Score One for the Girls: THE WOLVES at the Goodman's Owen Theatre

Against all kinds of obstacles, women in theater have thrown down the gauntlet on more than one front. Freedom from harassment, decent access to directing, design and stage management jobs, consideration for women playwrights and actors when artistic directors are choosing their seasons... It's all on the table. And it only makes sense. If you look around when you go to the theater, you already know that audiences are more likely to be made up of women. But how have theaters responded? Is anything getting better? From my perspective, the answer is yes and no. Locally, we've seen some progress*, a continuation of good work**, and a decided retreat into Same Old Same Old White Guy Theater***. But Chicago's Goodman Theatre has taken the ball and run with it, with programming like Sarah DeLappe's The Wolves, directed by Vanessa Stalling, who earned her MFA in directing at Illinois State University.

The Wolves is a wonderful choice, an inside look at a team of girls playing soccer and what's important to them. Stalling is the perfect director for it, too, with her emphasis on the physical side of theater, and appreciation for women on stage who can "look strong, be aggressive or take up space." That is exactly what these soccer players do as they run through practice, joke around, pick at issues they may not exactly understand, vie for playing time, and struggle with things like friendship, teamwork, sexuality, parents and mortality. None of it is revolutionary, just new, because somebody is finally listening in to teenage girls who find joy in strength and competition, pushing and kicking their way in a world that isn't all that welcoming.

DeLappe's script uses overlapping, fragmented dialogue that kicks around in a much less disciplined fashion than the drills the girls are running, veering from global atrocities to yogurt, yurts, tampons and maxi pads with breathless speed. Both the dialogue and the action are choreographed and tricky, but Stalling keeps her actors on their toes throughout the play and together, they drive the narrative perfectly. Whether or not any of these women actually played soccer during their high school years, they've brought their skills up to a level that reads like the real thing. Their stamina and focus are amazing.

As #46, Erin O'Shea stands out both with her soccer prowess as well as her acting, delivering emotional depth as an outsider who can't quite figure out the social cues that come so easily to her teammates. ISU grad Cydney Moody is a delight as #8, the more naïve one who falls apart when she finds out that the national tournament will be in Tulsa instead of Orlando, while Sarah Price makes smart girl #11 a real treat. I also enjoyed Isa Arciniegas as the no-nonsense captain of the team, Taylor Blim as a sweet girl who shows signs of an eating disorder, Angela Alise as the stressed-out goalie, Mary Tilden as a goofball whose jokes don't exactly land, and Aurora Real De Asua and Natalie Joyce as the most socially advanced of the bunch. Meighan Gerachis arrives late in the game, but she makes quite an impact with a heartbreaker of a monologue.

The Wolves is staged in the round (or rectangle) in the Goodman's Owen Theatre, with the audience up close to the action. Set Designer Collette Pollard has created a simple but effective space lined with artificial turf and surrounded by netting that allows for in-your-face athletics. Mikhail Fiksel's sound design and Keith Parham's lighting design add a blast of energy, as well.

Because it has proved so popular, The Wolves has been extended past its original end date. That means you can still see it through March 18 if you can get a ticket.

THE WOLVES
By Sarah DeLappe

The Owen Theatre at the Goodman Theatre
February 9 to March 18, 2018

Directed by Vanessa Stalling
Set design by Collette Pollard
Costume design by Noël Huntzinger
Lighting design by Keith Parham
Original music and sound design by Mikhail Fiksel
Dramaturgy by Kristin Idasak

Production Stage Manager: Nikki Blue
Soccer Skill Building Coach: Katie Berkopec

Cast: Angela Alise, Isa Arciniegas, Taylor Blim, Aurora Real De Asua, Meighan Gerachis, Natalie Joyce, Cydney Moody, Erin O'Shea, Sarah Price and Mary Tilden


* Illinois State University has done excellent work in spotlighting plays by women, people of color and from authors outside the United States, in its last two seasons. In Urbana, the Station Theatre is devoting most of its current season to women playwrights and women directors.

** New Route Theater in Bloomington-Normal continues its mission of giving a voice to underrepresented communities and ethnically and culturally diverse playwrights. 

*** Heartland Theatre has just announced a new mainstage season that will be 100% white male voices, after two seasons with paltry representation (a play by Anna Zeigler in 2017 and book and lyrics by Tina Landau in this year's Floyd Collins are the sole contributions of women) and more than double the number of roles available to men over those seasons.

Red Tape/Stage Left MUTT Pairs Director Vanessa Stalling and Actor Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith (L) and Michael Reyes as they appear in Mutt.

