Wegrzyn, a Chicago Dramatists resident playwright and co-founder of Theatre Seven of Chicago, says the prize came at a good time. “I was canned from my dayjob this summer, and I was banking on the Temp Agency to find me work soon,” she told me in an email this afternoon. “Now I’m buying time to write. I’m going to pay my rent and the bills. But I also want to go on a shopping spree through the Sky Mall catalogue so we’ll see.” Hickorydickory will also get a reading at New York’s Second Stage as part of the prize. We profiled Wegrzyn in August 2007.

The short pieces will debut in groups of five on February 8, March 1, May 24, June 1 and June 7; the entire collection will then be reprised each evening June 16–20, during the Theatre Communications Group’s conference in Chicago. Paparelli and Cuban playwright Maria Irene Fornes will collaborate on a prologue piece to introduce the evening.

In addition, ATC announced the induction of Usman Ally, Patrick Andrews and Jaime Castañeda into its ensemble. This doubles the size of ATC’s ensemble after all but three members (Kareem Bandealy, Joe Minoso and Sadieh Rifai, all added under Paparelli’s leadership) defected last spring to re-form under the company’s former name, American Blues Theater. ABT begins its new life next month with a production of the radio-play version of It’s a Wonderful Life in the new studio theater at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater; it will go head-to-head with ATC’s production of the same play, which had been an annual ATC tradition for several years.

The full list of playwrights penning works for ATC’s “Silver Project” is pasted below from the company’s press release.

Usman Ally (Public Enemy and American Ethnic at Remy Bumppo thinkTank 2008/09)
Stephen Belber (Emmy-nominated writer of The Laramie Project and Tape)
Kristiana Rae Colon (Chicago Def Poet; writer of The Darkest Pit)
Kristoffer Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and Welcome to Arroyo’s)
Zayd Dohrn (Sick, Magic Forest Farm, Long Way Go Down)
Laura Eason (Sex with Strangers, Around the World in 80 Days)
Maria Irene Fornes (Promenade, Mud, The Conduct of Life)
Yussef el Guindi (Back of the Throat, Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat)
Steve Harper (Lions and Donkeys)
Andrew Hinderaker (Suicide, Incorporated at Gift Theatre, June 2010)
David Henry Hwang (Tony Award-winning writer of M. Butterfly)
Naomi Iizuka (Award winning writer of 36 Views; Language of Angels)
Laura Jacqmin (And When We Awoke There Was Light and Light, Ski Dubai)
Kyle Jarrow (Obie Award-winning writer of A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant)
Rolin Jones (The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow; Showtime’s Weeds and Friday Night Lights)
Joel Drake Johnson (A Blue Moon, The Fall to Earth)
Stephen Karam (Speech & Debate, columbinus)
Nambi E. Kelley (Hope VI, How Kintu Became a Man)
Greg Kotis (Tony Award-winning writer of Urinetown, Yeast Nation, Pig Farm)
Joe Kraemer (The American Occupation; Literary Manager/Dramaturg of The Juilliard School’s Drama Division)
Neil LaBute (Tony-nominated writer of reasons to be pretty; The Shape of Things)
Dan LeFranc (60 Miles to Silver Lake)
Craig Lucas (Pulitzer and Tony-nominated writer of Prelude to a Kiss, Light in the Piazza –book)
Laura Lynn MacDonald (Peer Gynt at Gorilla Rep, Mattress World with Blue Damen Pictures)
Rohina Malik (Unveiled)
Itamar Moses (Bach at Leipzig, Celebrity Row, The Four of Us)
Carlos Murillo (Dark Play or Stories for Boys, Diagram of a Paper Airplane)
Justin D. M. Palmer (As Fat as You Can, War with the Newts)
PJ Paparelli (columbinus, Raven Odyssey)
Joshua Rollins (American Rex)
Tanya Saracho (Our Lady of the Underpass, The House on Mango Street)
Regina Taylor (Award winning writer of Crowns, Magnolia)
Brian Tucker (St. James Infirmary, Bathing Van Gogh)
Beau Willimon (Farragut North)

Photo: Zach Gross, 2007.

