Chicago Reader: Plays about Black women and the effects (tangential or otherwise) of COVID-19 are having a moment on Chicago stages this winter. MPAACT just completed their run of Squat by Tina Fakhrid-Deen, in which neighbors and lovers in a Bronzeville condo building struggle with their relationships while sheltering in place. COVID cautiousness also shows up in Kristen Adele Calhoun’s Black Cypress Bayou, running through March 15 in a local premiere with Definition Theatre.
3 comments:
I always love plays about parent-child relationships. I think they are an interesting way of comparing your personal experiences with the different lived experiences of others. Live theater, to me, often feels like the emotions are heightened and more relatable or realistic even if this is not true. I have been having very interesting conversations with my parents and grandparents about AI right now because of how prevalent it is becoming and I think we need to keep having those conversations. These conversations about AI are important to have with our families and on the big stage. One thing I like about this is the exploration of not only parent and teenager relationships but the relationships between teenage friends which feels really relevant with how young people were and are impacted socially and emotionally by the COVID lockdown. I think a lot of the work done about the COVID lockdown has played out a lot of the things people wanted to continue to process but young people's relationships are something I want to be explored more.
Interesting… I wish the critic talked more about how “The mix of realism and the absurd doesn’t mesh seamlessly”. AI characters in theater aren't new, but have the potential to become more popular, or unpopular right now. I’m really curious about their portrayal of emotional baggage as physical bags, boxes, and stuff on stage. With the story as it’s laid out I wonder if the AI character was really essential to the plot or just tacked on to seem more relevant. Will we see more AI in the theater? Or will we be so sick of it we want to escape it through theater? We’re at a really interesting crossroads in the arts right now. On the one hand, the rise of AI might draw people to the live performance even more. On the other hand, with our given political climate and rising instances of censorship the arts might be under serious heat in year to come, especially political plays.
This play is handling some really interesting topics, It seems to be jiggling a lot of plot points but each of them seem to have depth and are compelling on their own. I have personally never read a play that was set in Covid times but after reading the article it seems like the perfect time setting to discuss a wide array of topics that were relevant in 2020, like isolation from the outside world, a fear of society collapsing, declines in mental health due to less human interaction, and just an overall fear of dying(or your loved ones dying) to illness, the setting encompasses a lot. The relationship between mother and daughter is one I always love to see and its combined with the topics I previously mentioned so I think that makes it more nuanced
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