Chicago Theater Week is coming up and it is probably one of the most interesting weeks of the year for me. Of course, it's never just a week and plays start before the week and continue on afterwards.
In my first year I went to four plays in a week. That was an overkill and in years since, I have used a different approach.What I value most from TW is that it introduces me to theaters that I absolutely did not know about. The Goodman, Steppenwolf, Chicago Theater etc are good but the theater there isn't always what I enjoy. In recent months, the plays that I see on there are also not plays I want to watch -- either the description feels too vague or the plot is just not for me. I know that I like my plays to be at least somewhat solid -- I need a beginning, a story and some sort of an end. Metaphors and all are fine in small doses, but if everything is a metaphor for something or a tangent, then the play is not for me. Note, I am not calling them bad plays. They have their place and they have their people. I am just not one of them.
In the last two weeks, we went for two plays and honestly I was pleasantly surprised (we've seen some that felt real shitty and a few months ago, walked out of one at Steppenwolf). I must say they were both at small theaters, one with a very bare bones set. Both have fairly tight seating, no coat checks and both these plays had no intermissions. If you are like me and have to pee pretty regularly, that is not a great thing. Also, if like me you have at least two bags post the work day, plus a giant coat, it is cramped. But I recognize that this is the price of watching quality theater put on by people/groups that do not have access to large amounts of donations and grants in the same way I imagine the Goodmans and Steppenwolfs do.
