Displaying items by tag: Babes with Blades

I’ve delighted in Babes with Blades since they began in 1997, and they are never more delightful than when slashing and sauntering their gender-flouting way through Shakespeare. Apt, that: MAGA really should condemn all the Bard’s works as rooted in cross-dressing! The Babes would thumb their noses at that, though! And here they give us a lighthearted gambol through enchanted woods in the ever beloved A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.

Lauren Katz (she/her) directed, with Assistant Kelsey Kovacevich (she/her).  Jillian Leff (she/her) is BWBTC’s premiere fight choreographer, assisted by Madison Hill (they/them). Fight choreographer is a critical role in any BWBTC production, as the Babes’ raison d'être is ‘using stage combat as a storytelling tool that elevates underrepresented identities to center stage’.  Cool, yeah?

I wondered how the Babes would pull off Shakespeare’s famously light-hearted comedy – I last saw them in their 2022 production of Richard III (stupendous!) and I usually associate BWBTC with more … well … combative productions. But the Babes are nothing if not versatile, and this MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM presents the enchanted story with the unique perspective only BWBTC can bring.

The story, you’ll remember, is a bit complicated: the wedding of Athens’ Duke Thesus (Jalyn Greene [they/she]) to Amazon queen Hippolyta (Hayley Rice [she/her])  is the central theme around which several subplots revolve. One involves two pairs of lovers: Lysander (Christine Chang [they/she]) loves Hermia (Cat Evans [they/she/him]), whose bestie Helena (Patty Roache [they/them]) loves Demetrius (Kim Fukawa [she/her]) – who’s in love with Hermia. How could anything go wrong there, huh? The two pairs plan severally to meet tonight in the Woods of Fairyland.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the wood, a decidedly amateur group of thespians rehearsed a play to perform at the royal wedding. The wannabe troupe includes over-enthusiastic Nick Bottom (Sarah Scanlon [she/her]), Starveling (Jessica Goforth [she/her]), Snout (Lauren Paige [she/her]), Flute (Cee Scallen [they/them]), Quince (Morgan Manasa [she/her]) and Snug (Logan UhiwaiO’Alohamailani Rasmussen [she/her]).  Their collective stagecraft was far more droll than depictive, especially after ….

 Oops! I forgot to introduce the Fairies!

Fairy king Oberon (Hayley Rice [she/her)) and queen Titania (Jalyn Greene [they/she]) are experiencing consanguineous confutation and botheration; specifically, Titania is in possession (?) of a changeling boy that Oberon wants  (his purpose left to the audience’s imagination nudge nudge wink wink), but Titania is disinclined to relinquish the dainty. Fuming, Oberon calls upon his ‘shrewd and knavish sprite’ Puck (Hazel Monson [she/her]) to concoct a magical juice that, applied to the eyes of a sleeping person, causes them to fall in love with the first person (or whatever) they see. Thus, he will retaliate against his ungenerous wife.

Puck happens upon the theatric rehearsals and, taking Bottom’s name to mean jackass (a reasonable misapprehension), transforms his head into that of a donkey. Puck then scampers off to his appointed task of anointing the eyes of Titania and arranges that Bottom(ass!) be the first creature whom Titania espies … and instantly falls in love with!

Puck has a bit of remaining oobleck (yes, it’s a word, it means ‘a non-Newtonian fluid’) and, finding the lovers Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena slumbering under the trees, he sprinkles it on the blokes. They, naturally, are gazing upon the ‘wrong’ lady when they wake. The resulting convolution of affections triggers a spectacular Hermia/Helena catfight (as only Babes can fight!). King Oberon is delighted that Titania is enamored of an ass but appalled at the plight of the lovers: “What fools these mortals be!”. He casts a forgetfulness spell so that all four will awake remembering the whole mishegoss as but a dream.

Act the Final has Oberon, Titania and Puck, with a bevy of other fairies, wishing blessings on the audience then leaving Puck, who slyly implies that, “as I am an honest Puck” we may have dreamed it all as well.  