This evening, acclaimed performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Roberto Sifuentes and Violeta Luna of the ensemble La Pocha Nostra cap off a weeklong residency at Columbia College with a free public performance of Corpo/Ilicito: The Post-Human Society #69. I talked yesterday with Gómez-Peña, the recipient of a 1991 MacArthur “genius grant” and a longtime explorer of cultural and psychological border territory, about the new work.

Time Out Chicago: You’ve described Corpo/Ilicito as responding to the challenge of the end of the Bush regime. How does Obama’s election alter the position of the oppositional artist?

Guillermo Gómez-Peña: We’re exploring philosophically the transition from a legacy of cultural fear, the demonization of the body of the Other: the Latino immigrant, the queer body, the female body. This legacy is still with us, parasitic, like a lingering fog in the streets and in the institutions. How is it affecting us? How are we self-censoring?

And then how does this fit with an institutionalized culture of hope? We’re trying to compare notes from our own project of hope. Are we in sync with them? Is Obama willing to listen to artists and intellectuals?

TOC: You’ve developed this iteration of the performance in part through workshops at Columbia College. How has that process worked?

GGP: It’s been fantastic. There was a very sophisticated curatorial process that drew artists from organizations and communities throughout the city. It’s a very diverse group—diverse in age, in art practice, in ethnicity. We’ve got a very interesting troupe, and we’re hoping there will be a residue, that some will be empowered to participate in the process when we return for the second part, in the spring.  At Columbia, we’ve found the ideal conditions for our own style of pedagogy. And that’s crucial, because these kinds of educational spaces are appearing less and less within our institutions and universities; they’ve become more careful, worrying more about what kind of art or conversation they can support.

TOC: Your work has often centered on the issue of the border, especially the U.S.-Mexico border. Did the border arise as an issue during this Chicago residency?

GGP: Yes. I think that national borders are being reproduced in our cities. Chicago is a city that suffers from endemic internal borders. Inevitably, in the work that we workshopped, a lot of these borders began to emerge.

There are borders between neighborhoods, borders between genders. You have, for instance, new generations of gay and lesbian Latino artists who have trouble with older activist organizations that may not be so open to their imagery.

And the issue of immigration remains problematic under Obama. Politicians don’t talk about immigration—this is another legacy of the Bush era. There’s been a formidable demonization of the Latino Other in our institutions, and this worries me very much as a border artist. With the frail, precarious position of undocumented immigrants, it’s as though we’re back in a pre–civil rights era. And this is not part of the national debate. They don’t have strong voices speaking for them, and they are still a crucial part of our financial and cultural well-being.

TOC: What can people expect if they attend Corpo/Ilicito?

GGP: It’s going to be a very wild performance. When audience members first come in, they’re going to find that the whole building is occupied with live art images. We’ve been developing a wide array of site-specific images for the performance. And then, when they reach the space, they will experience a high-energy interactive performance art piece. We’re using sound, video projection, multiple stages. A lot of the issues we’re discussing will emerge, but not in an explicit, thematic way: It follows an elliptical, poetic method.

La Pocha Nostra performs Friday 30 at 7pm at Columbia College (618 S Michigan Ave). Admission is free, but arrive early.

Erik Kaiko, Govind Kumar, David Rhee and Joseph Anthony Foronda

Conceptually, Silk Road Cabaret: Broadway Sings the Silk Road seems like a brilliant idea. Silk Road Theatre Project, known for its mission of championing work by playwrights of Asian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean descent, takes a century’s worth of musical-theater songs set along the ancient, eponymous trade route—most penned by American or western European writers who exoticized and “otherized” Eastern lands and their people—and gives them to performers of those ethnicities, who provide context and their own identity experience. It’s an act of reclamation, of sorts. And it’s hard to disagree that, especially in the mid-20th century when musical theater was at the height of its popular culture influence, shows like The King & I, South Pacific and Flower Drum Song had a strong impact on American perceptions of “the Orient.”