In this election year, two Chicago theaters -- Stage Left and Red Tape -- are collaborating on a very political play. Mutt, a new play written by Christopher Chen, is described as a "blisteringly funny satire that skewers not only the elephants in the room but the donkeys too," as it "burns down the entire house of racial cards." Mutt opened on stage at Theater Wit on January 9 and it runs till February 14.

I am alerting you to the existence of this production of Mutt not because of its timeliness, although that's certainly a big plus, but because of its central Illinois connections. Director Vanessa Stalling is someone I met in the masters' program at Illinois State University when she was finishing up her MFA in directing there, while Dan Smith, who plays the candidate on the left in the Mutt poster above, frequently appeared on stage at the Station Theatre in Urbana before he left for Chicago. He also happened to be in an acting class I once took in Champaign. That may not seem like much of a coincidence, but the classes I shared with Vanessa and Dan were more than 20 years apart, so it seemed striking to me.

Vanessa Stalling showed her strong directorial hand on A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mrs. Packard,  The Maids, Gone Missing, Pullman WA and Mud while at Illinois State University. She was the Associate Artistic Director at Redmoon Theatre before she came to ISU, and since she left, she's directed Suzan-Lori Parks' The America Play at Oracle Theatre and Circuscope at Actors Gymnasium, continuing to add striking visual style and energy to illuminate complex material

As for Dan Smith... In the early 90s, he played a variety of major roles at the Station in shows ranging from Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Craig Lucas's Reckless, Eric Overmyer's In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe and Terrence McNally's The Lisbon Traviata. He showed again and again that he can be compelling and charismatic no matter who he's playing. In Chicago, Dan has appeared at the Goodman (King of the Yees, Measure for Measure and The World of Extreme Happiness) as well as Victory Gardens (Never the Sinner), the Piven Theatre Workshop ( and Steppenwolf, where he created a role in Tina Landau's Space and traveled with the show when it moved to the Public Theatre in New York.

Dan's role in Mutt is Len Smith, which already sounds like it fits. As you can see in this teaser video, Len is "exciting and non-threatening at the same time" as well as "a mix of every major race in the world." He's a multi-racial war hero who looks like the perfect candidate for canny political operatives looking to score a presidential home run.

You can see a lot more about Mutt at both the Stage Left and Red Tape sites as well as on their Facebook pages and Stage Left's Youtube channel.

MIDSUMMER Makes Storytime Magic Inside ISU's Westhoff Theatre

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has been changed up and spun around so many different ways -- trapezes and swings, puppets, steam punk, plantation, zombies, Cajun, theme park, bikers -- you might think there's nothing new that can be done to it. But director Vanessa Stalling's Midsummer takes a different tack, one completely new to me, in her Illinois State University production at Westhoff Theatre.

Stalling's Midsummer begins and ends with a young girl, a beat-up, battered little thing, who runs away from her troubles into a mysterious warehouse of the imagination. I actually guessed "attic" when I saw it, but the program notes are clear -- it's a warehouse. You get the idea fairly quickly that this Midsummer is some parts nightmare and some parts flight of imagination, as well as a coping device for our runaway child. She pulls things down from the cluttered shelves and cubbyholes looming over the playing space, as drawers magically open and close, lights appear and fade, and fantasy figures drop in and out of her dreamscape.

That means we can jump among the three overlapping stories of Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies; the quartet of Athenian lovers; and a group of Mechanicals, working men attempting to put on a play, with carefree abandon, just like they might appear during playtime for a child. And they all seem to play with an odd and slightly warped perspective.

The little girl who provides the framing device, here played with energy and spirit by Cydney Moody, steps into the action herself, taking on the role of Puck when the time comes, giving herself some of the power and control we can guess she didn't possess in real life. That extends to a sort of Superman cape near the end, protecting her, we hope, from whatever drove her here in the first place. It's to the credit of Moody's performance that we do actually worry about our little Puck when all is said and done.

Puck's vision includes fizzy, oddball songs and dances, including one to introduce our Rude Mechanicals after they pop out of the sewer where they work, another cheeky tune about a woodpecker, and an exuberant number I find impossible to describe, with the fairies frolicking in the forest and sweeping around with the lengthy train on Titania's vest, including flapping it like clean sheets on laundry day and bouncing on it like a trampoline.

