Philip Dawkins and NEW PLAYS FROM THE HEARTLAND Starting Tomorrow

The Mike Dobbins Memorial New Plays from the Heartland project -- combining a one-act playwriting contest with staged readings and a master class for the winning playwrights as well as a public forum to allow the prominent playwright who selected the winners to interact with the Bloomington-Normal community -- is back this week at Heartland Theatre.

The festivities begin tomorrow night at 7:30 pm when Philip Dawkins, this year's playwright in residence, offers his remarks and takes questions on the art of playwriting in a forum that is free and open to the public. You may remember Dawkins' name from the play Failure: A Love Story, a musical tragicomedy in verse performed at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in 2013 after a successful run at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater. Dawkins is also the author of Miss Marx: Or the Involuntary Side Effect of Living (Strawdog Theatre -- Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work), The Happiest Place on Earth (Side Show Theatre/Greenhouse Theater Center), Le Switch (About Face Theatre, The Jungle), Charm (Northlight Theatre), The Homosexuals (About Face Theater) and the musical adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches with composer David Mallamud (Children’s Theater Company, Minneapolis). His lyrical, whimsical style makes him a unique voice in American theater.

The three winning New Plays from the Heartland will be performed as staged readings beginning at 7:30 pm on Friday and Saturday and 2 pm on Sunday, directed by Heartland artistic director Rhys Lovell. This year's winners are Golden Land by John Adams of Richmon Heights, Missouri; All Sewed Up by Marty Seigel of Bloomington, Illinois; and Annabelle's Last Stand by Todd Wineburner of Pontiac, Illinois. Here's what Heartland has to say about each of the plays:

GOLDEN LAND by John Adams, Richmon Heights MO
A chance meeting in New York in 1904 illustrates that the apple seldom falls far from the tree. The age-old conflict between the disenfranchised and the privileged plays out on a tenement stoop on a hot summer day.

ALL SEWED UP by Marty Seigel, Bloomington IL
Owners of a small-town business and the town manager go head to head against a high-powered corporation. The lingering smoke from an old flame can’t mask a critical flaw that will bring one side down.

ANNABELLE’S LAST STAND by Todd Wineburner, Pontiac IL
A house is not just bricks and mortar; it’s dreams and memories too. And that’s worth fighting for, as a sheriff who is reluctant to exercise his authority soon learns.

For more information on the Mike Dobbins Memorial New Plays from the Heartland, Philip Dawkins or the winning plays, you can visit Heartland's website for the full scoop. Please note that this new-play festival is made possible by the Town of Normal Harmon Arts Grant and sponsored by Paul and Sandra Harmon.

Heartland News X 3

In addition to opening the first show of their fall season tonight and launching the new ten-minute play contest this week, Heartland Theatre has also announced auditions next week for their November show. Here's the lowdown on all three Heartland happenings:

Fighting Words by Sunil Kuruvilla, directed by Don Shandrow, opens tonight with a Pay What You Can preview. After tonight, tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for seniors over 65, and $5 for students, with performances through September 24. Groups of ten or more qualify for special discounts. Kuruvilla is a Canadian playwright who has a master's degree in playwriting from Yale School of Drama. This particular play involves three women in a small mining town in Wales, waiting to watch their hometown hero in a boxing match taking place halfway across the world in Los Angeles. Shandrow's cast for Fighting Words is Jessie Swiech, Lizzy Selzer and Nancy Nickerson. If you're interested in seeing the show, you'll find show times here and reservation information here.

Heartland has revealed the new theme for their annual ten-minute play competition. It's "The Graduation Party." They're asking for plays "that explore the fleeting moments when people realize they’re finishing a journey together." If your "Graduation Party" play earns highest honors and wins a spot in next year's festival, performances will take place June 8 to July 1, 2017. For more information on what they're looking for in terms of plays, try this link. Rules and guidelines are here.

Auditions for the next play on Heartland's schedule, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, will be held at the theater on Sunday, September 11, from 3 to 5:30 pm, and Monday, September 12, from 7 to 9:30 pm. Sandra Zielinski is directing The Homecoming, which features Pinter's trademark brand of menace and unpleasantness, as a professor with working class origins comes back into contact with his family, a loutish bunch of men. He brings his wife with him to this Homecoming, creating tension and conflict as the men posture for her attention. A bit of trivia: Like Fighting Words, The Homecoming has a would-be boxer among its characters. Zielinski will be looking for five men ranging in age from mid-twenties to 70s, and one woman in her 30s. Click here for all the audition info. Performances are scheduled for November 3 to 19, 2016.

To sum up, Fighting Words opens tonight and runs through the 24th; ten-minute plays on the theme "The Graduation Party" are now being accepted in a contest for possible production next year; and auditions for The Homecoming will take place this coming Sunday and Monday.

Calling All Actors: Auditions Next Week at Heartland Theatre and Community Players

Heartland Theatre Company and Community Players Theatre have both announced that they'll hold auditions next week for upcoming shows. The dates overlap a bit -- Heartland's auditions will be held on the 24th and 25th, while Players will be doing their auditions on the 25th and 26th -- but not to worry. The shows they're casting could not be more different, so it seems unlikely anybody who is interested in one will also be trying out for the other.

First up, Heartland and director Don Shandow will be looking for three women for Sunil Kuruvilla's Fighting Words, a 2003 drama set in the small town of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Auditions are set for Sunday, July 24, from 4 to 8 pm, and Monday, July 25, from to 10 pm.

Fighting Words has a cast of three, with action involving two sisters -- Peg and Nia -- and their landlady, Mrs.  Davies. Heartland will be looking for actresses in the 20 to 30 range for Peg, approximately 25 to 35 for Nia, and 50 to 60 for Mrs. Davies, and everyone will need to be able to handle a Welsh accent. (Here's a short Youtube video of two actual sisters from Merthyr if you want to hear what they sound like and see a bit of the town in its current state.) As for the play... Here's what it's all about:

In September, 1980, three women in the tiny Welsh village of Merthyr Tydfil wait, worry and watch, pinning their hopes and dreams on a bantamweight boxer named Johnny Owen, who has traveled all the way from Wales to Los Angeles to fight for a world championship. Every man in town who could scrape up the money is in California with their favorite son, but sisters Peg and Nia and their landlady Mrs. Davies are left behind. To pass the time before the bout is on television, they bake, they talk – and they fight – about their futures and fears and how they live their lives in this sorrowful mining town.