Where to begin my paeans of praise?!

Director Lauren Katz reflects in her Director’s Note that the first task of a director is to decide: ‘How is this production to be different?’; a critical question for a play so celebrated as A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. 

The differences begin, of course, with the company. Babes With Blades Theatre Company is a theatrical troupe like no other and leaves its singular imprint on anything they do:  BWBTC is the world’s only company using stage combat as its primary storytelling tool. I don’t know if they’re the world’s only all-woman stage fighting company, but they’re certainly the only one in Chicago. More fundamentally, BWBTC’s mission is to bring underrepresented voices onstage. For example, in the Babes’ 2022 production of Richard III the woman playing Richard was blind and the director deaf, and that show lives in my memory as the finest theatrical program I’ve ever seen.

That inclusivity extends to the audience. The night we attended A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM was one of their ‘sensory friendly’ performances:  to accommodate people with sensory challenges the house lights remained halfway up, theater doors stood open throughout (to facilitate lobby breaks); the volume was decreased for certain scenes; and (my favorite) the box office offered ‘sensory kits’, containing noise reducing earmuffs, notebook/pen, and fidget toys. How incredibly cool is that?

Scenic Designer Marcus Klein (he/him) effectively combined simplicity with actuation. Together, Light Designer Laura J Wiley (she/her), Technical Director Line Bower (they/them), and Sound Designer Hannah Foerschler (she/her) collaborated to create a truly magical Fairyland Forest. Victoria Jablonski’s (she/her) costumes were perfectly in character, even when several actors played multiple characters! Intimacy Choreographer Sydney Cox (she/her) was not stymied by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of intimate couplings, and Props Designer Persephone Lawrence (she/they) made sure Puck had their magic potion whenever it was needed! A good dialect coach is essential to make iambic pentameter comprehensible, and Carrie Hardin most emphatically did so.  

Everyone, absolutely everyone was superb, but there are always a few standouts. I once asked a theatre-savvy friend, “Just what does a Stage Manager do, anyway?” their reply: “Everything.” Essau Andaleon (he/him) did Everything and did it well; he and Production Manager Rose Hamill (she/her) produced a smooth flow of splendiferous energy.

The cast was also globally superb, with a couple of notables to shout out. I knew I’d seen Patty Roache (they/them) before – on that very stage, in fact, as Queen Margaret in Richard III. They were equally magnificent as Helena: I purely love it (and clearly, they do too!) when they can yowl and shriek and caterwaul their fool head off!  The actors’ troupe of Snug Snout, Quince and Starveling meshed beautifully, and Sarah Scanlon was an admirable Bottom as well as a terrific ass!

I play favorites – so sue me. After all, Puck is everyone’s favorite character! And, if you’ve been reading my reviews, you know I’m a diehard, down-to-the-bone fanatic (not just fan!) of Lord of the Rings. So how could I help but be ensorcelled when Hazel Monson (she/her) played Puck as though she was channeling Andy Serkis? How could I fail to be enraptured by so Gollum-like (Gollum-ish? Gollum-esque?) a Puck? who capered and gamboled, rollicked and larked, skipped and sprang about the stage, often ending crouched before Oberon, head quizzically atilt, awaiting Fairy King Oberon’s next decree. Brava Hazel!

If you’ve never seen a Babes with Blades production before, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM is a perfect place to start. If you’ve followed the Babes for years, don’t let this one get by! And if you’ve seen A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM a dozen times already, by all means come see what the Babes can do in Fairyland!

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM plays through November 23 at The Edge Theater. You can find the schedule of special performances on the Babes’ website.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I would absolutely bomb out of jury selection cos I have a very definite bias: I’ve been a fan(atic) of Babes with Blades Theatre Company (BWBTC) forever – since their very first show in 1997. Favoritism notwithstanding, I try to always be scrupulously fair in my reviews, and it’s certainly fair to say THE S PARADOX blew my socks off! My companion was particularly impressed by the fighting, but that’s only to be expected from the Babes – BWBTC is all about women in arms telling the truth with precision and grace.

