Chicago Reader: For most of its 43 years, Lifeline Theatre in Rogers Park has focused on literary adaptations, ranging from 19th-century classics by writers such as Jane Austen and Wilkie Collins to detective stories by Dorothy Sayers and sci-fi/speculative fiction, alongside their parallel KidSeries of shows for young audiences. Their most recent production, ensemble member John Hildreth’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, gave the 1890s novel a contemporary Chicago setting.
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Theater adaptations of written works is such a fun creative exercise, and it is so fun that this theater company, Lifeline Theatre, is focusing in on that. I would love for them to adapt books that push the boundaries of written work, to see how those new mechanics could be converted into theater. I recently read a book where a teen girl was trapped in her house with her mother, and to mentally escape she would write metal operas about her experiences. These scripts were complete with scenery designs and musical inspiration. In my head, the regular storyline, shown through traditional theater, would completely change in lighting and scenery whenever the main character designed these operas. The ways different theatre companies might interpret this would be so fun to see. Different ideas might include extending the stage for different operas or switching out characters, or even focusing a light on an orchestra whenever the opera begins.
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