Performances of Fighting Words are scheduled for September 8 to 24, 2016 at Heartland Theatre.

Over at Community Players, the comedy Boeing Boeing is in need of two men and three women. Director G. William Zorn and producer Chris Terven will hold auditions on Monday, July 25 and Tuesday, July 26, starting at 7 pm each night. Boeing Boeing is a silly, sexy farce -- very "Coffee, tea or me" if you remember that phrase -- about a playboy in Paris and the three flight attendants from different countries he's juggling. It was originally written in French in 1960 by playwright Marc Camoletti, but it was in English that it found its biggest audiences, with a smash London production that ran for seven years, a movie starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, and a revival in the new millennium that featured an all-star cast on Broadway. That cast included Bradley Whitford as a swinging bachelor living in a fab pad in Paris, with Mark Rylance as his clueless friend from the States, Christine Baranski as his housekeeper and Gina Gershon, Kathryn Hahn and Mary McCormack as the beautiful Italian, American and German women who are running in and out of the apartment. Rylance won another Tony for his Boeing Boeing performance. You can see descriptions of all the roles on the Players website, along with suggested ages for the various characters.

Community Players' production of Boeing Boeing will run from September 2 to 11, 2016.

The Summer Season Starts... Now!

I feel as if we hardly had a spring (I think I say that every year) but here we are, with a toe dipped in June, and it seems summer is here, whether we're ready or not. With summer come some different theater options we don't see the rest of the year. More things involving the younger set, lighter fare, and fun stuff all around.

Starting tonight, Heartland Theatre is back with its 15th annual ten-minute play festival, this year on the theme "The Art Gallery," with performances June 2-4, 9-11, 16-18 and 23-25. For all the details on what kind of art playwrights chose for their "Art Gallery plays," check out this preview piece, including info on the eight winning plays, playwrights, directors and casts. For show times, you'll want to visit this page.

Also at Heartland, June brings auditions for the "New Plays from the Heartland" project, which offers staged readings of three new one-act plays written by Midwestern playwrights, this year directed by Illinois State University professor Cyndee Brown. The winning plays in need of actors are Key Ring by Steven Peterson from Chicago, Good Morning, Miriam by Jacqueline Floyd-Priskorn of Troy City, Michigan, and Pazediv (Positive) by Alyssa Ratkovich. You may remember Ratkovich, an ISU alum, from her appearances in several Heartland ten-minute play festivals of yesteryear. Brown will hold auditions on Monday, June 6, and Tuesday, June 7, from 7 to 10 pm at Heartland Theatre. You can read more about what she's looking for here.

Illinois Theatre, the production arm of the University of Illinois's theatre department, has announced the return of the Sullivan Project, which pairs Daniel Sullivan, Tony Award winning director as well Swanlund Chair in theatre at U of I, with a new play by a major playwright. This time the play is Long Lost, written by Donald Margulies, the playwright behind Dinner with Friends (a Pulitzer Prize winner, also directed by Sullivan), Sight Unseen, Time Stands Still and Collected Stories. Long Lost concerns two middle-aged brothers attempting to reunite after years of conflict. Seven performances are scheduled between June 8 and 12 in the Studio Theatre inside Urbana's Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. For ticket information, look for the green button on this page.

Normal Parks and Recreation's 2016 High School Summer Theatre brings You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown to the Connie Link Ampitheatre on Linden Street in Normal at 7:30 pm on June 9, 10, 11 and 12 and 16, 17, 19 and 19. As they describe it, "Happiness is...Charlie Brown and the Gang!" They're using the script from the 2012 revival of the musical (with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner) based on Charlie Shultz's comic strips and cartoons. Like the cartoons, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown features Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroeder and of course Snoopy, the dog who has fantasies of flying his doghouse against the Red Baron. The cast includes Jamie Keller (Sally), Nicholas Koch (Schroeder), Will Koski (Charlie Brown), Brendan Riley (Linus) Paige Woods (Lucy) and Simmy Woods (Snoopy), as well as about 35 more high school and junior high age actors, dancers and singers. The Normal Parks and Recreation Summer Musical Facebook page has a list of the entire cast.

If you have a hankering to return to the big hair and hot dance moves of the 1980s, you're in luck. The Normal Theater goes all the way back to 1986 for Pretty in Pink, where pretty Molly Ringwald yearns for popular Blane, played by Andrew McCarthy, while driven crazy by weird-but-interesting Duckie, played by Jon Cryer, on June 10, and then to 1984 for Footloose, the one where Kevin Bacon just wants to kick up his heels in a town where dancing isn't allowed, on June 16. If the Psychedelic Furs ("Pretty in Pink") or Kenny Loggins ("Footloose") and Deniece Williams ("Let's Hear It for the Boy") are the soundtrack to your life, the Normal Theater is waiting for you.

The Station Theatre opens its summer season July 16 with the vacation comedy Leaving Iowa by Tim Clue and Spike Manton. The authors' website for the play tells us that "Leaving Iowa first premiered at Jeff Daniels’ Purple Rose Theatre, where it broke box office records and received a nomination for Best New Play from the Detroit Free Press. After a year-long, sold-out run at Chicago’s Royal George Theatre, Leaving Iowa made its west coast debut at the Laguna Playhouse, where it earned another honor as one of SoCal Theater’s 10 Most Memorable Moments." Performance of Leaving Iowa, directed by David Barkley, will continue at the Station Theatre through July 2.

With a presidential race happening right now, especially one with a demagogue front and center, there could be no better time for Charlie Chaplin's 1940 masterpiece The Great Dictator. Cinema Judaica presents the film on Sunday, June 19, at 7:30 pm at the Art Theater Co-op in Champaign. Chaplin plays two roles, one an evil tyrant named Adenoid Hinkle (the country he's got in his grip is called Tomainia), a caricature of Adolph Hitler, and the other an innocent Jewish barber who bears a certain resemblance to Little Tramp, his own classic comic persona from silent films. The Great Dictator was Chaplin's first real talking picture, making the most of his grace and physical humor, with supporting performances from comedian Jack Oakie as Napaloni, the dictator of Bacteria, and Paulette Goddardas a beautiful young woman named Hannah. You need to see The Great Dictator. Even if you've seen it before, you need to see it again. I'm not kidding.