Playwright Jillian Leff ^she/her  has outdone herself; the script moves at a lightning pace yet leaves one thinking long afterward. THE S PARADOX won the 2019-2020 Joining Sword and Pen Playwriting Competition, and this production is the world premiere of the work. The script is very clever and often hilarious; all the characters are intriguing and believably portrayed.  But what the bloody hell is an S Paradox? It’s a real thing in statistics and, though I wander gormless through the world of statistics, I’ll take a stab at defining it. Simpson’s (S) Paradox is a phenomenon in which associations between two variables can change or even reverse direction when there’s an unrecognized factor that interacts strongly with both variables.

For example, take a study done in 1974 of the relationship between smoking and heart disease, which found just what you’d expect. However, recently the data were re-analyzed and found that, after 30 years more smokers (76%) were still alive than non-smokers (68%).

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot? Does smoking prolong survival?? 

What confounded the data and produced the paradoxical finding is Simpson's Paradox – they failed to consider a third variable: age at the beginning of the study. Far more nonsmokers were over 64 – logical, because there simply aren't as many smokers who get that old – and naturally these older subjects died off sooner.  

Enough with the statistics already! let’s get back to the Babes. But the statistics are important cos THE S PARADOX is about time travel, where paradoxes abound and may have horrific unintended consequences.

Kayla Marie Klammer (she/her) and Elisabeth Del Toro (she/her) in THE S PARADOX

THE S PARADOX opens in a distant and (seemingly) utopian future: tax reforms have virtually eliminated poverty, healthcare is free, and guns are totally banned – the police are armed with (you guessed it) swords. Sounds good, yeah? Our hero is a young woman named Sloane, gorgeously played by Kayla Marie Klammer^she/her.  Through various machinations and interventions by Dez, the armorer, Sloane acquires a sword and is offered a sensational job with a shadowy government organization.

Dez is brought to exuberant life by Elisabeth Del Toro^she/her. I adored her! Funny and frolicsome, DelToro’s Dez sparkles with such droll enthusiasm that Sloane can’t resist her… and nor could I!

Sloane is pretty pumped about all this, but she gets a sharply unfavorable reaction from her partner Ava, who’s suspicious that the job looks too good to be true. More importantly, Ava is older than Sloane and remembers the times before the reforms; she wants no chance of returning to a world of guns! Cat Evans^they/she/him gives us an Ava who mounts these logical arguments but is primarily motivated by her love and concern for Sloane. This honey works better than the vinegar of logic, and Sloane agrees to return the sword.

All well and good, but she’s thwarted on numerous fronts: first, Dez is weirdly reluctant to accept the sword back. Weirder still, this woman who claims to be from the future appears and warns Sloane that she’s about to make a dreadful mistake … but disappears before she can explain herself. And who are these anonymous cloaked strangers following Sloane? Could something be happening in the future that is paradoxically non-utopian?

I can’t say more without grievous spoilers, but I do need to make a couple more introductions, as their characters will appear (and disappear and re-appear and disappear and re-re-appear and disappear again). William, the businessman who recruited Sloane, is brilliantly played by Steve Peebles ^he/him, who portrays him behaving ever more peculiar, fast approaching frankly creepy.

Sonja Lynn Mata^she/her/ella is a delightful Dez-of-the-future, a perfect sequel to her irrepressible younger self.  Mata portrays Dez as earnest and indefatigably persistent (mulish would not be far off the mark), particularly about this project she’s trying to conscript Sloane into. Thankfully, gravitas has not quelled the vivacity and ebullience of her youth, and Sloane finds her fully as engaging as before [me too!].

