Walkabout Theatre Company takes its mission to create location-specific theater into the great outdoors this summer, with a city-wide garden tour of “War Garden: An Experiment in Patriotic Agriculture, ” produced in conjunction with Neighborspace, “an urban land trust dedicated to preserving community-managed gardens in Chicago,” Led by director/co-creator Seth Bockely, Walkabout’s ensemble has tapped city history for subject matter, exploring the WWI war garden movement through the efforts of a ladies auxiliary organization who find themselves at odds with the antics of real-life Chicago shanty-town confidence man, George W. Streeter. But while the historical backdrop and community-activist ties sound ripe for a rich cultural exploration, the short performance itself (which runs approx. fifty minutes) is fairly silly and juvenile. Perhaps I was misled by the pre-show press and literature, which had me expecting a more thoughtful portrait of communities uniting in peril and “today’s urban agricultural revival,” but I was disappointed by the broadly cartoonish characters and performances—overblown and uncomfortably heavy on the kind of demonstrative mugging one would expect from a children’s sketch-comedy show. (Valerie Jean Johnson)
A Second Company's Saga: The Spirited Story of Fifty Years of Chicago Opera Theater Chicago Opera Theater began as a handful of vocal students of company founder Alan Stone. It was formed by Stone to give his students actual performance practice and experience. Stone’s decision to present operas in English was a considerable break with convention back in 1973.
