projections, orienting […]