Upcoming in August

August is a bit calmer month for local entertainment, but that doesn't mean there isn't plenty to keep you busy.

The Illinois Shakespeare Festival continues through August 9, with their all-male Much Ado About Nothing at 7:30 pm in the theater on the grounds of the Ewing Cultural Center on Tuesday the 5th and Thursday the 7th and in the Illinois State University Center for the Performing Arts at 1:30 pm on Saturday the 9th; Antony and Cleopatra at Ewing at 7:30 pm on Wednesday the 6th and 8 pm on Saturday the 9th and inside the CPA at 1:30 pm on the 8th; and the not-written-by-Shakespeare-but-featuring-him-as-a-character play Elizabeth Rex, written by Canadian playwright Timothy Findley, at Ewing at 8 pm on the 8th and in the CPA at 1:30 pm on the 6th. If that sounds like a lot of performances, remember that this is the last week. And check here on the calendar if you want to keep it all straight or see ticket information.

Also continuing through the 9th is the Station Theatre production of Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, a much-acclaimed new play about a grandmother and grandson trying to find common ground after he bikes across America and lands in her West Village apartment. Sara Boland-Taylor directs Janice Rothbaum and Casey Thiel as grandma Ida and grandson Leo in performances at 8 pm Wednesday through Saturday at the Station Theatre on Broadway in Urbana.

Terry Gilliam's weirdly wonderful Brazil comes to Champaign's Art Theater Co-op on August 6 and 7 in the 10 pm slot. Gilliam, the only American member of the Monty Python troupe, paints a picture of a sort of anarchic alt-world, not exactly the future or the past or the now, just a world that ours might have been or might become, where paranoia, an all-powerful bureaucracy and eccentric technology, as well as a lot of duct work, tubes and pipes, rule the day. That world is crushing the spirit of an everyman named Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce. It's funny, strange and sad, but never depressing. And visually, it is indeed a "nonstop dazzler," as the Art's website calls it.

If you were a fan of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of time travel romance novels, you'll either be thrilled or horrified to find out there's finally a screen adaptation of her work. It's on Starz and it starts August 9 at 8 pm Central. And if you just can't wait, Starz is making the first episode available online now. Irish actress Catriona Balfe plays English nurse Claire Randall, the one who tumbles backwards in time, away from war-torn Britain, landing in Scotland in 1743. Her Scottish love interest, rough and tumble Jamie Fraser, is played by Scotsman Sam Heughan.

New Route Theatre is officially moved in to its new space at 814 Jersey Avenue in Normal now, and they have been celebrating that fact with a summer schedule of workshops and staged readings. The next one up is set for August 15th. It's called Flashbacks, and it is written by Gregory Hicks and Erica Thurman, based on Thurman's prior writings.  Hicks also directs. New Route describes Flashbacks as "a multi-media work that examines the intersection of childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy, poverty, sexism and racism through poetry, rap and dialogue." The performance will begin at 7:30 pm on August 15, with a talkback afterwards. Tickets are available at the door for a donation. If you'd like more information, you can visit New Route's Facebook page or email new.route.theatre@gmail.com

The University of Illinois' Krannert Center for the Performing Arts recently sent out its big annual packet on the 2014-15 season, featuring "Renée Fleming, Ragamala Dance, KODO, Cassandra Wilson, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Rosanne Cash, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Circus Oz, and dozens of other artists and intriguing events," as they put it. Tickets go on sale August 16 at 10 am for everything from the season's opening night festivities September 12 with Tiempo Libre, Mariachi Sol de México de José Hernández and Samba Soul to the Mark Morris Dance Group's Acis and Galatea in May, 2015. All the details are available here.

Doctor Who with new doctor Peter Capaldi comes to BBC America on August 23 with the "takeover" episode at 7 pm Central that night. But there's a slew of Doctor Who programming before and after the premiere, including a live pre-show and after-show, a marathon of episodes voted through by fans, and movie theater screenings. To see the trailer for Who with Capaldi, click here. For the complicated list of what exactly is happening to usher in Doctor No. 12, thumb through BBC America's roundup.

Ayad Akhtar's DISGRACED Wins the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

This year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama has been awarded to Ayad Akhtar's Disgraced, a play which premiered in Chicago in January, 2012, at the American Theater Company. Director Kimberly Senior then took the production to New York, where it played in the Clair Tow Theater at Lincoln Center from September to December, 2012.

