“Theater has such an opportunity to challenge audiences and give them a very unique experience,” says Shawn Reddy, of Curious Theatre Branch and The MAGPIES. “The Art of Unbearable Sensations,” Reddy’s own MAGPIES side-project and Rhinoceros Theatre Festival installment currently running at the Viaduct, is a case in point. The piece, which consists of a series of “monologues/lectures that delve into what might have been the private lives of P.T. Barnum’s Circus freaks,” confronts audiences in a way much different than other theater. “There is a lot of audience participation,” says Reddy. “We get the audience to perform self-examinations of their own heads and to close their eyes and envision scenarios with the medium. We get the audience to play a more active role.” Reddy, inspired by his sympathy for Circus freaks—”people would just pay twenty-five cents to see them and then walk away”—and his concern over shock art—”what purpose does shock art serve when nothing is shocking, everything is possible?”—has created a piece that should not be absentmindedly observed. “If the audience goes away from the theater and holds on to what we did a couple hours longer and thinks about it—that’s all we can ask,” Reddy says. (Meaghan Strickland)
Theater, Dance, Comedy and Performance in Chicago
