Entertainment :: Theatre
Soiree Dada: Schmückt Der Hallen by Danny Orendorff
EDGE ContributorSaturday Nov 29, 2008 If you’re more likely to indulge in the humiliations of "National Lampoons: Christmas Vacation" or "A Christmas Story" this holiday season and less likely to get a bit teary-eyed at "It’s a Wonderful Life" - the WNEP Theater’s presentation of Soiree Dada: Schmückt Der Hallen at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Storefront Theatre is probably for you.
The holidays prove to be perfect fodder for an interactive Dada celebration, as one Dada aptly explained, since both events promise to likely ’shame and exalt you.’
Chock-full of absurdity, chaos, audience participation (beware!), and chance elements, "Soiree Dada" features a talented cast of many performers and poets speaking (sometimes nonsense and oftentimes over one another) in terrifically thick German accents. Song, dance, poetry, storytelling, and a lot of noise await you - and it’s all especially acerbic for this time of year.
For those unfamiliar with the Dada art movement emerging in Switzerland around the time of the First World War, Dadaist theatrical tactics of chaos, chance, and simultaneity were meant to express an anti-war politic. The WNEP Theatre holds true to this tradition with occasional, satirical references to today’s crummy economy and ongoing wars. But, for the most part, it’s all good fun.
Outfitted in classic black outfits and white face-paint, the WNEP Dadas are a motley group resembling, for the sake of this holiday presentation, some kind of loose, dysfunctional family-structure. At the helm of the bunch is Dada Dabo, played with Fruedian authority by the very skilled and very funny Jen Ellison.
Ellison’s take on the "disillusionment" awaiting beneath the bright and shiny wrapping paper of a small gift given to another Dada is probably the smartest holiday parody I’ve seen in recent memory.
The WNEP Theatre’s Soiree Dada: Schmückt Der Hallen is being performed now through December 20th and the Chicago Cultural Center’s Storefront Theater at 66 E. Randolph Street. For tickets, visit www.DCATheater.org or call 312.742.8497
Danny Orendorff is an arts journalist and organizer in Chicago. He can be reached at Dan[dot]Orendorff[at]Gmail[dot]com
|
|
|
Email
Print
Share