Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Six Degrees of Separation


I have always found the interactions between sub-cultures and the dominant American culture to be fascinating. (Can you tell I've been to grad school?) Not just racial tensions, but I love the interplay between a dominant culture and a sub-culture. If you're ever in need for a good dramatic ploy, the world will never tire of the old men vs. women trope. The story is always more successful when the less powerful culture is able to demonstrate a superiority over the dominant culture.

So, for me, Six Degrees of Separation is fascinating on so many levels. Of course there is the dynamics of the race interactions, but Guare takes the script deeper and introduces class, gender, sex, age, religion and mixes them all into one wonderful script that leaves the audience with something to contemplate while entertaining at the same time.

The current production by the Eclipse Theatre is crystalline in it's precision in depicting the conflict and intermingling of these various subsets of the American culture. Each topic is going to ripe for generations and Chicago audiences cannot be too exposed to an examination of these issues, nor challenged to strenuously to examine their own relationships to the issues in Guare's script.

If you consider yourself to be a thinking Chicago theatre goer, you simply cannot miss this production.
Directed by Steve Scott and featuring Eclipse ensemble members Stephen Dale and Rebecca Prescott, with guest artists Laura Coover, Brandon Ford, Sasha Gioppo, Michael Gonring, Zach Gray, Nick Horst, Howie Johnson, Eric Leonard, Joe Mack, Guy Massey, John Milewski, Michael Pogue, Drew Schad and Karen Yates.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

We're Back!

Is there anything worse than a neglected blog? No. But all I can say in my defense is that it has been one terribly exciting few months.

Big news that will unfurl in the coming weeks, but the last few months have been all about portfolio expansion. Models, models everywhere. Doing test shots for a big agent, (who has to remain nameless) and big business expansion plans.

All very, very exciting!

So check back in the coming weeks and watch the work as it unfolds!