Author Archives: Tom Valeo

SHRUBTOWN Circle Theatre Mark Stopeck is a sales rep for the Wednesday Journal in Oak Park. One day while watching The Bullwinkle Show on TV he thought, “Gee, that looks like fun,” so he went to the editor and asked if he could draw a comic strip for the paper. The editor agreed, but only […]

THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES Marbleworks Theatre at Niles College Inexperienced actors tend to focus on their dialogue, infusing the words with lots of feeling and animation. Veteran actors also know how to extract meaning from the spaces between words. Instead of merely hitting the notes dictated by the author, veteran actors make music onstage, evoking […]

CLOSE TIES Temporary Theatre Company at the Mayfair United Methodist Church I am married to three sisters. And apparently it’s not all that uncommon. I exchanged vows with only one of them, of course, but where one is, the other two are present also–at least in spirit. The rivalries among them, the way they adapted […]

THE POSITIVE EVOLUTION OF BONGO BAKER ETA Creative Arts Foundation Good playwrights weave their opinions into the fabric of a play, understanding that exhortations shatter the dramatic illusion and transform their plays into sermons delivered through thinly disguised surrogates. Unfortunately, far too many playwrights seem to believe this rule doesn’t apply to children’s theater. The […]

THE BEETLES Stage Two Theatre For its production of The Beetles, the first play by a young California playwright named Malcolm MacDonald, the Stage Two Theatre in Waukegan is offering a “no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.” Anyone who doesn’t think The Beetles is worth the price of admission can get a full refund. Offering a money-back guarantee […]

SUMMER AND SMOKE Touchstone Theatre at the Halsted Theatre Centre We humans have a dual nature. Physically, we’re endowed with the same urges that drive all species toward self-preservation and procreation. At the same time we’re capable of transcending our animal nature through imagination, which tantalizes us with visions of what could be. Reconciling these […]

BEYOND THE PALE Caravan Productions at the Heartland Studio Beyond the Pale is an impressive example of what can be done with an idea, some talented people, and a few dollars. A very few dollars. Conceived by the director, Jessica Thebus, and one of the cast members, Shannon Jackson, this play consists of eight Chicago […]

THE LIGHT AT THE PEAK OF THE BRIC-A-BRAC HILLS Stage Left Theatre One of the hallmarks of modern drama is an emphasis on character over plot. For modern playwrights, plot is the footprints left behind by the characters, not the path they follow. This preoccupation with character has limits, however, as the work of two […]

. . . SOME UNFINISHED CHAOS . . . Equity Library Theatre Chicago at Chicago Dramatists Workshop Our perceptions are shaped by a gestalt–a way of organizing information into meaningful patterns. That’s how we sort through the details: those that fit our personal gestalt get noticed, while the rest fade into the background. The problem, […]

THE ARTIFICIAL JUNGLE Raven Theatre THE ISLAND Raven Theatre I went to see The Artificial Jungle in 1986 at the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York–it was the 29th play Charles Ludlam had written for his company, formed nearly 20 years earlier. As usual, Ludlam played the lead. And as usual, the cast included a […]

THE BOY WHO KNEW NO FEAR Skeleton Crew Theatre Company at the Avenue Theatre The Boy Who Knew No Fear, G. Riley Mills and Mark Levenson’s musical for children based on a particularly weird Brothers Grimm fairy tale, is bright and coherent, and it’s staged with plenty of energy and wit by the Skeleton Crew […]

‘SHUA Marbleworks Theatre at Niles College Seminary The search for the historical Jesus–the flesh-and-blood man behind the Bible stories–is a frustrating one. Except for a few passing mentions of Jesus by Roman chroniclers, virtually everything we know about the man comes from the gospels, which aren’t reliable as historical sources. That means scholars must do […]

DESIRED AFFECTS: THREE ONE-ACT PLAYS Theatre of the Reconstruction Our sense of gratitude for what we have is easily overwhelmed by our chronic craving for more. Yet that craving tends to breed unhappiness and a perverse notion that we are entitled to whatever we desire. The humility of a grateful man clashes brutally with the […]