And for Sloane the elder, future Sloane – now simply called S – who else to cast but Maureen Yasko^she/her, Artistic Affiliate with BWBTC and stage combat maestro extraordinaire?  Yasko masterfully portrays S as a complex character, scored by grief and regret but preserving the passionate, indomitable woman of yesteryear deep within. She’s courageous, accepting without complaint the emotional pain of truth as well as the physical battering of the time leaps. And S never loses hope. Yasko manages to convey all this; admittedly with assistance from the stellar script, but these intangibles can’t be depicted by words alone.

Also brilliant were the four Nameless, the anonymous cloaked figures who inflict Sloane’s reality, and are still around to daunt the world of S: Tina-Kim Nguyen^she/her, Deanna Palmer^she/her, Jessica Pennachio^she/her, and Thomas Russell^he/they. All four of them were superb, but Russell’s performance was remarkable. Overall, the Nameless ensemble was suitably portentous and creepy.

The cast was uniformly splendid and, happily, their excellence was matched by the production team. Director Morgan Manasa ^she/her devised some amazing conceptual strategems; with Technical Director Line Bower ^they/them and Lighting Designer Laura J Wiley ^she/her, the time jumps were brilliantly accomplished; Wiley’s Light design was crucial during the many scenic transitions in time and space. Fight and Intimacy Director Samantha Kaufman ^she/her (and how fabulous is it that one woman directs both these seemingly antithetical functions?) had the finest material to work with in BWBTC, and she honed them to flawless precision. Scenic (Rose Johnson ^they/them) and Props (Evy Burch^they/she) Designers created a stage set that transformed seamlessly and believably. I loved how Costume Designer Rachel M Sypniewski ^she/her arranged Sloane’s and S’s hair! And LJ Luthringer’s^he/him Sound thrilled me: 1960’s bands Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, The Shondells … be still my heart! Stage Manager Taylor Stageberg ^she/they brought it all together superbly (and I love that they credited their cat!).

That’s the lot, and a stellar lot they are. I expect no less from the Babes of course, but it’s always a happy surprise to see how brilliantly they deliver. Their mission is to speak for marginalized voices, with stage combat a consistent storytelling tool. Rare, and fabulous!  as is THE S PARADOX!

THE S PARADOX plays Thursdays – Sundays at Factory Theatre through May 18.

Highly recommended!

The parallels between "The Good Fight's” retelling of the British Suffrage Movement -  and the Women's March going on in all countries around the globe now are truly uncanny and a little bit frightening. The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).British women's suffrage movement coined the powerful phrase “Deeds, not words" in response to the 50-year-long refusal by Parliament to allow women to vote in the UK. 

Babes with Blades latest production, “The Good Fight” is a stark reminder of today’s issues at hand. History is doomed to repeat itself, and in Babes with Blades latest production, “The Good Fight” at City Lit Theatre the already revved up Chicago audience finds a thought provoking reminder of yesterday's issues which are still being fought for today. 

There are many interesting, and also tragic, scenes that are presented well in this production. WSPU members were regularly subjected to police brutality like being beaten and arrested while demonstrating peacefully or simply selling their Women's Press newspaper, "Votes for Women".  The aging leader of the WSPU, Emmeline Pankhurst (Jean Marie Koons), and other members were arrested repeatedly under an actual law with the degrading and disgusting title “The Cat and Mouse Act".

"The Cat and Mouse Act" allowed police to not only repeatedly arrest and imprison members like Pankhurst but also to brutally force feed them while in prison when they chose to go on hunger strikes. As one character in the play mentions, "You are never the same after the force feeding." 

Force feeding was done by restraining the female prisoner on a medical table by her arms and legs then applying metal clamps to her mouth and teeth to open them so that a feeding tube, which often tore open their vocal cords in the process, could be forcibly shoved down their throats in an effort to punish them. This created a hollow appeasement to the public that they were being "fed by prison guards" in order to save their lives. 

Another fascinating and little known story is told about the group of fighting Suffragette’s called "The Bodyguard", a group of specially trained women who learned the martial art of Jiu Jitsu in order to protect their leader from the police brutality and repeated arrests at each WSPU demonstration. 

