Offered as an adjunct to the annual summer Rhinoceros Theater and Performance Festival, this monthlong showcase of fringe entertainment features mostly new work by such ensembles and individuals as the Curious Theatre Branch, Dolphinback Theatre Company, Ira Glass, Frank Melcori, Theater Oobleck, Jamie O’Reilly, Michael Smith, the Saint Ed Theatre Company, and John Starrs, among others. The festival runs through March 9 at three locations: the Lunar Cabaret and Full Moon Cafe, 2827 N. Lincoln; Link’s Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield; and Live Bait Theater, 3914 N. Clark. The phone number for reservations and information for all shows is 773-327-6666, ext. 3. Performances take place most nights (except Tuesdays), generally starting at 8 PM, as indicated in the listings below. (These listings are subject to change; audiences are advised to call the festival for late updates.) Tickets are $10 per show (except where noted in individual listings) or “pay what you can.”
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The Queen of Bakersfield & Other Tales of Dust & Moonlight Dolphinback Theatre Company’s artistic director KellyAnn Corcoran performs writer Greg Owens’s “loose collection of stories and songs [exploring] the well-mined world of trailer parks, beehive hairdos, and Elvis worship. To Owens’s credit, he also captures a far less discussed side of blue-collar life–its unwed mothers, suicidal depression, and diminishing job opportunities. But it’s very odd to see moments with the tang of truth side by side with scenes that are total bullshit,” says Reader critic Jack Helbig. Lunar Cabaret, 8 PM.
Points of Arrival: A Jean Donovan Journey Paul Amandes’s drama about Jean Donovan, a 27-year-old American Catholic lay worker who was murdered with three nuns in El Salvador in 1980, is directed by Beau O’Reilly for the Still Point Theatre Collective. Live Bait Theater, 8 PM.
Seeing Red, Snow White, and Blue: A Psychoanalytic Musical Performance artist/psychologist Wylie Goodman explores “feminist and feminized notions of performance/love” in this multimedia solo piece, whose text is derived from Freud, Derrida, and The Rules. Lunar Cabaret, 10 PM.
The Fever Dolphinback Theatre Com-pany’s production of Wallace Shawn’s one-man drama features Brad Light as an American beset by illness and conscience in a Latin American country. “The Fever is [an] angry, fanatical, . . . surprisingly sharp critique of privilege and class. . . . Brad Light . . . dives deep, performing Shawn’s monologue with such intensity that it’s impossible to take your eyes off him [as he] captures the anguish, disgust, guilt, and sputtering rage behind [the] words. And the effect is riveting,” says Reader critic Jack Helbig. Lunar Cabaret, 10 PM. Note: Tickets for both The Queen of Bakersfield & Other Tales of Dust & Moonlight and The Fever the same evening are $15 “or pay what you can.”
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17
The Queen of Bakersfield & Other Tales of Dust & Moonlight See listing for Thursday, February 13. Lunar Cabaret, 8 PM.
