Founded as a component of the Bucktown Arts Fest but now independent of that event, this annual summer showcase of fringe theater, performance, and music has relocated farher north over the past few years. This edition, which runs through September 23, is housed at the Lunar Cabaret and Full Moon Cafe 2827 N. Lincoln, and the Famous Door Theatre Company, Jane Addams Center Hull House, 3212 N. Broadway. Directed this year by Beau O’Reilly, the event takes it’s name from surrealist painter Salvador Dali’s use of the term “rhinocerontic” (it means real big); more than 20 companies and individual artists are featured, among them Famous Door, the Curious Theatre Branch, Retro Theatre, Theater Oobleck, Betty’s Mouth, Ler Noot Fiesta, Studio 108, David Hauptschein, Terri Kapsalis , Frank Melcori, Julie Laffin , David Kodeski, Warren Leming’s Cold Chicago Dance Theater, and Cleveland’s New World Performance Laboratory.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
The Retro Theatre Company performs forms two short plays by writers associated with the landmark off-off-Broadway theater of the 60s: Robert Patrick’s Camera Obscura and John Guare’s A Day for Surprises. Also on the bill is a new work by Retro member Sara Reily, My Sister’s Waltz, about the complex relationships of three sisters. “Retro’s attempt to ‘capture the spirit of past ages’ …confuses nostalgic simulacrum with art….Steve Reily’s mountings of [the] two insubstantial tantial Cino one-acts…are tame and conventional, [and the] one original piece … is as dry and stiff as 30-year-old bread,” says Reader critic Justin Hayford.
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Famous Door, 7 PM.
Maureen Ryan directs Vaclav Havel’s absurdist farce about an intellectual being driven mad by sexual and political complications. “What makes the play more than just another witty satire about a bankrupt social system is the work’s extraordinary cubist structure….A mind-bending way to tell a story, but it makes perfectly clear the unnatural world Havel’s characters inhabit…. Ryan’s production more or less successfully re-creates Havel’s crazy universe,” says Reader critic Jack Helbig.
Me, Me, Me, Me, Me!
