Life in the Windy City: My Kind of Town
Student teaching was, to put it bluntly, hell. The program at Michigan State University, which is one of the top teacher education programs in the nation, by the way, lasts for a full school year. For most of that year, the student teacher is solely responsible for teaching almost an entire load of classes, responsible for taking a full load of classes through MSU related to the student teaching experience, and, although it is officially verboten by the program, many student teachers are also responsible for whatever evening or weekend job they have to pay for college.
And during all of this, the student teachers are often told that their first year of teaching will be worse. Worse because, as unprepared as we might feel as mere student teachers, at least there is a safety net of mentor teacher, field instructor, classroom instructors, and the collective weight of Michigan State University. As a first-year teacher, you’re flying solo. Performing without a net. Sure, at least you’re getting paid, something student teachers don’t get and often complain about, but that paycheck comes with more responsibility, more stress.
I wouldn’t say my first year of teaching has been worse, stress-wise, than my year of student teaching. In some ways, such as the aforementioned paycheck, it is much better. But, like any first-year teacher, I have often wanted to pull all of my hair out in frustration: with my students, with other teachers, with administrators, with the bureaucracy, with myself.
Thankfully, I live in Chicago. As stressful as teaching, especially the first year, often is, as often as I fantasize about quitting my job and living the Bohemian life of a writer (that’s what summer is for, I tell myself), I only stress about actually living in Chicago when I’m stuck in traffic. Other than the inevitable traffic jams, life in Chicago has treated me very well so far.
If I were a more disciplined writer, a more timely reporter, a less-stressed teacher, I would have written about the following things months ago:
Flanagan’s Wake
Lisa and I hadn’t been dating very long, but her best friend, Naomi, wanted to check me out, make sure I was OK and all that. Naomi also happened to be acting in Flanagan’s Wake, a mostly-improvised comedy playing at the Pheasant Run resort outside of Chicago. So we killed two birds with one stone: we spent an afternoon laughing ourselves senseless, and then went out to dinner with Naomi.
Since the audience is integral to the performance of the play—the idea is that the American cousins have come to the recently deceased Irish man’s funeral to pay their respects, and they often have to remind their forgetful (or simply drunk) Irish hosts about vital information concerning Flanagan’s life—my favorite part of the play was when I was asked to remind everyone what Flanagan thought the afterlife would be like. I knew the word “bidet” would come in handy sooner or later.
The Credeaux Canvas
One of the benefits of dating someone who is a company member of a theater group is the free tickets she can get to shows. This wasn’t the main reason I started dating Lisa, but it is a nice perk. The first such show she took me to was the Circle Theater (www.circle-theater.org) production of The Credeaux Canvas, by Keith Bunin. The play uses the plot of three twentysomethings who plan to forge a “lost masterpiece” and sell it to an unsuspecting collector to examine the rules we set for ourselves and the roles we choose to play for each other. It was, in short, fantastic: the intimate set (and setting—Circle’s small theater seats fewer than fifty people), the razor-sharp dialogue, the perceptive themes all added up to a top-notch theater experience.
And, as an added bonus, I got to watch an actor I hadn’t seen since my graduate days at Central Michigan University: Jason Powers. In fact, we’d been in the same summer theater group together. Now he’s doing a lot of acting in Chicago.
Pilobolus Dance Company:
Yes, “pilobolus” is a real word. No, it’s not dirty. Well, not metaphorically, anyway. “Pilobolus (crystallinus) is a phototropic zygomycete - a sun-loving fungus that grows in barnyards and pastures,” says the official website of the company, www.pilobolus.com. “Pilobolus, the arts organism, germinated in the fertile soil of a Dartmouth College dance class in 1971. What emerged was a collaborative choreographic process and a unique weight-sharing approach to partnering that gave the young company a non-traditional but powerful new set of skills with which to make dances,” which is the website’s fancy way of saying what you see at a pilobolus concert looks something like a cross between modern dance and partner yoga—and it’s mouth-agape-awesome.
This was the second formal “date” Lisa and I went on, if you can count Credeaux as the first. We’d been out to dinner many times between the end of August and the middle of October, which is when we saw Pilobolus at the historic Chicago Theater, but we’d never actually gone out together, couple-wise, until Pilobolus. (Yes, you’d think seeing a movie together would have been simple enough, but for us, it wasn’t. Trust me. To date, we’ve only seen one movie together: The Incredibles. And that was just before Christmas.)
Shakespeare Kung Fu
It sounded so promising, a surreal melding of two of my favorite things: the immortal poetry of Shakespearean dialogue and the cheesy camp of bad kung-fu movies. Shakespeare Kung Fu turned out to be a disappointment; its main redeeming feature, however, is that it gave both Lisa and I something to laugh about on the train back to my place.
When Lisa first told me about this new play by “award-winning Chicago playwright Will Kern, best known for his popular and critically acclaimed long-running play Hellcab” (so sayeth The Store Front Theater) my first thought was “Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?