Schoolhouse Rock Live comes to Community Players Theatre on June 24, 25 and 26, showcasing a cast of performers ranging from 5th to 8th graders. This is the inaugural production under Players' new Summer Camp banner. And what's Schoolhouse Rock? It's a pop-culture phenomenon based on the Emmy Award-winning Saturday morning cartoon series from the 1970s. With songs like "Conjunction Junction" and "Just a Bill," Schoolhouse Rock taught grammar, history and math to unsuspecting kids.You can see Schoolhouse Rock Live with your children on Saturday, June 25, at 1 pm and 4 pm, or on Sunday the 26th at 2 pm. Director Kelly Rosendahl's cast includes Olivia Graham, Jacob Matchett, Monica Martinez, Savannah Sleevar and Matthew Williamson and an ensemble of about 40. To purchase tickets, click here.

As a teaser for its summer season, which starts in July, the Illinois Shakespeare Festival visits the Normal Public Library at 10:30 am on June 24 with something they're calling Scenes and Songs from Peter and the Starcatcher. Tickets for all three Festival productions -- Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Peter and the Starcatcher -- are now available, if you're considering a subscription or individual tickets. The Illinois Shakespeare Festival opens in previews July 5, with performances continuing through August 13.

There's plenty more happening in June and I'll try to catch up with that as we move along. But for now... It's time to start making reservations.

THE ART GALLERY 10-Minute Plays On Stage at Heartland Throughout June

Heartland Theatre's annual 10-Minute Play Festival has been a highlight of the summer season in Bloomington-Normal since it began back in 2002. The first year, local authors were spotlighted, but since then, the competition has become global, with playwrights from all over the world entering their work. This year, on the Art Gallery theme, plays came in from the United States as well as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.

THE ART GALLERY 10-Minute Play Festival opens Thursday, June 2, with a Pay What You Can preview, with 7 pm performances on the 3rd and 4th. The Festival continues on June 9, 10, 11 and 12; 16, 17 and 18; and 23, 24 and 25. For the complete list of show dates and times, click here.

This year's theme means that all of the plays are set in a gallery of some sort, with all different kinds of "art" in play. Here's the line-up of winning plays, with added information about who's directing and acting:

Sold! by Donna Hoke, East Amherst NY
The value of a piece of art may be hard to figure out, especially if a savvy buyer decides to play cat and mouse – or Clutter and Johnson – with a newbie collector. Directed by Connie Chojnacki Blick. Cast: Christopher Stucky, Kristi Zimmerman and Chris Stevenson.

The Art Gallery by Dan Borengasser, Springdale AR
Candace has an assignment to write about a new gallery for her newspaper. But the gallery – "The Art Gallery" – is both less and more than she expected. Directed by Rob Goode. Cast: Minette Donhardt, Aaron Thomas and Wes Melton (June 9-12).

Critic's Choice by Patti Cassidy, Watertown MA
Marian is an art critic. She thinks she knows exactly what Charles intends with his art. Charles thinks she has no clue. Who gets to decide what a painting means? Directed by Cristen Monson. Cast: Rick Clemmons, Michelle Woody, J. Michael Grey (June 12) and Carolyn Stucky (June 12 and 16).

Performance Art by Judy Klass, Nashville TN
"Experimenting with the whole art gallery experience in bold new ways" is all fine and good until you can't tell whether you're coming or going or Hecuba Rosenblatt is putting you on. Directed by Ron Emmons. Cast: Aszure Dorton and Abby Scott.

Abby Scott (L) and Aszure Dorton in Performance Art
Photo credit: Dana Colcleasure

I Was Fine Until You Came in the Room by Rich Orloff, New York NY
Fifty-one years ago, Pete saw Helen at an art gallery. He thought she was cute and she thought he looked nice, but… Somebody's going to have to say something! Directed by Ron Emmons. Cast: Elsie Cadieux, Chuck Pettigrew, Lizzy Selzer and Chris Stevenson.

The Art of Reincarnation by Nicole Neely, Van Alstyne TX
An artist has been digging through Lily's garbage, looking for inspiration, for hope. But how can evidence of her failures begin to add up to something beautiful? Directed by Cristen Monson. Cast: Lizzy Selzer, Aaron Thomas and J. Michael Grey (June 9-12).

The Painting by Ron Burch, Los Angeles CA
Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you see things the same. With the help of a selfie and Facebook, maybe, just maybe, the red blob can reach out to the center spot. Directed by Rob Goode. Cast: Chuck Pettigrew and Irene Taylor.

Honorable Mention by Shawn Samuelson Henry, Grosse Pointe Park MI
Kids will be kids and adults should be adults, until the adults start messing with the kids' art contest. Don’t forget, Mom and Dad – there’s "honor" in "honorable mention." Directed by Connie Chojnacki Blick. Cast: Rick Clemmons, Carolyn Stucky and J. Michael Grey (June 12).

Returning winners include Dan Borengasser, whose Auld Lang Syne earned a slot in last year's CLASS REUNION plays, and Ron Burch, who wrote Polly, one of the winning FOWL PLAYS two years ago.

For more information on THE ART GALLERY plays, click here for an overview, here for show times, and here for the list of plays and playwrights. Call 309-452-8709 or email boxoffice@heartlandtheatre.org for reservations.

And if you'd like to see (a rather impressive) list of winners from all 15 years of Heartland's 10-Minute Play Festival, try this page.

It's That Time Again -- February Fever!

I'm late out of the gate, but February entertainment options are not. They're starting up soon, and you need to know to get your tickets, your DVR fired up, or your snacks ready.