Disgraced concerns Amir Kapoor, a Pakistani-American lawyer who has enjoyed a great deal of success within a prestigious New York firm. He lives on the Upper West Side in a beautiful apartment with a beautiful (white) wife, enjoying all the material accoutrements that accompany his status as a big-shot lawyer. To achieve that success, he's suppressed and hidden the parts of his identity related to Islam. But his wife, who is an artist, has incorporated Muslim motifs into her work. And when she throws a dinner party for a mixed group of guests, all those forces of identity, religion and culture collide.

As you can see from the poster image from Lincoln Center reproduced here, Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show played Amir in the New York production. To see video clips from that production, click here or here (under the "Works" tab).

Other plays considered for this year's Pulitzer were Gina Gionfriddo's Rapture, Blister, Burn, which the Pulitzer committee calls "a searing comedy that examines the psyches of two women in midlife as they ruefully question the differing choices they have made," and Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, "a drama that shows acute understanding of human idiosyncrasy as a spiky 91-year-old locks horns with her rudderless 21-year-old grandson who shows up at her Greenwich Village apartment after a disastrous cross-country bike trip."

A "Reckoning" Season Coming Up for Steppenwolf in 2012-13

Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company has not only launched a splashy new look for their website, but also announced their upcoming 2012-13 season.

They're calling their upcoming season "The Reckoning," with the teaser "There comes a moment when we are called to account. Will our deeds be repaid? Will our secrets be revealed? Will we get what we deserve?"

All of which sounds like a very Steppenwolf season.

The five plays they've chosen to represent "what happens when the past comes knocking" are:

GOOD PEOPLE, by David Lindsay-Abaire. September 13 to November 11, 2012.
Lindsay-Abaire's Boston-based play opened on Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club just about a year ago, with a production directed by Daniel Sullivan and starring Frances McDormand as a down-on-her-luck single mother who turns up on the doorstep of an old boyfriend who turned out to be a lot more successful than anybody else in the neighborhood. McDormand won the Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her role in "Good People." For Steppenwolf, ensemble member K. Todd Freeman will direct, with Alana Arenas, IWU alum Mariann Mayberry and Molly Regan in the cast.

THE MOTHERF*CKER WITH THE HAT, by Stephen Adly Guirgis. December 27, 2012 to March 3, 2013.
Everybody wanted to know how the Times and other papers would refer to this play. I don't think the asterisk is fooling anybody, but apparently, "Motherf*cker" is what we're all going with. It, too, played on Broadway last year, with comedian Chris Rock as a parole and drug abuse counselor. Cast members Bobby Cannavale, Yul Vázquez and Elizabeth Rodriguez were all nominated for Tonys, as was director Anna D. Shapiro, who will also be at the helm for this new production at Steppenwolf. Will Shapiro take the play and its comic storyline about a guy just out of prison who thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him in a new direction this time?

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, by Harold Pinter. January 24 to May 19, 2013.
This Pinter classic, full of menace, dread and murky motives, is about a birthday party in a dumpy seaside town, with two surprise guests who turn everything upside-down. "The Birthday Party" will be directed for Steppenwolf by Austin Pendleton, who recently visited ISU, with ISU alumni Francis Guinan and Moira Harris in the cast along with John Mahoney, Ian Barford and Harris's daughter Sophia Sinise.

HEAD OF PASSES, by Tarell Alvin McCraney. April 4 to June 9, 2013.
Another birthday party! McCraney's brand-new play is nowhere near Pinter's England, however. She sets her party "at the Mississippi River's mouth," which I'm assuming means New Orleans, with a family gathering that exposes old, dark secrets. McCraney's "Brother/Sister Plays" were directed by Tina Landau, who will also take on "Head of Passes." Look for Alana Arenas, K. Todd Freeman, U of I grad Jon Michael Hill, Tim Hopper and James Vincent Meredith, who memorably appeared at the Station Theatre in Urbana before his Steppenwolf tenure.

BELLEVILLE, by Amy Herzog. June 27 to August 25, 2013.
No, not Belleville, Illinois. Herzog's suspense drama is is set in the artsy, gentrified Belleville neighborhood in Paris, the one that appeared in "The Triplets of  Belleville." Zack and Abby, a pair of American 20-somethings, think they've found the perfect place to be hip and trendy, idealistic and Bohemian, young and in love. But there are ominous cracks in their marriage from the very start, contrasting their experience in Paris with the more stable French-African married couple who are their landlords. "Belleville" will be directed by Anne Kaufman, with omnipresent ensemble member Alana Arenas as well as Kate Arrington in the cast. Fun fact about playwright Amy Herzog: Her grandfather was Arthur Herzog, Jr., who wrote the song "God Bless the Child."

For information about subscriptions to Steppenwolf's "Reckoning" season, click here.