Welcome back for another week! The fourth episode of The Chair Company, “Bahld Harmon birthplace (disputed)”, was a dive into the Trosper domestic sphere, shedding light on the conditions that have led Ron to this moment. Beginning with a flashback to six years ago, we see Ron and Barb sneak
This week on The Chair Company, Ron went further down the rabbit hole. What’s great about The Chair Company is that the whole show is built around a classically Robinsonian crash out, but here it’s extended over 4 hours rather than 5 minutes as it might be in
Welcome back to the Chair Company recap! When we last left our intrepid hero Ron Trosper, he was chasing down a man who hit him with a pipe. Ron’s prey evaded capture by unbuttoning his patterned shirt and slipping out of it, but perhaps that was a foolish idea.
Rough House Puppet Arts’ House of the Exquisite Corpse has become a bona-fide Chicago theater tradition since 2021, when it began producing its annual autumn shows under the Exquisite Corpse name. Every year in the fall, Rough House focuses their devising process on a theme, creating an immersive walk-through “puppet
Welcome, everyone, to the very first recap in Simpler history! For the uninitiated, I recapped the third and fourth seasons of Succession on my now-defunct (not really, you can still find it) Medium page, and now I’m turning my attention to another Sunday night HBO corporate drama, Tim Robinson
A performance by Bread and Puppet Theater, the legendary troupe out of Glover, Vermont, is always a singular experience. Their ramshackle, proudly political performances have been a linchpin of America’s protest theatre movement for over 50 years. Their show at Chicago’s Clarendon Park this past Tuesday, part of
Fiddler on the Roof is a totemic piece of midcentury Ashkenazi-American culture. Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock, and Sheldon Harnick’s 1964 musical Based on Sholem Aleichem’s stories about Tevye the Milkman, has served, for better or for worse, as the last shred of the shtetl in the American zeitgeist
When I was in graduate school, I was assigned to teach Rhetoric. Despite my having nothing resembling a classical education, my department informed me that teaching Rhetoric was a larger appointment and therefore a larger stipend (as in, just over the poverty line and not under it). I figured, well,
The “sad clown” archetype is well-worn. Jean Claudio and Raquel Torre’s Memorabilia, presented by Teatro Vista at Filament Theatre, approaches that territory and gracefully avoids the traps of overwrought sentimentality. Memorabilia is a melancholy clown show, equally silly and tender, navigating memory, its gaps, and what draws us back
Friendship, Tim Robinson’s first feature film, is much more than just an extended sketch. Written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, the film effortlessly weaves huge laughs with a true sense of despair, the story of one man’s bleak existence ruptured by his inability to understand male friendship. Craig
When comedians brag about comedy’s power as a political tool, they’re usually missing the point. Man-at-a-desk political comedy might draw thoughtful “hmms” and chuckles, but the comedy that brutally attacks those in power and comforts regular people is typically something much less refined. Taylor Mac’s GARY: A
I hope you're well. You may have noticed that I haven't posted too much on here recently, but don't worry! There's more to come. I've been lucky enough to contribute quite a bit to the venerable Chicago Reader in the