Right now, Champaign's Art Theater Co-op is offering Trumbo, the biopic about blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston in the title role. A big part of the Dalton Trumbo story involves the Oscars, as his work won two of them during a time he couldn't take credit for it. An English writer named Ian McLellan Hunter "fronted" for Trumbo on the 1953 film Roman Holiday, which won an Academy Award for its writing, while Trumbo used the pseudonym "Robert Rich" for The Brave One in 1956, another Oscar winner for its story. And this year, Cranston is nominated for his work as an actor in Trumbo. You'll find the film at the Art tonight and tomorrow at 10 pm, with showings at 11:30 am on Saturday the 6th and 2:30 pm on Sunday the 7th and Wednesday the 10th. Yes, those are odd times, but Trumbo is worth a look.

On February 5, Illinois Wesleyan University's School of Theatre Arts presents Sarah Gancher's Klauzal Square, a ghostly story of bullying, religion, and the power dynamic among preteens, inspired by a real Budapest playground built on top of what was once a Nazi mass grave. IWU senior Tyler Stacey directs a cast of five, including sophomore Libby Zabit, who plays Klara, the one with a ghostly friend, along with Hailey Lechelt, Jackie Salgado, Kristin Solodar and Brooke Teweles. Performances of Klauzal Square run from February 5 to 7 in the E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre on the Wesleyan campus. Call the box office at 309-556-3232 for ticket information.

Next week, Heartland Theatre kicks off the winter part of its season with Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris's Pulitzer, Tony and Olivier-winning play from 2010. The play, which functions as a companion piece to Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning A Raisin in the Sun, uses events in one Chicago house, shown in 1959 and then 2009, to illuminate the racial issues underlying where and how we live in America. In the 50s, Clybourne Park is a white, middle-class neighborhood, and a white couple named Bev and Russ are selling their home to a black family. When we see it again in 2009, it has become an all-African-American neighborhood, but white people are trying to move back in, pushing all the black people out and razing houses to the ground in the name of gentrification. The same actors play different people in the two timelines, giving them a chance to take on more than role, in some cases on opposite sides of the issues raised. Heartland Theatre's Artistic Director Rhys Lovell is at the helm of Clybourne Park, with a cast that includes John Bowen, Anastasia Ferguson, John Fischer, Joshua McCauley, Elante Richardson, Michelle Woody, Tim Wyman and Kristi Zimmerman-Weiher. For show dates and times, click here. For reservation information, try this page.

The musical Ragtime takes the stage at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on February 11 for just one show at 7:30 pm. It's not clear from the BCPA site who is performing this Broadway musical, which played for two years before the turn of the 21st century and earned three Tony Awards, including a Featured Actress win for Audra McDonald, who only had two Tonys back then. Ragtime was her third, but she has six now, if you're keeping track. Ragtime is based on the E. L. Doctorow novel, showing a swirling series of events in American history that involve people from disparate parts of society -- the upper and lower classes, a jazz musician, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe -- against a backdrop of a very American form of music. Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty wrote the score, while Terrence McNally wrote the book.

The Illinois State University School of Theatre and Dance also kicks off its 2016 theatre season next week, with Illinois Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Kevin Rich directing... Shakespeare! It's Romeo and Juliet this time, that timeless tale of star-crossed lovers who fall for each other in spite of parental disapproval and a climate of feuds and fighting in old Verona. Romeo and Juliet opens in Westhoff Theatre on February 12, with James Keating and Kaitlyn Wehr as R and J. Performances continue through the 20th, including a 2 pm matinee on the 14th if Romeo and Juliet is your idea of a cool Valentine's date. For more information (including a link to buy tickets), check out this ISU press piece.

If Hamlet is your favorite Shakespeare play (and it is mine), you're in luck. Illinois Wesleyan University's School of Theatre Arts is putting Hamlet on stage at the Jerome Mirza Theater in McPherson Hall on February 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27 at 8 pm and February 28 at 2 pm. IWU professor Christopher Connelly directs Shakespeare's longest play, the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark as he muses on life, death, revenge, and what to do about the rotten state in which he lives. No poster for this one that I could find, so let's content ourselves with a picture of David Tennant as Hamlet on a British stamp from 2011.

Street Scene on Broadway in 1947.

ISU Theatre is back on February 26 with the opera version of Elmer Rice's Street Scene, directed by new faculty member Robert Quinlan. Rice wrote the book of the musical, too, moving the action from a sweltering day on the front steps of a tenement in a "mean quarter of New York" in the 1920's to the same hot spot in 1946. The plot involves various residents of the building, as they gather to gossip, flirt, fight and generally push against each other in their small square of real estate. The opera's music was written by Kurt Weill, while poet Langston Hughes provided the lyrics. The 1947 Broadway production won Tonys for Weill and its costume designer, although it has never been revived on Broadway. When casting was announced, Quinlan's ensemble included Rebecca Crumline as Anna Maurrant, an unhappy woman who lives in the tenement behind the stoop; Joshua Ramseyer as her violently jealous husband; Morgan Melville as their daughter, Rose; and Kevin Alleman as Sam Kaplan, a Jewish boy who's in love with Rose. Street Scene is scheduled for performances in the ISU Center for the Performing Arts from February 26 to March 4. 

Closing out the month, Arts at ICC will present The Dead Guy by Eric Coble, with performances from February 26 to March 6. Coble's 2005 play looks at the continuing appetite for reality TV and the moral price we pay, focusing on a show (also called The Dead Guy) with a shocking premise. Contestant Eldon Phelps gets a cool million dollars to appear on the show, but... There's a big but: Eldon is required to spend the entire amount during one week, with his death looming at the end of it, live and on TV. As he goes through his spending-a-million week, the audience is busy voting on how he should kick his reality TV bucket. Ouch. ICC Theatre is giving you six performances to catch The Dead Guy, with shows on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2:30 pm starting February 26. I am also without a poster for The Dead Guy at ICC, but Proper Hijinx Productions in Texas has a nifty one for their current production that you can see here.

Discovering an Undiscovered Classic: New, Funny, Political Ibsen at Heartland

It's not surprising that Henrik Ibsen would center a play on a critique of politics and politicians. He was a playwright very much in tune with his times, with his harsh look at immorality and religion in Ghosts and the government cover-up at the heart of An Enemy of the People. But... Funny?

Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, A Doll's House... Not exactly a barrel of laughs. There are lighter moments in Peer Gynt in some directors' hands, but even so, Ibsen's reputation as a playwright is not built upon comedy.

