Windy City Times, August 29, 1996 The production by the Thirteenth Tribe, currently playing in the bunker-like depths of the Chopin Theatre, rejects this facile interpretation wholly. Far from glossing over Genet’s arguments, director Joanna settle emphasizes them by keeping her actors clothed at all times, albeit in fetishistically provocative garments,...
Chicago Sun-Times, August 12, 1997 The two-year-old Thirteenth Tribe, serious proponents of site-specific theatre, has ignited a firestorm of paradoxes and provocations in Bombs in the Ladies Room, written and performed by company member Megan Rodgers. Set in the claustrophobic basement of Wicker Park’s Yello Gallery, this multimedia work explores the theme...
Chicago Tribune, March 24, 1999 Classical Stories Brought to New Life JoAnne Akalaitis, Anne Bogart, Robert Wilson and most other postmodern cutting-edge directors in the American theatre do the bulk of their creative work with well-established institutions. They claim allegiance to the avant-garde, but the scale of their visual conceptions demands a...
Gay Chicago Magazine, June 1999 As the world watches refugees return to what may be left of their homes in the former Yugoslavia, Oana-Maria Cajal’s The Enduring legend of Marinka Pinka and Tommy Atomic couldn’t be more timely or more disturbing. Set in a refugee camp somewhere in Europe, an mélange of...
Chicago Reader, September 9, 1999 Settle’s performers (A. Deacetis, M. Rodgers, and K. Taber) speak their lines with the kind of crisp, intelligent clarity that only actors who know and love their Beckett can achieve. Even more delightful is how gracefully they negotiate the play’s mood swings, winning laughs one minute...
TheatreChicago.com, August 26, 2000 There are plenty of fun moments, and the magic tricks were drawing gasps from the audience the night I attended. The costumes and set are stunning, and both actors are on top of their game; there is enough strength in the performances and visuals to recommend this...
Daily Herald, January 12, 2001 Ionesco’s Macbett, now being staged at the Chopin Theatre in Chicago, succeeds in being both a brilliant satire of the Bard’s play and an angry commentary on 20th century life. Those who know their Macbeth know that Banquo is one of the early martyrs in that play,...
The Beckett Circle, Fall 2001 Audience members received instructions to wait at the corner of Pierce and Leavitt, a tree-lined neighborhood of vintage apartment buildings and elegant turn of the century homes. By eight o’clock on September 9, a crowd of about eighty playgoers gathered, very young and very fashionable with...