There are a whole lot of inventive and creative bits of staging like that, especially when the fairies are around. That's aided by Jen Kazmierczak's nifty scenic design with all its attendant doors and hideyholes (and the surprises that keep poking out) and Caisa Sanburg's moody and atmospheric lighting design that extends the fantasy feel. Jamie Jones' costume design combines snazzy modern-dress for the court, an early 60s Dick-and-Jane look for the wayward Athenians, and some Victorian linens for the fairies, giving us the idea that Puck is mixing different sets of dolls and books in her imagination.

This is a reduced version of the play, with, for example, only four Mechanicals instead of the usual six, with Robin Starveling and Tom Snout right out, and some changes to the script to get it to come in, complete with new opening scene, at just about two hours. Stalling also uses the same actors -- Devon Nimerfroh and Abby Vombrack -- to play both Oberon and Titania and the Duke and his bride, Titania, which is not an unusual move. It underlines the tie between the two battling sets of lovers and in this subconscious world, gives Puck a way to work out that battle in Fairyland. Nimerfroh and Vombrack are strong in both pairings, but I especially enjoyed Nimerfroh's warmth as the sentimental-at-heart Oberon and Vombrack's tempestuous yet bright-eyed take on Titania. Her Titania reminded me a bit of Madeline Kahn's Bride of Frankenstein; let it be noted that conjuring up Kahn is a huge compliment to any actress.

Alex Strzelecki makes Bottom the weaver pretty darn cute (even if he is a smudged-up sewer rat) and not such a come-down for Titania, which is a welcome development, while the mismatched lovers are energetic and fun as a unit and Fiona Stephens' engaging Helena stands out among them. I also enjoyed the coterie of fairies, a sunny bunch of free spirits, with Mary DeWitt and Omar Shammaa coming off especially charming.

In the end, Stalling's Midsummer is bright and boisterous, as well as affecting. It's something people do and have always done, telling ourselves stories to take us out of life's dark and scary corners. But I'm still worried about Little Miss Puck. At the end of the play, we can only hope she's okay in the hard, cold world outside her imagination.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
by William Shakespeare

The School of Theatre and Dance at Illinois State University
Westhoff Theatre

Director: Vanessa Stalling
Scenic Designer: Jen Kazmierczak
Costume Designer:Jamie Jones
Lighting Designer: Caisa Sanburg
Sound Designer: Shannon O'Neill
Text Coach: Kevin Rich
Prop Master: Matt Black
Stage Manager: Nicole Pressner

Cast: Mary DeWitt, Elizabeth Dillard, Garrett Douglas, Angela Geis, Caitlin Graham, Kate Klemchuk, David Link, Dan Machalinski, Brandon Miller, Cydney Moody, Devon Nimerfroh, Austin Peed, Andrew Piechota, Omar Shammaa, Fiona Stephens, Alex Strzelecki, Abby Vombrack.

Remaining Performances: April 13 and 16-20 at 7:30 pm, April 14 and 20 at 2 pm.

Running time: 2:10, including one 15-minute intermission

For ticket information, click here.

Keeping Up with Casting: MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at ISU

To catch up... We've already talked about the casts for four of Illinois State University's upcoming shows, from Archibald MacLeish's J.B, opening February 21 in Westhoff Theatre, to Rodgers' and Hammerstein's Oklahoma, in the Center for the Performing Arts from February 22, Tales of the Lost Formicans, a play by Constance Congdon, starting March 28 in Centennial West 207, and The Adding Machine, a classic from Elmer Rice, with performances beginning April 5 in the CPA. If you want to see which actors are playing which roles in those plays, click on the link under the show titles just above.

So what does that leave? Shakespeare, of course! A Midsummer Night's Dream is the last show of ISU's theatre season, taking the stage in Westhoff Theatre from April 11 to 20. Vanessa Stalling, the MFA directing candidate who worked on Jean Genet's The Maids last season, will direct this Midsummer for ISU.

Stallings has cast Devon Nimerfroh, memorable as Howard the salesman in Picnic and one of the onstage musicians in Mother Courage, as Theseus and Oberon, with Abby Vombrack, Mother Courage herself, opposite him as both Hippolyta and Titania.

Duke Theseus and his tempestuous Amazon bride-to-be, Hippolyta, form the framing device for the play. Their wedding offers an opportunity for aristocrats like the young Athenian lovers to gather as guests. It also gets the troupe of "mechanicals," regular working folk, together to attempt to put on a play in honor of the nuptials. The third plot thread in Midsummer involves a band of fairies and their king and queen, Oberon and Titania, who are up to some mischievous magical tricks in the same forest as the lovers and the mechanicals.

