Also by Valerie Jean Johnson
Master of Puppets
“In the puppet theater, the text is important, but not as important as the performance itself,” says Blair Thomas, founder and artistic director of the eponymous Blair Thomas & Company, the puppet theater he established in 2002. For six years, the Chicago-based company has focused primarily on touring shows, traveling the globe with their highly unique, multi-dimensional productions. 2008, however, marks the year that Thomas and company have decided to establish new roots in Chicago, launching their premiere season in the city
(2008-11-18)
Voices from the Dead
“Late at night in the guts of an abandoned theater, a company of actors gathers to rehearse Shakespeare’s 'Macbeth.' They soon realize that they’re not alone. As they are drawn deeper into the Bard’s most magnetic play, the ghosts that have haunted the story since its inception hover and encroach.” So goes the story behind “Radio Macbeth,” the latest offering from the renowned New York City-based SITI Company
(2008-11-04)
Taking Flight
Often, one of the biggest inspirations for a person to become an actor is the desire to inhabit a world other than their own, the challenge of “becoming” another human being. But for actress Mierka Girten, company member of A Red Orchid Theatre and writer/performer of the company’s season opener “With or Without Wings,” starring as herself in her own life story may be the richest, most rewarding role of her career
(2008-09-23)
Galati-esque
The work of famed Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has been captivating readers around the globe for decades. Translated into dozens of languages, Murakami’s stories are a delicious blend of dream and reality, the tangible and the ethereal, populated with characters both fantastically bizarre and starkly human. Director Frank Galati, whose stage adaptation of Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore” opens at Steppenwolf Theatre this week, describes the writer’s world as “a very strange, liminal place somewhere between illusion and reality
(2008-09-16)
Playing Around
(2008-05-13)
Playing Around
(2008-04-29)
Tip of the Week
(2008-04-29)
The Long Goodbye
(2008-03-25)
Tip of the Week
(2008-01-22)
Girl Crazy
(2008-01-15)
Over the Ocean
(2007-12-26)
Tip of the Week
(2007-12-18)