After we suppressed our laughter for the hour that the show ran, my thoughts ran more toward debating with Lisa whether the show would have been better if the actors had played the Shakespearean stuff more seriously or if they had hammed it up more. As it was, everything—the language, the cheesy combat (and not martial-artist-skillful, I might add, only stage-combat-skillful)—was so over the top that it was hard to take the whole thing seriously. At least the costumes and the set were nice to look at.
Off the Page with Keith Bunin at Circle Theater
Another perk that comes with dating a member of a theater company is the inside track I get on events at the theater. Not only am I privy to whatever Lisa tells me about the inner political workings of Circle Theater, more importantly, she keeps me updated on other cool events, like this one, when playwright Keith Bunin came to Circle Theater for a moderated discussion about his play, and about the life of a playwright. As a theater junkie, as a teacher of English, as a wannabe writer myself, these two hours were mana from heaven.
Jane Eyre: The Musical
Nothing Emily or Charlotte Bronte published could ever be considered cheerful and sunny. The same goes for this musical adaptation of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre. In high school, I was seized by the desire to read Wuthering Heights. It had something to do with a girl. I later found out that the girl wasn’t worth the effort. Neither was Wuthering Heights. I had never read Jane Eyre, but all you really need to know about the story is wonderfully summed up in this doggerel parody published in Maurice Sagoff’s Shrinklits: Seventy of the world’s towering classics cut down to size.
My love behaved
A bit erratic:
Our nuptial day
Brought truth dramatic:
He HAD a wife,
Mad, in an attic.
I fled! I roamed
O'er moor and ditch.
When life had struck
Its lowest pitch,
And uncle died
And left me rich.
I sought my love
Again, to find
And awful fire
His home had mined,
Kippered his wife
And left him blind.
Reader, guess what?
I married him.
My cup is filled
Up to the brim:
Now we are one,
We play, we swim,
The power we share
Defies all pain;
We soar above
Life's tangled plain--
He Mr. Rochester,
Me Jane!
The poem, at least, is entertaining. The same can’t be said of the musical.
It’s not that the actors were bad or that the set was poorly designed or that everyone was off key. On the contrary, the actors did a wonderful job, the set was solidly put together and no one’s voice was terribly irritating. But none of that could overcome a blasé script, inane music and the inherent downfalls of the period: poor English people in the Victorian period dressed in drab colors. It was, at times, like watching a funeral.
About half an hour into the show, I leaned over to Lisa and whispered: “Shakespeare Kung Fu was better.” We both had a good (although silent) laugh.
* * *
Yes, there is certainly much to do in Chicago. I definitely like it here.
And during all of this, the student teachers are often told that their first year of teaching will be worse. Worse because, as unprepared as we might feel as mere student teachers, at least there is a safety net of mentor teacher, field instructor, classroom instructors, and the collective weight of Michigan State University. As a first-year teacher, you’re flying solo. Performing without a net. Sure, at least you’re getting paid, something student teachers don’t get and often complain about, but that paycheck comes with more responsibility, more stress.
I wouldn’t say my first year of teaching has been worse, stress-wise, than my year of student teaching. In some ways, such as the aforementioned paycheck, it is much better. But, like any first-year teacher, I have often wanted to pull all of my hair out in frustration: with my students, with other teachers, with administrators, with the bureaucracy, with myself.
Thankfully, I live in Chicago. As stressful as teaching, especially the first year, often is, as often as I fantasize about quitting my job and living the Bohemian life of a writer (that’s what summer is for, I tell myself), I only stress about actually living in Chicago when I’m stuck in traffic. Other than the inevitable traffic jams, life in Chicago has treated me very well so far.
If I were a more disciplined writer, a more timely reporter, a less-stressed teacher, I would have written about the following things months ago:
Flanagan’s Wake
Lisa and I hadn’t been dating very long, but her best friend, Naomi, wanted to check me out, make sure I was OK and all that. Naomi also happened to be acting in Flanagan’s Wake, a mostly-improvised comedy playing at the Pheasant Run resort outside of Chicago. So we killed two birds with one stone: we spent an afternoon laughing ourselves senseless, and then went out to dinner with Naomi.
Since the audience is integral to the performance of the play—the idea is that the American cousins have come to the recently deceased Irish man’s funeral to pay their respects, and they often have to remind their forgetful (or simply drunk) Irish hosts about vital information concerning Flanagan’s life—my favorite part of the play was when I was asked to remind everyone what Flanagan thought the afterlife would be like. I knew the word “bidet” would come in handy sooner or later.