Nimerfroh and Vombrack will have more to do as Oberon and Titania, since their romantic battles create all sorts of havoc, what with misguided love potions mixing up the four lovers and Titania falling in love with Bottom, one of the actors in the amateur troupe, after he's been turned into a donkey by Puck, Oberon's right-hand fairy minion.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline as Titania and Bottom

For ISU, Cydney Moody will step in as Puck, while Thomas Howie (who happens to be the son of Mike Howie, my very first editor at the Champaign New-Gazette when I started as a theater critic) will play Bottom, the amateur actor who falls afoul of Oberon, with Garrett Douglas, Andrew Piechota and Brandon Miller as his fellow mechnicals.

Elizabeth Dillard and Fiona Stephens, who were together in Stallings' production of The Maids, will play Hermia and Helena, the Athenian girls who play mix-and-match with their romantic partners. The objects of their affections, Athenian youths Demetrius and Lysander, will be played by Dan Machalinski and Austin Peed.

Omar Shammaa, who was so good as Pascal in Anon(ymous) last fall, takes on Hermia's dad, Egeus, the one whose refusal to allow his daughter to chose her own boyfriend sends everybody on the lam, as well as other roles, which I hope include Robin Starveling, since otherwise we're missing a mechanical. Others in the cast include Kate Klemchuck and Mary DeWitt as fairies Peaseblossom and Mustardseed, along with Angela Geiss, Caitlin Graham and David Link in the ensemble.

Note that both images accompanying this post are from the 1999 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Michael Hoffman and starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Everett as Titania and Oberon, Kevin Kline as Bottom, Anna Friel, Calista Flockhart, Christian Bale and Dominic West as the four lovers, and Stanley Tucci as Puck.

There were a lot of things to like about that movie version, including my favorite group of mechanicals ever, with Kline as the leading man and Roger Rees, Bill Irwin, Gregory Jbara, Sam Rockwell and Max Wright rounding out the group. They came across as a band of brothers with sincere loyalty and affection for each other, giving Midsummer a different feel and making Bottom feel achingly real and his dream achingly lovely. (I never will like Rockwell's over-the-top Thisbe in the play-within-the-play, but I can always avert my eyes during that part.)

In any event, a good Midsummer is something to look forward to in any season. Bring it on, ISU!

Those Twisted Sisters, THE MAIDS, Open at ISU on Thursday

Are you ready for The Maids? Is anybody ever ready for The Maids?

Jean Genet's play is provocative and disturbing, centering on sisters Claire and Solange, poor, lowly housemaids who work for wealthy Madame. When Madame is away, the maids will play, concocting sadomasochistic games around the mistress/servant relationship. First Claire dons powder, rouge and lingerie to impersonate Madame, verbally eviscerating her sister in her role as maid until the clock runs out on Round I. Then Solange turns the tables and pretends to murder Madame as portrayed by Claire. And when Madame comes home, the game enters a new phase, as real poison and real betrayal come into play.

There are issues of identity, power, repression, sex and class all over The Maids, making it a very dark and dramatic psychodrama in the right hands.

Vanessa Stalling is in charge of the Illinois State University production that opens November 1, with a cast that includes Fiona Stephens and Elizabeth Dillard as Claire and Solange, and Tam Dickson as Madame. You may remember Stephens, who was terrific in last season's Cloud Nine, and Dillard from her memorable turn as a different kind of sister in The Marriage of Bette and Boo.

If you're intrigued, here's a little more info from ISU's Facebook page for these Maids:

First performed in Paris in 1947, The Maids provoked cries of outrage as it swerved from realism to melodrama — the maids plan a poisonous tea party for their mistress — to comic absurdity to madness. Over the course of his life Genet was a thief, prostitute, prisoner, poet, novelist, playwright, daring voice of homoeroticism and champion of the oppressed. In her review of a production of The Maids critic Rosie Dow wrote, “The colorful but troubled life of Jean Genet weeps out of every word of this play, and it’s not the thing to go and see if your established theatre comfort zone is a few chuckles and a happy ending.”

The Maids plays November 1-4 and 6-10 in Centennial West 207, with performances Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm and matinees at 2 pm on the 4th and 10th.

No "Cherry Orchard" at ISU -- It's "The Maids" Instead

The School of Theatre and Dance at Illinois State University has announced a change in the line-up for this season. Instead of Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" in the November slot in Centennial West 207, we will see Jean Genet's "The Maids" instead.

