Alex Huntsberger

Last year, actor Stacy Keach suffered a heart attack onstage during the opening night of his one-man performance as Ernest Hemingway in Pamplona at the Goodman Theatre. Though the entire run was canceled, Keach wasn’t down for long. Pamplona is back this summer along with a robust crop of seasonal shows in venues of all sizes. From major musicals like Waitress and Heartbreak Hotel to wild experiments like Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Everybody plus Michael Shannon doing French absurdism in a storefr

Summer is fading, which can mean only one thing: Theater is back, baby! Clybourne Park author and satirist Bruce Norris debuts a new play about registered sex offenders at Steppenwolf. Feminist musical theatre company Firebrand Theatre revives Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Civil Rights-era musical Caroline, or Change. Celebrating the novel’s 200th anniversary, the first of several local Frankenstein adaptations jolts to life at Lifeline Theatre. Plus, the city’s latest Broadway tryout swoops

If you heard peals of laughter ringing out through the quiet, reverent halls of an art museum, what would your reaction be? Would you “tut-tut” in their general direction, maybe shoot them a glare or offer them a pointed “shhh”? If so, can we be totally sure that you, and not they, are in the right? For contemporary artists who love to insert a little bit of humor in their work, the situation above begs the question: Can art be funny? Yes, of course — but it doesn’t have to be, whereas comedy

Comedian Maria Bamford isn’t shy about her mental illness; she’s talked openly in her act and in interviews about being diagnosed with Bipolar II (hypomanic episodes) and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). In fact, Bamford is quite the opposite of shy. She’s upfront and forthright and working to destigmatize mental illness in society-at-large. But this doesn’t mean that Bamford’s new show, Lady Dynamite, which dropped on Netflix last week, is a sober, reflective mental health PSA (public serv

Like the Republican Party, theatre is a grand old American institution suffering from a severe racial diversity problem; unlike the GOP, it’s also one whose lack of racial diversity goes directly against the principles it espouses. Cowering in fear that their old, white affluent subscriber bases will run screaming into the street if they tell stories written by, aimed at or featuring people of color—theatres across the country have displayed a conservative approach to diversifying their seasons

I haven’t cried since the summer before I went to college and broke up with my high-school girlfriend. And by cried, I mean like when your face starts uncontrollably heaving and your throat tries to climb out of your mouth and your eyes don’t so much shed tears as they vomit them. It’s been ten years since then, but I remember that it felt good. It felt right. It felt cathartic. The idea of catharsis in art goes back to Aristotle’s Poetics, wherein he defines formal tragedy as, in part, contain

Normally when a new theater company opens in Chicago it is cause for little fanfare. Small storefront companies come and go with the transience of a celebrity parody twitter account. However when the Windy City Playhouse announced its inaugural season last summer, the theater community took notice. Unlike the usual bands of scrappy, broke college grads hoarding pennies and launching kickstarters, The Windy City Playhouse announced that they would be opening with a full four-show season cast with

After 10 years of presenting edgy, contemporary theatre at 716 Main Avenue, Theatre B is moving out. Their 2016-2017 season will be presented at a series of temporary venues around town. Meanwhile, the company is searching for a new permanent space to call their “forever home.” “We’ve been having some really interesting conversations,” said Artistic Director Carrie Wintersteen, regarding the search. “Part of it is helping people understand our needs, and part of it is that sense of inviting peo

For five years, Broken Nose Theatre has been a fixture of the city’s storefront scene. Until recently, they were best known for Bechdel Fest, their yearly new-play showcase in which every show absolutely has to do one thing: pass the dang Bechdel Test. But now they’re known for “At The Table.” Written by Michael Perlman and directed by company member Spenser Davis, “At The Table” opened in February at the Berger Park Coach House to rave reviews, sold-out houses, four Non-Equity Jeff Award nomi

It takes a lot of work to make a play. Learning lines, learning songs, learning blocking and choreography and learning how to be someone you are not. Rehearsing until you get it right and then rehearsing even more until you can’t get it wrong. Theatre might seem a silly diversion to some, something people do because they want to be in spotlight, to be showered with applause—and sometimes it is. But it takes a lot of work to do it. I reflected on this while I sat in the seats at the 330-seat Ga

In an age when producers in theatre, television and film are all searching their couches for viable IP (Intellectual Property) to convert into new content, I suppose an Addams Family musical was inevitable—even if it wasn’t that advisable. The show was panned when it opened on Broadway in a production starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, and it underwent subsequent revisions before its first national tour, many of which were actually quite well received. While the resulting show is minus one

If there’s one question that has hounded theatregoers from wing to stall over the past century more than any other, it is most certainly the following: how would W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan have fared had they been originators of the classic 70’s sitcom, ‘The Love Boat’? And now, courtesy of NDSU Opera’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s classic comic opera “HMS Pinafore”, we finally have an answer: they would have done just fine. With stage direction by Chelsea Pace and music direction

Fargo Moorhead Community Theatre recently announced the slate of shows for its 70th season, which begins in the fall of this year. The first Mainstage play will be “Peter and the Starcatcher”, a whimsical, highly theatrical prequel to Peter Pan (If you saw the movie “Pan” and hated it…okay if you saw the movie “Pan” at all, you can rest assured that “Peter and the Starcatcher” is much, much better). It runs October 7-9and 13-16. The second production will be an adaptation of Stephen King’s “Th