In execution, though, the show’s a mixed bag. The slate of songs, curated by Silk Road artistic director Jamil Khoury, shows impressive, deep-tracks musical-theater knowledge; in addition to the obvious choices listed above, there are cuts from such near-forgotten shows as 1961’s Milk and Honey and 1916’s Chu Chin Chow, and lesser-known recent shows like Imelda, about Ms. Marcos of the Philippines, which premiered at L.A.’s East West Players in 2005. And the songs sound exquisite. Musical director Gary Powell does fantastic work, and the strong cast (Christine Bunuan, Dipika Cherala, Katherine L. Condit, Joseph Anthony Foronda, Erik Kaiko, Govind Kumar and David Rhee) sells them well; Elizabeth Margolius’s staging, which moves among three playing areas surrounded by cabaret tables, is handsome.

Christine Bunuan, Katherine L. Condit and Dipika Cherala

If only similar care had been spent on the connecting tissue. It’s tough to follow Khoury’s dramaturgy at times. It makes sense enough for Kaiko to follow an anecdote about his biracial identity by singing Miss Saigon’s “Bui Doi,” about the biracial orphans of the Vietnam War. But other tunes, like Two Gentlemen of Verona’s “Bring All the Boys Back Home” or “A Step Too Far,” from Elton John’s Aida, may be set along the silk road but don’t really have anything to say about its cultures.

The actors, when given a chance, have surprisingly little to say as well. Each of the seven cast members gets a moment to tell a story about his or her experience; these bits are awkwardly under-rehearsed, with many of the actors rambling, repeating themselves or losing their place. Unless they’ve been asked to ad lib a new story at every show—which would seem an odd thing to ask—it’s hard to understand why these trained and talented performers were so on musically but unsteady in these passages at Sunday’s press performance, which came after five previews.

More importantly, though, the stories don’t feel terribly introspective. There are glimmers of insight. Condit, the cast’s lone Caucasian (though she notes she was raised in part by a Persian stepfather), tells of going in to audition for Les Miserables, only to be told by the casting director that, based on her black and white headshot, he’d thought she was a person of color, which is all they were seeing; she says she felt for the first time what her actor friends of color must all the time. Rhee talks about getting cast as a replacement in Broadway’s Thoroughly Modern Millie and having a week to learn his lines, which were in Cantonese, and his songs, which were in Mandarin. “I’m Korean,” he says pointedly. The line gets a laugh, but why not further interrogate that “any Asian will do” attitude in theater, and what it means to him as an actor? As for the younger performers, they mostly tell “my parents didn’t want me to be an actor” stories that are not much different than any white theater major’s, except that they’re enhanced by references to Filipino parents being strict and Indian parents wanting all their kids to be doctors and engineers. The music makes the evening worth it, but it’s tough to shake the sense that the Silk Road Cabaret could have dug deeper. The show continues through Sunday 1.

Photo: Michelle Faust

The Hideout stage has played host to some colorful characters: Neko Case, Ken Vandermark and TOC Books editor Jonathan Messinger, for starters. But few have the flair for grabbing attention, along with body parts, demonstrated by its new resident, the bluesy and voracious flytrap relative Audrey II.

Last night marked the opening of the Hideout Players’ weekend-long production of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s boy-meets-flora saga Little Shop of Horrors. Featuring a cast of the club’s employees and regulars, the production blends a curiously infectious barroom-meets-community-theater vibe with a high level of artistic accomplishment. It helps that the Hideout’s staff and tipplers sport some impressive theatrical resumes.

Not that you would mistake this for Broadway in Chicago. If the warehouses along Wabansia didn’t tip you off, the cardboard set hand-labeled “Mushnik’s Flower Shop” reflects production values closer to the original Roger Corman cult classic than to Frank Oz’s 1986 film of the musical. Thursday night’s performance featured some harmonies that composer Alan Menken never dreamed of, as well as an overeager fog machine that submerged the closing scenes in a dreamy haze.

What makes the show work, though, is the cast’s universal commitment to this material, making the tale of vegetation-abetted murder strangely heartwarming. Lucid Street Theatre founder Lily Emerson is an agile and sweet Audrey, rattling off her past in impeccable Brooklynese, while Jeff Harms lends Seymore a passionate awkwardness; they find real depth along with laughs in these cartoonish characters.