MFA directing candidate Vanessa Stalling will still direct, the rest of the production team remains in place, and performances will still run from November 1-4 and 6-10 at CW 207. No word yet on the cast for "The Maids," but there are roles for three women* in this controversial, dangerous little play.

The major action of the play surrounds Solange and Claire, sisters who work together as housemaids for wealthy Madame. When Madame is away, the maids will play, concocting sadomasochistic games around the mistress/servant relationship. First Claire dons powder and rouge and lingerie to impersonate Madame, verbally eviscerating her sister until the clock runs out on Round I. Then Solange turns the tables and pretends to murder Madame as portrayed by Claire. These two are what you might called Twisted Sisters.

And when Madame comes home, the game enters a new phase, as real poison and real betrayal are  revealed. There are issues of identity, power, sex and class all over "The Maids," making it a very dark and dramatic psychodrama in the right hands.

This image shows Susannah York and Glenda Jackson as Claire and Solange in the 1975 movie version of "The Maids." And, yes, it's as creepy as it looks. "The Maids" is definitely difficult, provocative material, making it a very intriguing choice for ISU's theater program, especially in the intimate space of CW 207.

Meanwhile, I'd love to see somebody at ISU pick up Adam Rapp's "The Edge of Our Bodies," a one-woman (or one-teen) play about an alienated schoolgirl who has a role in her boarding school production of "The Maids," and do it in some campus venue. Those two plays need to be seen together.

* Genet originally intended for the roles to be played by men, and that still happens fairly often. Do a Google image search on "The Maids" and you'll see a lot of guys in French maid drag. The movie version went with women, as you can see above, and Stalling is also casting females for the ISU production. Personally, I prefer it with women, just because the oppression of the maids and the power imbalance seems stronger that way. Yes, it loses something in camp or absurdity, but... The stuff about babies and mothers plays much better, and the women's problems seem more real. Just my take...

"Pullman, WA" and "9 Parts of Desire" Open Tomorrow at ISU

As we finish out February and head into March, we have a lot of theater happening in Central Illinois.

Yes, quirky and compelling "Cloud 9," the Caryl Churchill gender-bender, picks up again tomorrow and continues through Saturday, March 3.

Yes, the fast and furious "Mauritius," by Theresa Rebeck of "Smash" fame, has one more weekend at Heartland Theatre, with performances Thursday, March 1, through Sunday, March 4.

And, yes, there will be two new shows opening tomorrow, with the classic Noel Coward comedy "Blithe Spirit" taking the stage at Community Players and a more modern piece of relationship comedy, Gina Gionfriddo's "Becky Shaw" opening at Urbana's Station Theatre.

ISU also has two smaller shows sneaking up on us with invited dress rehearsals tonight and the first of just four performances starting tomorrow. They're both free, I think, and both take place in smaller venues, with Young Jean Lee's "Pullman, WA" in room 149 at ISU's Center for the Visual Arts, and Heather Raffo's "9 Parts of Desire" at Centennial East 115.

One interesting note: In the continuing discussion over why female playwrights get so many fewer productions than male playwrights, I am happy to tell you that five of the six playwrights attached to the plays I've listed here are, indeed, female. Thank you, area theaters, for doing your part to even the score.

Young Jean Lee was born in South Korea, but she grew up in Pullman, Washington, which provides the title for her play "Pullman, WA." In The New Yorker, Hilton Als described Lee as "a facetious provocateur; that is, she does whatever she can to get under our skin -- with laughs and with raw, brutal talk that at times feels gratuitous, and is meant to."

"Pullman, WA" is directed by grad student Vanessa Stalling for ISU's first-year MFA 2X2 program. The show's Facebook page says it is "the story of 3 self help gurus trying to preach their way of life and their cure for self hatred on the audience while discovering and working through their own personal demons along the way." Stalling's cast includes Drew Mills, Dustin Rothbart and Tyler Yonke.

The other half of the 2X2 is "9 Parts of Desire," Heather Raffo's examination of  "the extraordinary (and ordinary) lives of a whole cross-section of Iraqi women: a sexy painter, a radical Communist, doctors, exiles, wives and lovers. This work delves into the many conflicting aspects of what it means to be a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq." 

Raffo is an Iraqi-American, and she performed "9 Parts of Desire" herself as a one-woman show. She received a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show for that work. For ISU, Matt Campbell directs a cast of five -- Claire Ford, Jenna Liddle, Becky Miller, Alison Sokolowski and Carla Westlund -- to tell Raffo's story. 

For more information on "Pullman WA," including performance dates and times, click here. For "9 Parts of Desire," click here.