But A League of Youth, a play that came a year after Peer Gynt and ten years before A Doll's House, relies on cynical humor to tell its story. Ibsen's jabs at Norwegian politics made A League of Youth very popular in Norway, although it has only rarely been done outside that country. It did get a professional production in England that kept the Norwegian setting and added an Obamaesque poster (seen above) to underline the political nature of the action. That Nottingham theater also created an intriguing trailer for their League of Youth here.

Chicago playwright Nigel O'Hearn has taken a different tack with the material, calling it An Alliance of Brats, making the characters American and setting the play right now at an Iowa caucus during the presidential race. The spine of the play is still there, focused on an upstart who decides to launch a political campaign, pulling in young, disaffected voters to topple the corrupt fat cats. But that upstart is compromised by his own runaway ambition and lack of principles almost before he gets started. O'Hearn is banking on the fact that political naivete, demagogues and backroom deals never go out of style. Witness the current presidential campaigns...

Joey Banks, a third-year MFA acting candidate at Illinois State University, is working with O'Hearn and director Sandra Zielinski to give An Alliance of Brats a try-out of sorts, a staged reading at Heartland Theatre with a strong cast combining ISU actors and local favorites and some design elements to see how it works. There are discussions scheduled after each performance -- tonight's features the playwright himself along with McLean County Board representative Victoria Harris -- to look into the play's issues and this new adaptation more deeply.

Banks will play Ted Staynsgore (Stensgård in the original), the opportunist who kicks the alliance of brats into gear, with Todd Wineburner as Elias Bratsberg, a local aristocrat and money man; John Bowen as Monty Patronymic, a rich landowner; Bethany Hart as Audra Lundestad, the establishment politician; Kelsey Bunner and Gabrielle Munoz as Bratsberg's and Patronymic's daughters who become romantic interests for Staynsgore;  Mitch Fscher as Erik Bratsberg, shady son of the power broker; Colin Trevino-Odell as Alekson, a newspaper man; Jaimie Taylor and Tommy Kawalek as other members of the press; Andrew Piechota and Alejandro Raya as a manager and doctor who work for Bratsberg; Tim Wyman as a once-wealthy man and general troublemaker, and Riley Zobel as one of the young voters Staynsgore is reaching out to.

An Alliance of Brats has three performances left. Tonight and tomorrow the show begins at 7:30 pm, with a matinee on Sunday at 2 pm. For all the details on who's speaking after each performance, check Heartland Theatre's showtimes page. For this event, tickets are $5, payable at the door. To make a reservation, call 309-452-8709 or email boxoffice@heartlandtheatre.org

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like December

There's a lot to stuff in your stocking this month, with some interesting not-so-holidayish items, (like a very special trio of staged readings) to go along with the classic Nutcrackers (and more Nutcrackers) and Christmas concerts.

This week, Heartland Theatre is doing something a little different -- a staged reading of a completely new (updated and contemporized) version of an "undiscovered Ibsen classic" in collaboration with Illinois State University's School of Theatre and Dance. Although Ibsen's title was originally translated as A League of Youth, this new version by playwright Nigel O'Hearn is called An Alliance of Brats. It's political and timely, with a cast led by ISU MFA actor Joey Banks, directed by Sandra Zielinski, with talkbacks on political topics scheduled after every performance. You can see An Alliance of Brats for a $5 donation from December 4 to 6, with the playwright himself in house on Friday the 4th. Click here to check out the schedule and the lineup of guest speakers after the show.

Turner Classic Movies is offering way too many holiday movies for me to enumerate them. But you can peruse the list here, with a choice of Scrooges (Albert Finney and Reginald Owen) as well as the cream of the holiday film crop with Meet Me in St. Louis, Christmas in Connecticut and The Shop Around the Corner. The holiday parade at TCM starts on Thursday at 8 pm with It Happened on 5th Avenue, a slight but sweet romantic comedy about GIs solving the post-World War II housing crisis for themselves by moving into a posh but empty 5th Avenue mansion while its millionaire owner summers in warmer climes. TCM finishes up December with a whole lot of Marx Brothers and Thin Man movies on December 31.

Hayao Miyazaki’s much-beloved Spirited Away makes the lineup at Champaign's Art Theater Co-Op this month, with screenings from December 5 to 10. This beautiful piece of animated fantasy sends a young girl named Chihiro deep into an enchanted theme park, battling demons, witches and sorcery to save herself and her parents. Spirited Away ranks No. 30 among IMDB's list of the all-time best movies. To see showtimes and a trailer for this Oscar-winning film, click here.

Music for the Holidays at ISU December 5 and 6

Illinois State University’s annual Music for the Holidays concerts will take place at 3 and 7 pm on December 5, and 3 pm December 6, in the Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall on the ISU quad. Music for the Holidays includes traditional holiday music performed by instrumental and vocal ensembles from ISU's School of Music at ISU, with orchestral pieces such as Russian Christmas Music and Hanukkah Festival Overture, choral arrangements of the Christmas Waltz, "Pat-a-Pan" and "Still, Still, Still," and an arrangement of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Audience members are encouraged to join and sing along. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for faculty/staff and $10 for students and seniors.

Illinois Wesleyan's annual Christmas Choral Concert takes place December 6 at Holy Trinity Church. This special holiday concert will feature IWU’s Collegiate Choir, University Choir and Chamber Singers, conducted by Professor of Music J. Scott Ferguson. The Lincoln-Way East High Schol Chorale, conducted by Matthew Granger, will also perform. For more information, click here.

The Normal Theater is branching into live theater with a special staged reading of Lillian Hellman's gripping family drama, The Little Foxes, directed by Patrick O'Gara, on Tuesday, December 8, at 7 pm. The role of Regina Gibbons, the scheming matriarch of a poisonous family, has been played by Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis, Anne Bancroft and Elizabeth Taylor, but O'Gara has put together an all-star cast of his own, including local powerhouses Lori Adams, Dean Brown, Gregory Hicks, Kyle Fitzgerald, Don Shandrow, Claron Sharrieff and Todd Wineburner, along with all three members of the de Veer acting family. Yes, this Little Foxes includes Connie, Gwen and Mark de Veer on stage at the same time. I would say it's not to be missed, but that should be apparent from the cast without any input from me. The Normal Theater will follow that up with a screening of the 1941 movie version of The Little Foxes, starring Bette Davis, with a screenplay penned by Lillian Hellman herself. (Note that the image accompanying this paragraph is from the 1997 Broadway revival with Stockard Channing.)