The Credeaux Canvas
One of the benefits of dating someone who is a company member of a theater group is the free tickets she can get to shows. This wasn’t the main reason I started dating Lisa, but it is a nice perk. The first such show she took me to was the Circle Theater (www.circle-theater.org) production of The Credeaux Canvas, by Keith Bunin. The play uses the plot of three twentysomethings who plan to forge a “lost masterpiece” and sell it to an unsuspecting collector to examine the rules we set for ourselves and the roles we choose to play for each other. It was, in short, fantastic: the intimate set (and setting—Circle’s small theater seats fewer than fifty people), the razor-sharp dialogue, the perceptive themes all added up to a top-notch theater experience.
And, as an added bonus, I got to watch an actor I hadn’t seen since my graduate days at Central Michigan University: Jason Powers. In fact, we’d been in the same summer theater group together. Now he’s doing a lot of acting in Chicago.
Pilobolus Dance Company:
Yes, “pilobolus” is a real word. No, it’s not dirty. Well, not metaphorically, anyway. “Pilobolus (crystallinus) is a phototropic zygomycete - a sun-loving fungus that grows in barnyards and pastures,” says the official website of the company, www.pilobolus.com. “Pilobolus, the arts organism, germinated in the fertile soil of a Dartmouth College dance class in 1971. What emerged was a collaborative choreographic process and a unique weight-sharing approach to partnering that gave the young company a non-traditional but powerful new set of skills with which to make dances,” which is the website’s fancy way of saying what you see at a pilobolus concert looks something like a cross between modern dance and partner yoga—and it’s mouth-agape-awesome.
This was the second formal “date” Lisa and I went on, if you can count Credeaux as the first. We’d been out to dinner many times between the end of August and the middle of October, which is when we saw Pilobolus at the historic Chicago Theater, but we’d never actually gone out together, couple-wise, until Pilobolus. (Yes, you’d think seeing a movie together would have been simple enough, but for us, it wasn’t. Trust me. To date, we’ve only seen one movie together: The Incredibles. And that was just before Christmas.)
Shakespeare Kung Fu
It sounded so promising, a surreal melding of two of my favorite things: the immortal poetry of Shakespearean dialogue and the cheesy camp of bad kung-fu movies. Shakespeare Kung Fu turned out to be a disappointment; its main redeeming feature, however, is that it gave both Lisa and I something to laugh about on the train back to my place.
When Lisa first told me about this new play by “award-winning Chicago playwright Will Kern, best known for his popular and critically acclaimed long-running play Hellcab” (so sayeth The Store Front Theater) my first thought was “Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?
After we suppressed our laughter for the hour that the show ran, my thoughts ran more toward debating with Lisa whether the show would have been better if the actors had played the Shakespearean stuff more seriously or if they had hammed it up more. As it was, everything—the language, the cheesy combat (and not martial-artist-skillful, I might add, only stage-combat-skillful)—was so over the top that it was hard to take the whole thing seriously. At least the costumes and the set were nice to look at.
Off the Page with Keith Bunin at Circle Theater
Another perk that comes with dating a member of a theater company is the inside track I get on events at the theater. Not only am I privy to whatever Lisa tells me about the inner political workings of Circle Theater, more importantly, she keeps me updated on other cool events, like this one, when playwright Keith Bunin came to Circle Theater for a moderated discussion about his play, and about the life of a playwright. As a theater junkie, as a teacher of English, as a wannabe writer myself, these two hours were mana from heaven.
Jane Eyre: The Musical
Nothing Emily or Charlotte Bronte published could ever be considered cheerful and sunny. The same goes for this musical adaptation of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre. In high school, I was seized by the desire to read Wuthering Heights. It had something to do with a girl. I later found out that the girl wasn’t worth the effort. Neither was Wuthering Heights. I had never read Jane Eyre, but all you really need to know about the story is wonderfully summed up in this doggerel parody published in Maurice Sagoff’s Shrinklits: Seventy of the world’s towering classics cut down to size.
My love behaved
A bit erratic:
Our nuptial day
Brought truth dramatic:
He HAD a wife,
Mad, in an attic.
I fled! I roamed
O'er moor and ditch.
When life had struck
Its lowest pitch,
And uncle died
And left me rich.
I sought my love
Again, to find
And awful fire
His home had mined,
Kippered his wife
And left him blind.
Reader, guess what?
I married him.
My cup is filled
Up to the brim:
Now we are one,
We play, we swim,
The power we share
Defies all pain;
We soar above
Life's tangled plain--
He Mr. Rochester,
Me Jane!
The poem, at least, is entertaining. The same can’t be said of the musical.
It’s not that the actors were bad or that the set was poorly designed or that everyone was off key. On the contrary, the actors did a wonderful job, the set was solidly put together and no one’s voice was terribly irritating. But none of that could overcome a blasé script, inane music and the inherent downfalls of the period: poor English people in the Victorian period dressed in drab colors. It was, at times, like watching a funeral.
About half an hour into the show, I leaned over to Lisa and whispered: “Shakespeare Kung Fu was better.” We both had a good (although silent) laugh.
* * *
Yes, there is certainly much to do in Chicago. I definitely like it here.
posted by Christopher at
3:28 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home