100th Post - Brother/Sisters Plays

Yesterday I did something that I've been wanting to do for a while - seeing a Chicago theater performance.

I really love theater. With all my heart. If I was ever given a choice between a good play and a good movie - the play would win every time, hands down! By the way, just because I love great plays doesn't mean I can tolerate a crappy performance. Things like that just give me migraines. What is it about theater that's better than film? Acting and creativity. Creativity in giving the audience imagination and power to feel the story. Films are a visual orgy - and they are beautiful too - but they can overshadow the emotion delivered through the vehicle of acting.

Although long overdue, I think that yesterday was the time I was finally ready. You see, no one tells you when you move to a country of which you speak the language of - that you are not going to get their culture for a VERY long while. I can speak English very well - extremely well. But American culture, literature, pop culture symbolism, etc. are foreign to me. Its confusing missing references but I can see that I've caught on quite a bit from when I first arrived here.

So, while researching on things to do on Friday, I figured why not go see a play? I got really excited. With none of my friends free and my husband on call night...I was like perfect ... let me go see a play just to see a play. No annoyances, no distractions - purely a theater experience. I researched the shows playing in Chicago online and settled on 'The Brothers/Sisters Plays'. It fit my budget range and it was in a convenient area of Old Town, at the really well-known Steppenwolf Theater. I really wanted to go see something of a high standard. Ironically, I don't really know why I thought Steppenwolf was a stellar place. I looked it up online on Wikipedia and saw that okay they have a couple of Tony's and National Arts awards. Here's what I also read "Steppenwolf helped to launch the careers of a number of well-known American actors, including Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, Joan Allen, John Mahoney, Martha Plimpton, Glenne Headly, Gary Cole, Kathryn Erbe, and Laurie Metcalf."

I don't know any of these people. Clicking on their pics made me realize oh yeah I've seen them act in movies/sitcoms.

After work, I excitedly got at Steppenwolf an hour early to buy their Rush Half-price tickets. It turned out that the 'half-price' tickets were the same price as their normal, back-seat tickets i.e. $20. Maybe, the box office guy saw disappointment on my face (I was hoping closer to $10). He asked me, "Would you like to see the play for free?". For one-thousandth of a second I thought I was being insulted by sarcasm; another one-tenth of a second, I thought he was kidding. Since he looked so earnest, I moved on to ask, "Really? How can I do that?". It turned out the theater's volunteer ushers were short that night and they were actually offering a free show in exchange for some helping out. Needless to add, I jumped on board the offer. Free show, yayyyyyy!!!!!

The night's duties included:
Stuffing flyers in program booklets
Guiding people to their seats
Being helpful during intermission
Picking up used booklets after the show for the theater to recycle

Not too bad huh? Things I didn't appreciate:

My complimentary tea cup (1 free refreshment for volunteers) was semi-snatched by the front-house manager after orientation.
A 90-year old granny in a walker giving me a piece of her mind when I pointed her to the 'wheelchair' seating in the theater "I'm not in a wheelchair!!!". (Geez, lady, I learned all these 20 rules like 5 minutes ago - give me a break!)
Arty-Farty Werewolf-Bearded Front-House Manager who acted all so 'professionally' gracious for our volunteer work. Just rubbed me the wrong way.

Otherwise the night was wonderful. I loved the 2-part trilogy of The Brother/Sisters Plays. You have to sit down with me to go into detail about it - but wow, the theater experience was awesome! There were still a lot of references from African-American culture and American culture that I missed but the audience caught on to....still, I had a wonderful time :). P.S. I watched the play from the second row :D.