New Route Theatre's According to John on December 11

New Route Theatre is up and running in December with According to John, a new piece based on the Gospel of John in the New Testament, written and performed by Ron Roman, another of Illinois State University's third-year MFA actors. This solo performance, a staged reading, takes place at the First Christian Church of Bloomington on December 11 at 7 pm. Tickets are available at the door on the night of the performance. There is no set ticket price, but donations are encouraged. Email new.route.theatre@gmail.com for more information.

This month they're busy rehearsing The Crucible, their January show, at Community Players, but in the meantime, Players is also offering a "Holiday Movie Night" double feature with The Muppet Christmas Carol, where Michael Caine plays Scrooge alongside Kermit as Bob Cratchit (with songs!) and Christmas Vacation, with Chevy Chase tied up in lights as the crazy Griswolf family gathers for the holidays. Players' "Holiday Movie Night" is set for December 12; doors open at 4:30, with the Muppets starting at 5 and Chevy Chase & Co. taking over at 7. And it's free!

Singer Sal Viviano comes to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on December 12 with his tribute to Frank Sinatra called Perfectly Frank: Celebrating a Century of Sinatra. December 12 happens to be Mr. Sinatra's birthday -- his 100th, as a matter of fact -- so you are promised cake if you attend this concert, which will cover Sinatra hits like "Luck Be a Lady" and "My Kind of Town." Viviano doesn't sound a great deal like Sinatra (you can hear a lot of him on the long teaser video posted on the BCPA site) so this is clearly not intended as an imitation.

Carols in the Courtroom on December 15

Illinois State University's Civic Chorale hosts Carols in the Courtroom on December 15 at 7:30 pm in the Governor Fifer room of the McLean County Museum of History. And hot cocoa and Christmas cookies will be available, as well. Once again, admission is free, but donations to help support ISU's Civic Chorale will be accepted. Professor John M. Koch is conducting, with Patricia Foltz at the piano and Julia Kay Jameson at the harp. The event has a Facebook page here.

On December 18, Illinois Central College's Guest Artist Series celebrates a different musical superstar when "tribute artist" Carla DelVillaggio and pianist Chris Rottmayer present Simply Streisand: Holiday Memories to put the spotlight on Barbra. No word on what songs DelVillaggio will be performing, but it could be anything from "Jingle Bells" to "Ave Maria" to "It Must Have Been the Mistletoe," all of which have appeared on Streisand's Christmas albums. For performance and ticket information, you can visit ICC's page for the event.

If you need a Christmas gift for somebody who likes Shakespeare (and specifically the Illinois Shakespeare Festival), the Festival is offering subscription packages now, with plenty of time to stick Viola and Orsino, Hamlet and even a little Peter Pan under the tree. Individual tickets won't go on sale till February, but this is your chance to get your choice of seats with your season tickets now. All the details are available at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival website.

Plenty of opportunities to give yourself the gift of theater this December!

Lynn Nottage's INTIMATE APPAREL Opens Tomorrow at Heartland

If you saw By the Way, Meet Vera Stark last year at Illinois State University, you know that playwright Lynn Nottage + director Don LaCasse + actor Faith Servant adds up to some fine theatre. The team is back, this time at Heartland Theatre, with Intimate Apparel, a different kind of Nottage play.

Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize, for Ruined, her emotional and dramatic look at women abused and "ruined" by war in the Congo, plus a Guggenheim fellowship and a MacArthur "genius" grant, along with a host of other awards and fellowships. Her voice as a playwright is distinctive but also versatile, ranging from the Alice Down the Rabbit Hole modern-day stylings of Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, produced locally by New Route Theatre; Crumbs from the Table of Joy, a family drama set in the 1950s that has been compared to The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun; the afore-mentioned Vera Stark, a fun and irreverent look at what it meant to be black and talented in Old Hollywood; and Intimate Apparel, probably her most-produced play, which focuses on an African-American woman in a different historical period.

Intimate Apparel's Off-Broadway production at the Roundabout Theatre starred Viola Davis and took home Obie, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Davis, with another Outer Critics Circle win for the play itself, an Obie for Derek McLane's set, Lucille Lortel Awards for set and costumes, and a half dozen nominations in other categories.

Its action is set in 1905, a time when a talented seamstress like Esther -- more of an artist than a tradeswoman when it comes to the beautiful lingerie she creates -- can scratch out a small place for herself in New York City, even as she cruises past the far side of 30 unmarried and on her own. Yes, the lace and silk confections she sews are popular with both sides of the street, with white society ladies and juke-joint African-American women alike. But Esther wants more than dressing up other people in sexy underthings. She wants love, romance, intimacy... Maybe even the respectable marriage her landlady keeps pushing.

In Nottage's script, Esther comes into contact with people outside her own small circle, from a sympathetic fabric merchant who happens to be an Orthodox Jew, an African-American prostitute, a wealthy white woman trapped in a stultifying marriage, and a pen pal halfway across the world. The pen pal, a working man in Barbados who's worked on the Panama Canal, is the source of much of Intimate Apparel's drama. Is he the man Esther sees in his letters? Can he be what she needs?

For director Don LaCasse, Faith Servant, a third-year MFA candidate in acting at ISU, will take on Esther. Servant played the glamorous maid-turned-actress Vera Stark last year; Esther Mills is more real, less sparkly, but definitely a showcase for an actress. The rest of the cast is equally strong, with some of Bloomington-Normal's best actors, including Fania Bourn, seen last year in New Route Theatre's powerful production of The Mountaintop; Rhys Lovell, Heartland's Artistic Director who can always be counted on for first-rate performances; Elante Richardson, seen on stage at ISU in Happy Endings and Day of Absence; Jennifer Rusk, who made a vivid impression in Community Players' Hairspray and as Eliza Esque with Illinois Voices Theatre; and Megan Tennis, who went from ISU's Pride and Prejudice last spring to Brighton Beach Memoirs a few months ago.

