WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

- Ralphie May is back and he's performing at Zanies in St. Charles. It was also brought to my attention that the St. Charles location is at the Pheasant Run Resort. If everyone else knew and appreciated this already, I apologize for being late to the party. Anyway, the show is one-night-only on August 7 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30.   

- Raven Theatre's welcoming new ensemble members: Michael Boone, Cathy Bowren, Cody Estle, Jason Huysman, Teri McCaskill, Sophia Menendian, Jen Short, John Weagly, Antione Pierre Whitfield and Kristen Williams. Additionally, ensemble member and Director of Education & Outreach Kelli Strickland has won the DeVos Institute Fellowship. She'll be in D.C.

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"One of the most influential voices of all time, Billie Holiday, was born Eleanora Fagan and she died on July 17, 1959 [at Metropolitan Hospital in New York] from alcohol and drug-related complications after a lifelong struggle with addiction," said Chicago poet Emily Rose at The Paper Machete. She shares this letter she wrote as Holiday to a young artist. Some of the quotes in here are direct quotes from her. Read below or listen above:

Letter to the young artist:

"Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three." There was no easy way for me to grow up, it was a struggle, only we called it life. Called it New York, 1920. Called it do what you have to.

I didn’t have the legs for dancing and it wasn’t the voice they thought they wanted, but that $2 a night set me straight for awhile. Got me up off my knees, wrung that dirty water out from my skirts. I started using my throat to keep the roof up and did it different than my mama taught.

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- "Relationships should be perfect. But the truth is even the good ones leave scars. Come experience a profoundly visceral night of theatre that explores a  perfect relationship like one would look at the inverted, bloody sinews of a skinned animal," proclaims Cor Theatre's press release for Skin Tight. It's described as a "high physical" love story that includes "erotic abandon." So, bring the kids! It opens August 28 in previews.

- My weird obsession with 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche can let its freak flag fly again, as the production returns for a brief run at the Center on Halsted before it goes to the New York International Fringe Festival. It's August 2-5. Only some of the original cast returns, which means some of the roles have been switched around and Mary Hollis Inboden is no more.

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I didn’t begin as an enthusiast of re-setting the classics in different time periods, locations or cultures. It always seemed distracting, an effort by the director to steal focus from the author, an effect I generally described as “Let’s do Shakespeare in aquamarine swimsuits.” On seeing a very early Bob Falls version of The Tempest (at Court Theatre, back when it took place in the eponymous courtyard) set on a sort of white-man’s-burden version of a voodoo island, all I could think was, "If you think the play is boring, don’t direct it.” As a verbal person, I resented having the canonical words cluttered up with a lot of visual detritus.

That was silly, of course, because theater is never purely verbal, always visual and auditory and tactile and generally polymorphous perverse. So though one might criticize a particular combination of those elements, it makes no sense to argue that only one such combination can ever be justified. Directors, after all, get paid to decide what the play means and to communicate that vision to the audience.

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Robots are awesome, argues comedian Whit Nelson — and who are we to disagree with him? Despite their awesomeness, we still worry about them taking over the world. 

"It is the same choice we face when we have children, or pets, or anything else that can go haywire," says Nelson. "There is always a risk your children will turn out terribly. But that risk alone isn’t enough to stop most of us from having kids. The potential rewards are simply too great. So let us charge headlong into a possibly dystopian future with our fingers crossed, and our firearms ready, just in case their eyes turn red, and they start chanting destroy, destroy, destroy." Read an excerpt below or listen above:

On August 5th, 2012, less than a month from now, a spacecraft will descend from the sky and using a series of jets, it will hover over the planet's surface. It will then use a sort of sky-crane to lower a robot by cables down to the ground. The parent craft will power up and fly away. The landing vehicle will be a six-wheeled robot the size of of MINI Cooper. It will be smart enough to navigate and explore by itself. It will be nuclear powered.

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Jonathan and I will debate Oedipus El Rey (at Victory Gardens through July 29) and talk about the risks and rewards of adapting a classic to another time, place or culture. –KK

Floyd Collins, Bohemian Theatre Ensemble at Theatre Wit, 1229 W. Belmont in Chicago; final four performances: Thursday July 12th through Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 1:30; tickets $28 (pay a scalper if you can find one).

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- The first season of The Dinner Party has wrapped up and will start again September 20. Highlights from this season in the video at the link.

- Well here's a headline: "Daniel Tosh: Sorry for the rape joke"

- ComedySportz turns 25 and Jason Heidemann takes a look at the ComedySportz World Championship, which starts a week from today. Their approach? A sort-of President George W.

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