The fact that these early suffragettes NEEDED to learn to fight using hand to hand combat just shows clearly how violently they were abused by the police and lawmakers at the time. It's too bad this production didn't get a mention in about the South Asian British suffragettes without whom this battle would not have been won. 

Some scenes were real reminders of how male autocrats use physical force to rule over their subjects. Playwright Anne Bertram includes scenes about Parliament arguments over whether to allow women the vote, which included arguments that the women's hats would be too large to see over if women were voted into government. Another argued the stressing of women's physical weakness as an indicator that they must be ruled over because men are born capable of physically subduing women, etc.  

Although this quote is not in the play it was one of these infuriating responses that served to agitate the movement completely when in June of 1908 the WSPU held a 300,000-strong "Women's Sunday" rally in Hyde Park. The suffragettes argued for women's suffrage with the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The Prime Minister agreed with their argument but "was obliged to do nothing at all about it" and so urged the women to "go on pestering" and to exercise "the virtue of patience".

Some of the women present had been virtuously patiently fighting for their rights for FIFTY years and so the advice to "go on pestering” was felt as an unbelievably patronizing and disgustingly inhumane response from the Prime Minister, which spawned the more militant actions to come. 

One of the most interesting things I did not know about the WSPU and the formation of " The Bodyguard" is that the WSPU members debated  among themselves whether or not to return violence with violence or continue to resist peacefully, doing only damage to abandoned buildings and closed stores in order to avoid using violence to defend their aging leader and other young members from  the  physical destruction of lives through the "Cat and Mouse" torture and release legislation.This production mentions the interesting and bitterly ironic fact that Parliament also passed another legislation protecting it's armed forces that forbade women attending WSPU peaceful marches or protests to wear "hat pins" to fasten their hats because so many police were "poked with hat pins while attempting to arrest protesters that the hat pins were now considered by baton and gun wielding policemen as weapons! 

Hence, the brilliant and necessary formation of " The Bodyguard" which utilized the peaceful art of jujitsu; one of the only martial arts in the world which uses ONLY the energy of an attacker’s momentum to respond to and end the attackers violent actions. 

The essential scenes for this production directed with passion by Elizabeth Lovelady and fight choreographer Gaby Labotka made great use of the relatively small space for so much physical action and complex action scenes. I loved the use of the sumptuous period costumes and official colors of the WSPU. As is stated, “In 1908 the WSPU adopted purple, white, and green as its official colours. These colours were chosen because Purple...stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette...white stands for purity in private and public life...green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring."

Some of the British accents could use some work because it was a little bit distracting to hear them come and go within a couple cast members. Each member of this ensemble did a great job expressing the fever, excitement and anguish of meeting each day’s challenges and humiliations. 

Emmeline Pankhurst was played beautifully with great wisdom and pride by Jean Marie Koon. Grace Roe, a jailed WSPU member and one of the founders of the movement, was played with wonderful sensitivity and forceful energy by Arielle Leverett. 

I enjoyed watching this play surrounded by Chicagoan's who are right now marching 300,000 strong downtown to protest all GOP of the human rights being eroded by the current Trump administration. 

The fact that in 2018, it has been less than 100 years since women have been given the right to vote and the fact that not only are women still fighting for equal pay, they are also still fighting to keep their rights to abortion, healthcare and protection from career ending sexual harassment while an accused sexual harasser of the worst kind  has been " voted" somehow into the highest office in the land, makes this production a must see for all who are struggling daily to keep up their own energy physically and emotionally to fight "the good fight".  

I highly recommend taking your sons and daughter to see this informative and sadly, still VERY relevant, production to show them how long it takes to win this type of good fight and also that the good fight has not yet been entirely won. 

“The Good Fight” is being performed through February 17th at City Lit Theatre - http://babeswithblades.org/winter-2018-good-fight/.