Rusk will portray Mrs. Dickson, Esther's respectable landlady and confidante, with Bourn as Mayme, a prostitute who buys garments from Esther, Tennis as Mrs. Van Buren, Mayme's society counterpart, Lovell as Mr. Marks, the Jewish merchant, and Richardson as George, the mystery man from Barbados.

Intimate Apparel is a beautiful play -- a real standout even on Lynn Nottage's outstanding resume -- and its issues of aspiration, longing and loneliness should resonate with almost everyone. If you'd like to read more about Nottage, try this piece in The Guardian or this Interval interview. 

Intimate Apparel opens tomorrow night at Heartland Theatre with a special 7:30 pm "Pay What You Can Preview," followed by evening performances on November 6 and 7; 12, 13 and 14; and 19, 20 and 21; and matinees at 2 pm on November 15 and 22. For reservation information, click here. For a list of performance dates and times, click here.

Let's Catch Up with September

Yes, it's late, but it's the day after a holiday weekend, which is the perfect time to take store of what's coming up. September! Back in school, theatre scene set to simmer, everybody looking for entertainment...

There's plenty of drama happening out there! Serena and Venus Williams are battling in a quarterfinal at the US Open even as we speak, and that's about as dramatic as it gets. And later tonight, Stephen Colbert hits the desk for his very first Late Show from the Ed Sullivan Theatre in Manhattan. If his Comedy Central show was any indication, it will take Colbert a night or two to really get rolling. But once he's got his Late Show legs under him, watch out! Tonight Stephen hosts George Clooney and Jeb Bush, with Jon Batiste leading the band. You can find Mr. Colbert et al. on CBS after the nightly news.

Community Players opened the Michael Frayn backstage farce Noises Off last weekend, but they'll be back this weekend, too. Darlene Lloyd stars as Dotty Otley, an English actress a bit past her prime, taking her act on the road with a bad farce and a terrible company of actors. The hapless troupe includes Dotty's much-younger boyfriend, Garry Lejeune, played for Community Players by Thom Rakestraw, and much-beleaguered director Lloyd Dallas, played by Brian Artman, who himself directed Noises Off at Players a few years ago. There's also an aging dipsomaniac (played by Alan Wilson), a gossip (Bridgette Richard), two dim bulbs (Hannah Kerns and Chris Terven), a sleep-deprived stage hand (Jon Hubal) and a stage manager (Erica Sommers) who really does have it all together, except everybody else keeps getting in her way. Suffice it to say several people end up in their underwear at one time or another and there are a whole lot of slammed doors, sardines and stairs to run up and down. Noises Off continues at Community Players through the 13th. Click here for ticket information.

Nina Raine's Tribes, an Olivier nominee for Best Play in its inaugural production in London in 2010, begins at Heartland Theatre on Thursday the 10th with a Pay What You Can Preview, running till September 27. Tribes is a family drama, circling around Billy, born deaf into an intensely verbal clan. He can read lips but he has never learned sign language. That's just fine by his family, even if he tunes them out on occasion. But then Billy meets Sylvia, a hearing young woman from a deaf family. Sylvia is very good at sign language. She understands Billy's "tribe" much better than he does at the onset of the play. Tribes is a provocative play with strong language and a lot to say. Sandra Zielinski directs a cast that includes Colin Lawrence as Billy, Tim Wyman and Cristen Monson as his parents, Connie Chojnacki Blick and Aaron Sparks as his sister and brother, and Kaitlyn Wehr as Sylvia, the catalyst for change. Showtimes are listed on this page, with reservation info at the bottom.

In television news, Dancing with the Stars returns to ABC on the 14th, with Doctor Who (seen above) coming back to BBC America on the 19th; Gotham (Fox), The Voice (NBC), The Big Bang Theory (CBS) and Castle (ABC), all on the 21st; soapy goodness Empire (Fox) and Nashville (ABC) on the 23rd; and Shonda Rhimes' Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder both back on ABC on the 24th. There's new stuff popping up, too, from Scream Queens on Fox on September 22 to ABC's much ballyhooed Blood and Oil and Quantico on September 27.

Here's something you don't see every day... A one-man Wild Bill Hickok show. Walt Willey, who starred as one of Erica Kane's most lasting romantic foils on the daytime soap All My Children, comes to the BCPA in Wild Bill! It's billed as "an evening with James Butler Hickok starring Walt Willey," although it's actually an afternoon in this case. Bloomington's stop on the Wild Bill! tour is at 2 pm on September 20th. If you're wondering what this exploration of the life and times of Western legend looks like, you can catch a teaser video on Youtube.

The fall theatre season at Illinois State University starts on September 23 with Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, directed by Jonathan Hunt Sell in the Center for the Performing Arts. Brighton Beach is the first of Simon's autobiographical trio of plays, with the fictional character of Eugene standing in for Mr. Simon in all three. In this one, Eugene is a teenager in Brooklyn during the Depression, obsessed with baseball and girls and trying to survive in his crowded household. Garrett Douglas will play Eugene for ISU, with Jimmy Keating as his brother Stanley, Gloria Petrelli and Graham Gusloff as his parents, Christina Duris as Aunt Blanche, and Cassandra Conklin and Megan Tennis as cousins Laurie and Nora, who move in and cause Eugene no end of tsuris.

Prairie Fire Theatre offers A Night of Big Band Music on September 25 and 26. The two Nights will take place at Illinois Wesleyan's Memorial Center on 7:30 pm each night. According to the Prairie Fire site, tickets aren't on sale yet, but will be soon.

And, to bring this full circle, another late night host steps into the box on September 28 when Trevor Noah officially takes on The Daily Show on Comedy Central in the wake of Jon Stewart's departure earlier this summer. He won't be Jon Stewart, but I guess we'll have to see if he can make it work.

Loading Up Your April Basket

April always seems to be a big month for entertainment -- it's when people peek outside looking for shows after a winter spent inside, when theatre companies announce their new seasons and start hawking subscriptions, when TV shows gear up for spring sweeps, and new work starts cropping up at festivals around the country.