But the twin pillars of Little Shop are the dentist and the plant, and these do not disappoint. Demanding a gander at audience members’ mouths and sucking on a nitrous-delivery device out of Max Ernst, Cupola Bobber’s Tyler Myers charges the sadistic Orin Scrivello, D.D.S., with a demented comic menace. His striking physical performance may have more in common with another 1986 cinematic gas-huffer, Frank Booth, than with Steve Martin’s fey driller.

And the Audrey II, designed by Michelle Faust, manipulated by Faust and Amber Marsh, and voiced by musician and performance poet Marvin Tate, easily dominates the puny humans with which it shares the space, matching Tate’s wheedling bloodlust with expressive puppetry. The plant may be a monster, but from its opening trio to its final world-conquering vision, the production’s a delight.

Little Shop of Horrors runs Friday 23 at 8pm; Saturday 24 at 3, 8pm; and Sunday 25 at 3, 7:30pm. All shows $15.

The cast of The Addams Family arrived in town this week for its final weeks of rehearsals before the show begins previews November 13. (The show won’t open for the press until December 9.) There are plenty of big names (Nathan Lane, Bebe Neuwirth) and Broadway stalwarts (Kevin Chamberlin, Carolee Carmello, Terrence Mann) in the New York-bound production, but the cast also features some young up-and-comers. I sat down yesterday with two of them: Krysta Rodriguez, who portrays the show’s 18-year-old Wednesday Addams, and Wesley Taylor, who plays Wednesday’s unnervingly “normal” boyfriend Lucas Beineke.

TOC: I’ve seen your resumes, but tell me about your backgrounds. Where did you grow up? Where’d you go to school?

Krysta Rodriguez: I grew up in Orange County, California, and went to a performing arts high school there; the Orange County High School of the Arts. And then after that I went to New York for college; I went to NYU for a couple of years, and although I would have loved to finish I did not get that opportunity because I started working. So…no degree in musical theater, but so far an okay career.

TOC: Yeah, so far I guess you haven’t needed it.

KR: Yeah, [whispering] don’t tell.

Wesley Taylor: I was born in Jersey, but can’t really count it cause I moved to Florida instantly when I was a baby. I grew up in Orlando, Florida and went to an arts high school then went to drama school at North Carolina School of the Arts in North Carolina. So I spent four years in NC, then moved to the city.

TOC: Interesting that you both went to arts high schools. How did you develop that interest in performing and the arts?

WT: It was just knowing at a young age this is what we wanted to do pretty seriously.

KR: I started out doing children’s theater, and a chunk of people that were in the children’s theater had gone to the arts high school, so that’s how I learned about it. I didn’t really know that that kind of thing existed and it wasn’t until that time—I remember I was in, like, a dance recital and I told my mom, “I just love the smell of the theater. It smells different there and I want to smell that.” And she said, “You know, you can do this for a career,” and that just blew my mind. From that point it has just been no looking back.

WT: I went to a private, Christian, Southern Baptist school from kindergarten through eight grade and I was, you know, [self-deprecatingly] the star of every play in the school, and I was like, This is not enough. [Laughing] I needed more.

KR: He was his small town’s hero!

WT: I wanted to be among other people who wanted to do what I did. That was the only school to go to in Orlando where that was central, the arts. So I went there, and the best thing about that school is it pointed me to the best drama schools, conservatories for college. So I went to…sorry…um…Where was I going with this?

KR: I don’t know, but we have the exact same life, I’m realizing.

TOC: Krista, you in the last few years have had a lot of ensemble roles and a lot of understudy roles. This is kind of a major break, right?

KR: Yeah, definitely.

WT: She’s going to be a staaahh.

KR: I had played a role in [the 2006 revival of] A Chorus Line. I was Bebe, but I was a replacement. This is the first time I have originated a role. That is the holy grail for actors. Being able to originate, that is something we all look for. So this is definitely the most exciting and intensive and all-encompassing thing that I’ve ever achieved. Its going to be very exciting. My parents are thrilled, as am I.

TOC: Wesley, you on the other hand kind of landed Rock of Ages right out of college. Is that right?

