At That Time
Hello Neighbor
at Live Bait Theater, through
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In a culture awash with electronic entertainment, live performances remain popular–because they remind those of us raised on TV, radio, and computer games that we exist, that we matter, that we are absolutely necessary. This is doubly true for solo performers like Lisa Buscani, Barrie Cole, and Jennifer Biddle, who prefer to work without much technological support: a few lighting cues and a handful of sound cues, a couple of props, and the right clothing are all any of these women need to pull off their shows. And even these are not essential. Neo-Futurist and poetry-slam champion Buscani could do her show in your kitchen and be just as good. In fact, I’ve seen Cole and Buscani deliver excellent performances in much more primitive settings than their current venues.
Cole and Buscani have a lot in common. Both know how to command attention onstage. Both feed off the audience’s reactions. Both speak with authority and conviction. Both have a gift for spoken and written language–both are published poets–which translates well in their performances. Of the two, Buscani is the more established, familiar to Chicago from her countless appearances in the late 80s and early 90s in Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, at the Green Mill poetry slam, as a member of the Big Goddess Pow-Wow, and most recently in her one-woman show Carnivale Animale, just before she left for New York.
Jennifer Biddle isn’t even in the same league as Buscani and Cole. Trained in improv, she hasn’t yet transcended that genre’s fondness for quick, easy, flat stereotypes stuck in predictable situations. Each of the five sketches in Jenny Jenny Bang Bang could as easily have come from a Second City-style comedy revue.
