Chicago Day 4

Wednesday! Day 4!

Today was the day we booked 2 plays to see. So we woke up early to make the train to Lincoln Park and De Paul University. Sean was supposed to come show us where our first theatre was. However, when we arrived we realized we could find it ourselves, so we went exploring instead. We found a nice Thai restaurant by the campus that served cheap meals to students and we had lunch.

After lunch we went to find our theatre, The Greenhouse Theatre. It's a theatre with the same layout as our Warehouse Theatre at school, but with a smaller stage and larger seating area. It has seating on 3 sides. Basically, this theatre houses 3 theatre companies that perform all of their shows in the space, instead of one company owning the space. I think that's pretty awesome, because the audience that comes to this theatre has the chance to see a diverse range of performances.

We got our tickets early and then hung out in a coffee shop to wait until the show started. The stage our show was on was on the second floor. So at show time we went to go take our seats. We were in the center section to the stage left side. Awesome seats. We were seeing Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons). Melissa and I had performed a scene from the play in Acting III, so we picked the show to watch because we loved the script so much. It's Georgian Period, right after the Restoration, during the 1780's. We took a Restoration class last semester, and we had to learn the language of the fan(because all ladies carried a fan, but never to actually fan themselves with), and the proper way to move in the dress of the period, as well as how to sit and stand properly. It's all very intricate and it was so exciting to watch professional actors do it right!

The man playing Valmont (the main male) was especially adept at sitting, standing, and flirting properly. They didn't use fans, unfortunately, except in one scene and it was slightly distracting because they didn't practice it time period.

Overall, the play was just incredible. The space was intimate, but the actors were spot on. They did Standard American dialects (taking out all regional accents and implementing the vowel changes of the British dialects (been=bean, after=AHfter)). The characters were interesting and engaging, and the sword fight at the end was just the most amazing fight I've ever seen, especially on stage. I took stage combat this past summer, and watching a professional fight was exciting. It was fast paced, very intricate, and the sound effects by the actors were really good. I don't know how they did this fight so well in such a small space, but it was just amazing. I left the theatre wanting to learn that fight.

The actors also did a great job ignoring interruptions. There happened to be a wasp in the 2nd act that found its way onto the main actress' arm, and she didn't miss a beat (it was an important scene) as it crawled up her arm and flew into her wig. It also flew onto Valmont's jacket and he didn't break either. I cringed through the whole scene hoping it didn't sting someone!

We took the El down to the Magnificent Mile right after Dangerous Liaisons. We wanted to find a sushi place to eat at before we headed over to the Looking Glass Theatre to see Trust by David Schwimmer. We ate at a place called Friends Sushi, which was really good. Then we got our tickets and headed over to the Ghirardelli Chocolate Shop to have awesome ice cream. Then we went back to the Looking Glass to find our seats.

It was the same staging with a thrust stage (3 sides for the audience). The set for this piece was really cool. The show itself is about how technology tears a family apart when a 14 year old girl meets an older man in a chat room and starts a 'relationship' with him. So there was a huge 'screen' upstage that was made of white blocks (actually 3-D). There was one block missing, and it was on the floor stage left being used as the girl's bed.

There weren't many props, most actions were pantomimed such as eating, packing bags, driving cars. However, if the family was eating dinner, their dinner would show up on the screen upstage so the audience knew they were eating. Or if the scene changed to a different location (a bedroom, school, dining room, outside, a party) the location would be showed on the screen too! Whenever Anna (the 14 year old) was chatting on IM or taking pictures on her laptop or cellphone, the conversations were on the screen so the audience could read it.

It was a really interesting idea to have technology run the show the way it ran this girl's life. And the acting (once again, in such an intimate space) was just phenomenal. Especially Anna, who happened to be 19 like me! We got to talk to 2 ensemble members after the show, after the talk-back about the issues the show raises, and they were very nice. Raymond (who played the older man from the chat room) actually knew where our college was (which is rare) because his mom attended our school when it was a 2 year institution!! Talk about ironic.

We also had the opportunity to talk to Anna, whose real name is Allison, because she was leaving the theatre the same time as us. She asked about our school, and her mom asked us about what we thought of some of the issues of the show. It was one of the best things on the trip, to get to talk to actual cast members of an awesome company. I would love to work at Looking Glass after I graduate from school. They have such a different outlook on theatre, and I'm really interested in it. So many of the members in the Trust cast were extremely young too, which is promising.

After the show we took the El back to the hostel and slept!