Displaying items by tag: Jason Bowen

There are no shortage of stories to be told in Chicago. Whether you’re visiting a museum, riding the L, or simply sitting on a lakeshore bench, you can find a story in every person you encounter, every landmark you see, even the very ground holds stories in Chicago. For every singular story there is a theatre, a center, or a space that offers a stage to allow those voices to be heard in nearly every neighborhood from prime downtown real estate to a small garden space. Whatever the stage, voices are given a platform and stories are shared. It is only for us to sit for a moment and listen to the stories, lest they never be told, or forgotten to time. That’s exactly what Jerker, Or The Helping Hand aims to do before it wraps on November 8^th at the Open Space Arts.

Jerker, Or The Helping Hand is a pornographic elegy with redeeming social value and a hymn to the queer men of San Francisco in twenty telephone calls…many of them dirty. Set against the backdrop of San Francisco in the 80s, the intimate and minimalist set puts you right in the middle of a quick and steamy sex call. The two men lay in their respective beds, one hand holding their long landlines, the other holding their long…well, you can imagine. Over the course of the phone calls we learn about the context they find themselves in, their world slowly forming around them with each reference of the character’s flirty banter. Flirtation leads to vulnerability, vulnerability leads to friendship, and something deeper is being connected through the tangled red telephone cords, more than just casual sex. These men can’t truly be who they are, for fear of ridicule and a virus that terrified and decimated a community. They long to be seen, to be cared for and looked after, and most importantly safe from the ignorance and illnesses that plagued their friends and chosen families.

The story unfolds carefully. It is not preachy or presumptuous. It assumes the audience and viewers know enough about the aids epidemic and statistics to linger on the topic for too long. It was also so unknown during the period of time the play is set in. Jerker, Or The Helping Hand focuses instead on two men looking to play, release, and connect on a different level. It gives a voice to those voices lost to a time that is slipping further away; decades whittled down to facts and statistics. We hear from voices that unless we sit and listen risk being lost beneath the weight of something that was more than 40 years ago.

Robert Chesley's Jerker, Or The Helping Hand is one piece of the four-play series ‘Before We Are History" now playing at the Open Space Arts Center. The curated and selected pieces spotlight early queer voices and aids-era works. Together, the plays offer a journey through a history that must never be forgotten. “Our hope is that we leave these performances with a deeper understanding of what the world lost,” says Artistic Director David Zak, “what survived, and what we still have the power to discover, preserve, and create together.” Contrary to what I tell myself, the 80s weren’t 20 years ago. Entire youthful generations haven’t grown up in the shadow of a virus that was once a death sentence. Though they’ll learn of the era it will be like more history books, clinical facts on a page. Though stories have been written there are thousands that have not. Open Space Arts shines a light on those voices in this beautifully curated series. It’s those voices, those stories, that truly make Chicago theatre what is it.

Jerker, Or The Helping Hand is performing a limited run through November 8, at the Open Space Arts theatre in Uptown (1411 W Wilson Ave., Chicago).Tickets are available at https://openspacearts.org/ Be sure to see it before 20 years turns into 40 years and 40 years turns into history.

I absolutely adored Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue directed by Eric Swanson, now playing at Broadway Playhouse. Having grown up in Miami, Florida with my working single mom when the show actually began airing, the Golden Girls have always been a nostalgic favorite for me. The only stage creations I've seen of Golden Girls have all been done in drag by some of the best drag actors and actresses in Chicago, so I was pleasantly surprised with this beautifully casted production to see the fantastic accuracy and sense of humor that came alive in this very funny and fast paced take on our four golden heroes. 

“It’s not an old episode, it’s a brand-new show,” said Vince Kelley, who plays Blanche said in an interview with WTTW. “Sophia is out on bail looking to make money. Rose and Blanche have started a new hookup app for seniors to meet. Through the app, Dorothy finds a younger man and experiences a new romance.” Kelley continued, “Did you watch Sex and the City or Girlfriends? They wouldn’t even exist. There wouldn’t even be that four-character type show without the Golden Girls.”

This new play is based on Golden Girls, the mega-popular TV series about four retired women living together that ran from the mid-eighties through the early nineties. The show helped pave the way for women in leading roles and has gained more and more popularity with generation after generation. The wonderful thing about the original TV show created by the brilliant writers Susan Harris and Paul Junger Witt, is the way it brought to light the problems, pitfalls and joys of aging in ways that were insightful, touching and hilarious. This production which is set in 2023 written by Robert Leleux takes the time to illustrate several important issues facing seniors today.

In this story, Sophia has been arrested for selling marijuana brownies and LSD laced cakes to her fellow senior citizens at the nearby senior assisted living facility and gives a wonderful speech about why she should not be sent to jail for "rolling a few joints for those of her friends who have glaucoma" or selling LSD cakes to otherwise terminally bored and serious seniors who want to get over their fear of death.

Rose and Blanche have created a hugely successful app for "horny seniors" called “Creakin’” because the alert sound is hysterically the sound of creaking bones. The girls hope to pay Sophia’s legal fees with the money they make from the app. Blanche declares with a sexy sigh, "You have no idea how many of them there ARE!!" It's a sound idea, actually. My mother spent eighteen years in various senior facilities and dating of any kind let alone sexual contact within each facility was very difficult and limited by their tiny community and inability to meet new people.

Dorothy just happens to use the app and swipes right on a younger man, Burt, who falls in love with her and offers her a whole new life as a star if she moves to New York with him! Dorothy’s younger love interest’s sincere sexual and intellectual attraction to her is not played off as a joke. It is played as a very exciting and mutually fulfilling meeting of minds and bodies in late life.  

This cast is downright stellar. Vince Kelley as Blanche is mind-blowing. Kelley is an absolute scene stealer with all of Blanche's overt sex appeal and unabashed libertine wildness. Adam Graber is an unbelievably beautiful and adorable Rose recreating with seeming ease and beauty the glorious comic timing of Betty White. Ryan Bernier, as Dorothy, has all of Bea Arthur's dry humor and intelligence and wisdom and even her subtle sexiness down pat while Christopher Kamm as Sophie hits on one-liner after one-liner. The transformation Kamm goes through to take on the role of Sophia in incredible in itself. Also commanding a good number of hearty laughs is Jason Bowen who plays dual roles of both Stanley, Dorothy’s ex-husband, and Burt, her new lover. The entire cast should be awarded for their performances which go beyond camp and into sincere tribute to each of the wonderful actresses who created these evergreen characters, Betty White, Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty and Rue McClanahan.

Yes, it takes great writers to create a show with this kind of universal and lasting appeal, but actresses are so often made to feel that they are replaceable, interchangeable and downright un-castable after the age of 35, and Arthur, White, McClanahan and Getty helped change that.

The degree to which these talented actors have recreated and brought back to life the work of four of the  greatest comediennes of ANY generation moved me so much because it demonstrated that the huge and long lasting success of this show hinged not just on the greatness of its writers, it absolutely was the result of the outstanding work of four actresses, who were always irreplaceable, never interchangeable and eminently castable well into their golden years. 

I highly recommend this production.

Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue is being performed at Broadway Playhouse at Water Place through May 26^th. For tickets and/or more show information, click here.   

*Extended through June 9th!