WT: Yeah, I was really lucky. I’ve been blessed; when I got done with school I started working, which is pretty awesome. But, um, I’ve been out of school for a year and a half and this is… this is her fifth Broadway show. She’s been around the block, she’s a vet on me. Yeah, I’m just thrilled that things keep on happening.

TOC: So what was the process like for you both getting involved with this show? Did you have to go through rounds and rounds of auditions?

KR: Oh yeah.

WT: [laughs] Yeah!

KR: The first reading that I was involved in was August of last year. I was in the ensemble. Go figure, always. Then it came around again in January and I re-auditioned. So from the first, I had to audition several times—and the show hadn’t even been really written yet. They had a structure and they had written a script, a few songs—some of which are not in the show anymore. So we kind of didn’t know what the parts were or what the show was yet. The auditions were very involved; very much like, sing this or sing that, let’s try this or try that—just kind of seeing what everybody could do. Like a vocal gymnastics of sorts. When I finally did get the role in January, that’s when they wrote the songs that I’m still singing. Fantastic songs. From then on, I was involved in several readings. But yeah, the audition process was intense and long.  There was one day—actually the day I met Wesley—where we were there for hours just mixing and matching people.

WT: And I remember auditioning for The Addams Family right when I got out of school. Before I had gotten Rock of Ages. I auditioned for the first reading and did not get the job, and then I auditioned for the next workshop and did not get it, but for the third workshop they called me in again. I was like, Jesus, I’ll come in again but I know you don’t want me—cause they had been kind of clear about…

KR: Oh, they had been clear in their un-clarity.

WT: They had cast some other guys. But I kept on going in and going in, and I was so confused because I keep going in for this show and they don’t seem to want me. But at this point, I was on Broadway, and all of the creative team had come to see me [in Rock of Ages] at various points in the show, and…

KR: He was winning awards…

WT: There was a little more clout now that I was not just a baby out of school, now that I was working on Broadway. So they had a little bit more trust, I guess. I finally got the part after eight auditions. So…

KR: …so the moral of the story is do not give up. [Laughs] Because not getting the first time doesn’t mean you won’t get it eventually.

TOC: If you get called in again, always go.

KR: Exactly.

TOC: Let’s talk a little bit about the show itself. I’ve previously interviewed other people involved, and everybody has been on message about the fact that this is not based on the TV show or the movies, it’s based on the [Charles Addams] cartoons. Given that, Krysta, how do you go about building your character knowing that people have expectations about who Wednesday Addams is, and yet this Wednesday Addams is very different than what people know?

KR: Right. Well you know, to be fair, the cartoons were different from the movies were different from the TV show, so there has been an evolution in Wednesday. She hasn’t been the same in every incarnation. This is just one more evolution of her life. She’s been slowly growing throughout history: starting at five, then nine, 13, [now] 18…I’m hoping people are ready for this next phase. There are some expectations about what she looks like, the things that she does, and I can say that we honor her very well. Everyone has been brilliant in their ideas of how we give people what they think they want, and also give them something that they don’t know that they want. I think they will be pleasantly surprised.

TOC: Teenage romance is not exactly something people associate with previous incarnations of The Addams Family. How does that play out within the aesthetic?

WT: Well, it sets up the whole story. The conflict of the whole piece is that Wednesday is now a woman and she’s fallen in love with a “normal” kid. His family is invited over to the mansion, and everything unfolds from there. But there’s actually three different love stories in this show. There’s her parents, my parents, and us. Although the parents have been married for years, it doesn’t mean they’re not going through their own kind of drama. It’s very much a show about love.

KR: Which is what the Addamses are about. They’re about love in their own right.

WT: The Addams family is just so deeply rooted in this family loyalty, love and tradition. They seem to have a positive influence on everyone who comes into their crazy, kooky life. Even though at first it seems peculiar, you might shun it or dismiss it as being weird or not normal, you end up having a pretty beneficial influence.

TOC: Speaking of positive influence, you guys are working with a lot of serious vets here like Nathan, Bebe, Carolee… What lessons have you learned from them so far?

WT: Oh man, what haven’t we learned? [Krysta laughs] We grew up watching these people; to share the same room with them is beyond our wildest dreams.