First, let's just get Mad Men out of the way right off the top. AMC's amazing piece of television history begins its final season this Sunday night, with ad man Don Draper and his colleagues, wives, lovers and kids taking a trip to the 70s. Watch out for polyester, plaid and a major infusion of facial hair. Where will Don and Peggy and Roger and Joan end up? Given what we've seen so far, happily ever after doesn't seem likely. Neither does Don ending up as D. B. Cooper, but that doesn't stop people from continuing to guess it.

Speaking of new work... I will be making my annual trip to Louisville for Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American plays next weekend. No better spot to wallow in theatre for an entire weekend. There will be six full-length shows, a program of three new 10-minute plays, parties, panels and impromptu discussions. I'll let you know what I thought about all of that as soon as I get back. But in the meantime...

I don't think there is any particular Tennessee Williams anniversary or event that we're celebrating this month, but it's not like the work of this quintessentially American playwright ever goes out of style. Thomas Lanier Williams, AKA Tennessee, was born March 26, 1911, and here he is, 104 years later, with his plays still a hot item on the stage. In fact, from Normal to Urbana, there is a Tennessee Williams Trifecta available this month. You can easily do all three if you have a hankering to compare/contrast, from the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire to perennial favorite The Glass Menagerie and upstart Not About Nightingales, all within a 50-mile radius.

Elia Kazan's 1951 movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire was nominated for a dozen Oscars, winning four, including Best Actress for Vivien Leigh as Blanche, Best Supporting Actress for Kim Hunter as Stella and Best Supporting Actor for Karl Malden as Mitch. Kazan had also directed the Broadway version of Williams' steamy drama, with Marlon Brando, Hunter and Malden in the same roles. There is much to admire and much to chew on in the movie, too, with Leigh almost translucent as poor, fading Blanche, and Brando giving a Method acting clinic as crude, sexual, red-meat-eating Stanley Kowalski. When Blanche and Stanley are thrown into conflict in a tiny, stifling, much-too-crowded New Orleans apartment, something's got to give, and we all know it won't be pretty. This Streetcar plays four times on the screen at the Normal Theater, 7 pm each night between April 2 and 5.

Streetcar on film is a perfect appetizer for The Glass Menagerie, which will be live on stage at Heartland beginning April 9. ISU professor Connie de Veer portrays Amanda Wingfield, another faded Southern belle fallen on hard times. Unlike Blanche DuBois, Amanda has children. But her relationship with theme is just as constricted and unsuccessful as anything Blanche attempts. Son Tom wants nothing more than to get out of the apartment to live a life of his own, but if he goes, he will have to leave his fragile sister Laura behind. Don LaCasse director Glass Menagerie for Heartland, with Joe Faifer as Tom, Elsa Torner as Laura and Patrick Riley as the Gentleman Caller. Performances continue through April 26, with a talkback with the cast scheduled after the Sunday matinee on April 19. For all the details, click here.

The Urbana part of the Tennessee Williams equation is a lesser-known work called Not About Nightingales, directed by Tom Mitchell at the Studio Theatre inside the University of Illinois' Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Nightingales opens April 9, as well, with performances through the 19th. Williams wrote this play in 1938, supposedly inspired by a real-life Pennsylvania case of abuse and death inside a prison. In the fictional prison, inmates go on a hunger strike and eventually riot as conditions become unlivable.

Illinois State University moves far away from Tennessee Williams, into a land of fantasy and folklore with Selkie: Between Land and Sea a lyrical drama by Laurie Brooks, directed by Jessika Malone for ISU's Westhoff Theatre from April 9 to 18. Olivia Candocia plays the mystical girl/seal creature called a Selkie, while Dave Lemmon and Eddie Curley portray the men in her story. For more information, try this link.

David Ives' All in the Timing is pretty much a perfect program of 10-minute plays, combining humor, commentary on modern relationships, and even a few barbs pointed in the direction of 20th century Russian politics. I'm looking at you, Leon Trotsky! Illinois Central College in East Peoria takes on All in the Timing April 10 to 19, with the Ives' collection directed by Rob Fulton, Julie Peters and Doug Rosson for the Studio Theatre in ICC's Performing Arts Center.

Eureka College's Pritchard Theatre is a fairly intimate setting, making it an interesting choice for Tracy Letts' sprawling, messy, dark family comedy August Osage County. There is a very large house at the center of August as well as several generations of the Weston family. Will that fit at Pritchard? Time and Eureka's production will tell the tale from April 14 to 18. Joel Shoemaker directs the Westons and their swirl of family troubles.

The Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts is big on improv, which means Broadway's Next Hit Musical, an improvised piece of musical comedy, is right up their alley. You can offer your own suggestions and see if the improvisers spin a new show out of your idea on April 16 at the BCPA.

If you like being involved in the show, you may be able to take it a step farther than just pitching ideas out of the audience. You can act, too! Or at least audition. Heartland often uses its annual 10-minute play festival to widen its pool of actors. And why not? There are more than 20 roles up for grabs in nine short plays, with characters ranging from a pair of 18-year-old high school students to a 90-year-old nun. Auditions for Heartland's 10-minute play festival will be held from 7 to 9:30 pm on April 20 and 21 at Heartland Theatre.

Appropriate, a firecracker of a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, brings its creepy post-Colonial sins of the father to Urbana's Station Theatre from April 23 to May 9. Is its title referring to the verb "appropriate," meaning to steal, to seize, to convert to one's own possession? Or the adjective "appropriate,"meaning suitable or fitting? I think it's the former, given the plantation setting and thhe echoes of its racist past that continue to plague it. Like August: Osage County, Appropriate centers on a large family home. And the Station Theatre is even smaller than Pritchard over in Eureka. How will the overgrown plantation fit? It's a mystery! Appropriate is directed by Mike Prosise for the Celebration Company at the Station Theatre.

Back home in Bloomington-Normal, New Route Theatre offers Black N Blue Boys/Broken Men by Dael Orlandersmith. Look for Black N Blue April 24 to 26 and May 1 to 3 at New Route's new space at 814 Jersey Avenue in Normal. Don Shandrow directs Claron Sharrieff in this one-woman show, an examination of "the captivating life stories of six unforgettable male characters of diverse backgrounds whose inescapable connections tie them together through traumatic pasts."