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Curious & the Rhino: A fringe theater story |
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Written by NED O’REILLY
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Friday, 15 October 2004 |
If you’ve a leaning toward the intellectual and emotional exchange that is live theater, read on! Never seen an unconventional play? Does the label sound elitist? You’d actually be surprised at how much of it makes sense to you – personally – once you experience it.
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Curious Theatre Branch
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7001 N. Glenwood
Chicago, IL 60626
(Right off the Morse El Stop)
Reservations: reservations@curioustheatrebranch.com
or call (773) 274-6660
Mailing list: list@curioustheatrebranch.com
Season: Year round;
Rhino Festival: September to November
Runs: Typically six weeks, plus extensions;
Rhino Fest shows and other projects shorter
Frequently more than one program a night
Parking: Free parking available two blocks north of the theater at the Trilogy lot, Estes and Greenview
Atmosphere: Very casual
Refreshments: Various snacks and non-alcoholic beverages
Information on the Curious Theatre Branch: curious@curioustheatrebranch.com
Information on the Rhinoceros Theatre Festival:
Rhinocerostheatrefestival.com
For information or to join a mailing list for other Chicago fringe theatrical events:
mscottmartin@yahoo.com
Information on Verbatim Verboten:
vickiq@aol.com
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The companies, actors, and writers you’ll read about in this article are not household names, but the artistic world is vast in Chicago and well worth exploring. As I said, read on!
Come with me back to the late 1980s in Chicago’s Wicker Park, a neighborhood of musicians, painters, actors, and playwrights, where the city’s fringe theater movement was taking root (‘fringe’ being the preferred name in the non-commercial professional theater community). A man named Howard Seale, working with the Bucktown Fine Arts Festival (Wicker Park and Bucktown border each other) conceived the idea for a festival of independent, original plays that he dubbed the Rhinoceros Theatre Festival.
One of the companies emerging at that time was the Curious Theatre Branch, a troupe formed by Beau O’Reilly and Jenny Magnus as an adjunct to their cabaret rock band, Maestro, Subgum & the Whole. Sixteen festivals later, the Rhino and Curious are still going strong. Through several storefront homes and over 60 original productions, the Curious Theatre Branch has survived as a critical darling and a refuge for, as Magnus calls it, ‘the community of the intelligentsia.’ Usually comprising seven to 10 full-time members, the company has often utilized group direction and depends on contributions from all of its actors in each given play. Guest artists from other companies also often appear.
While the Prop Theatre is enjoying its 22nd season and Theatre Oobleck nearly that, it is the Curious that has been the most consistent of the fringe companies over the last decade and a half. O’Reilly, Magnus, and Magnus’ brother Bryn have written the vast majority of the company’s plays. Curious runs shows nearly every week of the calendar year, almost exclusively original scripts you won’t see anywhere else, and always for “12 dollars or pay what you can.”
What kind of plays are we talking about here? Intimate, character-driven pieces about life in this challenging world, often including original songs and original incidental music. There’s hardly a subject these folks won’t write about, yet nothing they present is ever mundane. Even so, with all the examining of cultural issues, the fantastical juxtaposing, and the strained family relationships, these plays are often funny. Political? Sure. In opposition to societal norms? Certainly. But there are also a few things that Curious is not.
“It never ceases to amaze me that people have such a distorted view of what Curious is,” says Jenny Magnus. “When people say Curious is avant garde, I just laugh.” O’Reilly echoes that sentiment, as Magnus clarifies. “We’re not experimental, we’re not avant garde. Ninety percent of the time, there’s a fairly clear narrative, it’s character-driven. The word that I have coined is ‘introspectacle.’ The idea is instead of getting bigger and bigger and bigger, it’s deeper and deeper and deeper.”
After being housed in couple of spaces on North Avenue, the company moved to the Lunar Cabaret on Lincoln near Diversey and Racine where they spent seven years and established a consistent following. Early 2003 brought a move to Rogers Park, across the El tracks from the Heartland Café. Total seats in all of the company’s theaters have numbered in the dozens, so audience members always feel like they’re right in the world of the plays. And while another significant playwright, Shawn Reddy, has joined their ranks and the roster of Curious actors continues to grow, the company has retained its high quality writing and acting values, even while maturing.
Magnus observes, “It’s about adult concerns. It’s not adolescent concerns of ‘Who am I gonna fuck?’ and stuff like that. It’s much more about ‘how do you have a self in this world and keep your integrity?’ Now several of us teach at the graduate level in universities. One great way to assess how far you’ve come is by what you can offer other people. And there isn’t anything else that distinguishes Curious, other than a certain language proclivity, an interest in political language.”
Even as the Curious has kept up its year-round schedule, the company also produces the Rhino Festival each fall, having taken over those duties from Seale back in its third season. The Rhino, which began as a three-day festival in 1988, has expanded to nine weeks, featuring fringe companies from all over Chicago because, as Magnus says, “you have to find a way to keep the press interested.” It’s always been the biggest undertaking of each Curious year, and what makes them the money to keep the art alive.
According to O’Reilly, for the first several years, “if you wanted to be in the Rhino, you could be in the Rhino.” Eventually, larger places like the Remains Theatre and the Prop Theatre became involved and people had to submit scripts to get the approval of a committee. Demand for spots in the Rhino became so great that the committee had to forego even the script reading and base many of its decisions on proposals and on familiarity with the artist or company’s work. Appearing at new venues every year, the Rhino is always evolving. This year’s festival, which opened Sept. 17, features mostly works by Curious playwrights and is being presented exclusively at the Curious Theatre Branch.
“Jenny came up with this,” O’Reilly explains, “which I really love: past, present, and future. The past is looking at those crucial provocateur playwrights who have provoked good work in us and our peers (Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Dylan Thomas), the present is us and our peers, and the future is the mentored projects – students of ours. That’s the model for this year. We’re presenting the work of about 65 writers in this festival alone. And next year we’ll change it again.”
Actor, director, and producer Michael Martin helped produce the Rhino for several years and has more recently gained notoriety for his “Verbatim Verboten” series of dramatic/humorous presentations of political and celebrity transcripts, running in its latest form at the Royal George Theatre.
Says Martin about Curious's place in the Chicago fringe scene, "Every vital fringe scene needs its true believers, the ones who sink roots deep into their hometown, growing but never straying. That's Curious in Chicago. I know that their come-and-go commercial success frustrates Jenny and Beau - and it should, they're brilliant - but some artists draw the curse/blessing card of being ‘local heroes,’ respected by other artists but under-appreciated by the theatergoing public. (And certainly under-appreciated by the press, who always take such players for granted.) Beau and Jenny are far from the only Chicago artists toiling away, neglected, because they weren't in the right place at the right time. Part of me even suspects that if the artists who draw this card can take it, that lack of wide recognition is part of what keeps them artistically important. Nothing inspires like adversity."
On the importance of the Rhino Festival, Martin adds, "The festival is the main intersection, the favorite coffeehouse -'Hey, I'll meet you at the Rhino Fest at two' - of Chicago's fringe scene. Between it, always a huge event, and Curious' own year-round programming, nearly every important fringe artist has passed through Beau and Jenny's door. The PAC/Edge Festival has come on strong, and deservedly so. But PAC/Edge is the festival for polished work. The Rhino remains the place for work-in-progress, and for new voices. Chicago could do without it, but it wouldn't want to."Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
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