Monthly Archives: May 2019

Othello

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Not long ago we went to the Factory Theater in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood to see a staging of Othello by the Babes With Blades Theatre Company. I suggested we go because I’d never seen that play staged. Also, Ann read it not too long ago for school — wrote some papers and so on, the usual sort of things you do in high school.

The Factory is a small venue, about 70 seats on three sides of a simple stage. As far as I could tell, we saw a completely traditional staging of Othello, complete with well-done period costumes and actual swords and knifes, except for one thing. Babes With Babes is an entirely female theater company.

But not just a female company. A company of players with some specific talents.

According to the BWB web site: “Our initial showcase, in 1997, was conceived by founder Dawn ‘Sam’ Alden as a two-day presentation of fights and monologues, intended to bring to the Chicago art world an awareness of the large number of stage combat-trained women it had in its midst whose talent was being consistently underutilized.”

While not an overly stabby play (unlike Titus Andronicus) Othello certainly has its share of swords and knives as a part of the action, and the troupe handled them well.

More importantly, they handled their parts well. The novelty of women in the parts always played by men — Deveon Bromby as Othello and Kathrynne Wolf as Iago, to name the principals — lasted for a few minutes. Then it wore off and you were simply watching a solid production of Othello.

Wolf was particularly good as Iago. If you’re not going to have a spot-on Iago, a character that believably exults in the art of deceit, you might as well not do the play, since everything turns on that performance.

Much has been made of the muddled motives of Iago, or perhaps his motivelessness, but I’m not sure that matters. If it’s perversely captivating to watch his glee at destroying the Moor, I’d say the actor has done his, and in this case, her job.

A Festival of Music, 1973

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I found this bit of ephemera at my mother’s house last year. She had saved it, tucked away in a envelope. I’d forgotten about the event, but it jogged my memory.

Jog might be too strong a verb. I still don’t remember much about the event, including why I participated. I was in the sixth grade, toward the very end of that year, and didn’t usually participate in choruses. Mainly, I think, because I can’t sing. But somehow or other I decided to do it, and there I am along with scores of other kids.
At the time, Alamo Heights had four elementary schools that fed into a single junior high and high school. Among the names of the kids at the three other elementary schools that I didn’t attend, I recognize a lot of people I didn’t know in 1973, but whom I would know by the time I finished high school six years later.

Considering the structure of the district’s schools, and the passage of time, and the way social interaction goes, that isn’t really so strange, and yet it feels strange when I think about it.

Another irrational feeling that comes to me when looking at the list is how normal most of the first names sound. Especially the girls’ names, like Amy, Barbara, Caroline, Laura, Lisa, Lynn, Mary, Melissa, Patricia, Sharon, Susan and variations on Deborah, Julia, Rebecca and Sandra.

The evening’s program.

Three of the four songs by the elementary chorus were from Up With People. I didn’t know that until reading the program recently. Guess they produced the kind of anodyne songs considered good for elementary school children in the early ’70s.

I’ve read a little about that organization, though I can’t say that I know much about it. But I can’t shake the lingering idea that if Ned Flanders founded a cult, it would be something like that.

Raumpatrouille

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Rain is more typical than snow for late April/early May, and we’ve gotten buckets of it since the snow melted on Sunday. The grass has responded by taking on new hues of lush green. I expect scads of the much-maligned dandelion to follow. The back yard already has some, but the rain beat them down. They never stay down for long.

How did I not know about Raumpatrouille until the other day? In full, as befitting a title in German, the TV show is called Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion. That is, Space Patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion.

Naturally, when I found out about it, I wasn’t looking for information about the German science fiction television program of that name that’s an exact contemporary of the original Star Trek, premiering on German TV on September 17, 1966 (Star Trek first aired on September 8).

Yet in wandering the Internet’s twisty little maze of passages, or maybe its maze of twisty little passages, I chanced across Raumpatrouille not long ago. I didn’t have time to follow up on the information right when I found it, but I had the presence of mind to do some bookmarking.

Later, it was easy enough to find the episodes — there are only seven of them — on YouTube, which have helpful English subtitles. I watched the first one. Though I’d read it was good, I was taken by surprise by how good it was. As good as anything Star Trek did, and without that annoying Roddenberry vibe.

Actually, there’s a bit of his outlook. By the unspecified year in which the show is set, Earth has a world government. What little you hear about that government, or at least its military, makes it seem officious and a touch German, but not totalitarian.

The characters are supposed to represent a cross-section of Earth’s population. As Television Heaven puts it, “While Major McLane [the commander] is American, his crew includes a Japanese navigator and star cartographer, a Scandinavian engineer, and an Italian computer specialist and armaments officer. This is clearly not a projection of a desire for a Teutonic world order.”

In the single show I’ve seen so far, the story has some intelligence and suspense, plus some character development, and the pacing is good. The sets and props strongly resemble Doctor Who in its early days, since Raumpatrouille clearly had a slender budget. But they did well with what they had.

Also, there are a few moments of unintentional comedy. One scene has the characters at a bar near wherever their ships launch from, and the characters are having a discussion in the foreground. In the background, extras are dancing, as if it were a dance club. Except that they were obviously doing “a dance of the future.” It’s a strange sight with a lot of odd moves, and gets more funny as it goes along.

I’ll watch the rest of Raumpatrouille in the fullness of time. Don’t want to hurry, though. This is where I found out about it.

The Chicago Riverwalk

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Returning from my appointment on Friday, I took a walk along the Chicago Riverwalk — a section that wasn’t completed the last time I was paying attention — from N. LaSalle St. around to W. Lake St.

Parts of the waterfront walkway to the east were started back in 2005; the western section was only completed in 2017. The San Antonio Riverwalk, it isn’t, but Chicago has done well with what it has.

From the north end of the LaSalle St. bridge, you can see the “River Theater.”
To the west of that feature is a walkway that crosses under the LaSalle St. bridge.
I noticed that besides building the riverwalk, the city cleaned up the underside of all the bridges you can see from the riverwalk. Once upon a time, they wore their peeling paint and rust like badges of honor.

From the LaSalle St. bridge to the Wells St. bridge is a straightaway with a tubular fountain sort of feature.
On the west side of the Wells St. bridge is a fine view of that structure.
The afternoon sun in late April left a curious trace on the 300 N. LaSalle building, which rises above the Wells St. bridge.
Further to the west of Wells St.
This section, west of Wells, sports floating wetland gardens. Or maybe you can call them the Floating Gardens of Chicago. But what the city really needs are hanging gardens. Maybe they can go next to the Obama Library.
From there, the path crosses under the Franklin St. bridge, and goes to its end at Lake St., with the Merchandise Mart dominating the view. Workmen were busy installing turf on the small slope to the right (in this pic) of the sidewalk.
All the while, you can see boats plying the river.
Interesting that yellow means taxi, even on the water. I recognized the vessel in the second pic. The good tourist ship Lila passing Wolf Point.