It seems like just last month when Suzan-Lori Parks’ remarkably ambitious “365 Days/365 Plays” festival kicked off. Well, guess what? Now, it’s pretty much over. Parks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who spearheaded the festival across the country, will return to Chicago for the closing benefit on November 13 at Andersonville’s T’s Bar and Restaurant. Jason Loewith, executive producer of the festival in the Chicago area, claims more than 500 actors, fifty theater companies and 7,000 patrons participated in the free event. “They were in hallways, in schools, at Millennium Park, they were all over town,” Loewith says. The 365 plays touch on a variety of topics, but many revolve around current events of 2002-2003: one is dedicated to the memory of actor Gregory Hines (who passed away in August 2003), others are clearly affected by the Iraq war. But Loewith says judging each play individually and not as a singular work of art misses the point of the festival. “You evaluate the event based on questions like, ‘Did it create a community? Did it unite artists behind to common theme?'”
On the Brink: City Lit's "Thirteen Days" Gender-Swaps the Cuban Missile Crisis As the closest the world's ever come to nuclear war, The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the most consequential geopolitical events of the twentieth century and Brian Pastor chose to adapt and direct Robert F. Kennedy's memoir of the event, "Thirteen Days."