KR: And when you find out they are just lovely people as well, it’s a treat.

WT: Seriously, Nathan is a master of musical comedy. He’s the tops, and to sit in a room and watch him do what he does best? And to get paid to watch him do what he does is pretty wonderful.

KR: I grew up watching Bebe. She’s one of the reasons I ended up in musical theater in the first place, seeing her in shows.

WT: And Andrew Lippa! His Wild Party is one of the first soundtracks I ever owned. It made me think that I want to start doing musical theater instead of just theater. He is such an actor’s composer. He writes his music completely from intention and…

KR: He is so smart. His lyrics are so smart.

WT: Every character sounds different musically. Like, our characters are more contemporary than the adults, more rock.

KR: There are some vaudeville send ups; there are some beautiful, lyrical songs that are just pleasing to listen to.

WT: Unlike other original work that I’ve worked on, he is not a composer who is just so married to his work. He will mold it around you. He’s kind of written his music around us, which is thrilling.

Second City is set to debut the kids’ show Hogwash in the de Maat Theater on the third floor of Pipers Alley Nov. 8. Tickets will be $10 a pop (and a mom and a kid). The new 50-seat theater is named after late instructor Martin de Maat. (Disclosure: I took classes from Martin at Players Workshop of the Second City in the ’80s and also performed in one of the Second City kids’ shows back in the day.)

Hogwash is an improv show for kids that’s been around a while–in fact, we profiled it in the very first issue of TOC. But Kerry Sheehan, president of Second City Training Centers & Education Programs, told me recently, “We’re going to do our own Second City productions” in the space as well. I spoke with Sheehan for a story in the next issue of Time Out Chicago Kids, which will be out next month, so watch for our roundup of improv classes for little bastards boys and girls.

Despite the clusterfuckedness of it all (can we give director Michael Weber a special Jeff for apparently not doing much?), there were still plenty of good lines and nice moments. A Minister’s Wife lyricist Jan Tranen, accepting the new work—musical prize for herself and absent composer Joshua Schmidt, book writer Austin Pendleton and director Michael Halberstam, said, “I’m really sad that Josh and Austin and Michael aren’t here, but it’s the first time in three years I’ve gotten a word in edgewise.”

Both winners for supporting roles in plays gave emotional speeches. History Boys‘ Alex Weisman said his show “has completely changed my life.” Weisman closed a six-month run on Sunday, not long after beginning his senior year at Northwestern. “Thank you to all my professors at Northwestern…everyone who ever went to Northwestern,” he said. Former Chicagoan Spencer Kayden, a Neo-Futurist alum and a Tony nominee for her role in Urinetown, got choked up accepting her award for Don’t Dress for Dinner. “I’ve been living in Los Angeles for the last five years, and not working very much,” she said, adding that the opportunity to return here came as a great reminder that we all have value even when we’re not given the opportunity to show it.

Longtime Chicago theater critic Richard Christiansen gave a tribute to the importance of Second City in the growth of Chicago’s theater scene, noting that theater in Chicago consisted largely of Broadway tours until SC proved the viability of the homegrown. “On December 16, 1959, there was a light in the wilderness,” said Christiansen. “It was not an import. It was indigenous.”

It was Second City e.t.c. that got Jeff’s attention, though, with its newest revue, Studs Terkel’s Not Working, taking home three awards while its big brother went home empty-handed aside from the special award accepted by CEO Andrew Alexander. A rendition of Not Working’s opening number was one of the two performance highlights of the evening; the other was E. Faye Butler’s absolute killing of “Lot’s Wife” from Caroline, or Change, which tied Ruined with four Jeffs.

Goodman associate artistic director Steve Scott, accepting the best production—large prize for Ruined (it was a tie with Steppenwolf), said, “I’m the one from Ruined who did show up”—playwright Lynn Nottage, actor Saidah Arrika Ekulona and composer Dominic Kanza were among the no-shows—while TimeLine artistic director PJ Powers, accepting production—midsize for The History Boys—that show’s fifth award of the night—happily pointed out that this was TimeLine’s first season of eligibility in the Equity wing. “In a lot of ways, this feels like the quintessential Chicago theater story,” he said.