Various Playwrights
At: Collaboraction at Steppenwolf Merle Reskin Garage, 1624 N. Halsted
Phone: 312-335-1650; $30 ( $50 festival pass )
Runs through: July 1
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
Don't accuse Collaboraction of trying too hard to be hip. If you don't want to dance during the company's 7th Annual Sketchbook Festival of short plays, that's your problem.
Collaboration does what ever it can to facilitate a funky groove. DJs and live bands perform, kids play and an open snack bar fills time between playlets. Homemade mirror balls, glass crystals and translucent fabric panels hang from the ceiling to get you in that happy 'happening' mood.
With so much sensory fun stuff happening, you'll be more likely to overlook the occasionally weak play in the Sketchbook mix. Luckily, those works—which generally run under 10 minutes—are few and far between in Program B of this year's Sketchbook. ( Program A rotates in repertory. )
If there's a pattern in this year's line-up, it's a tendency to veer toward narration instead of outright dialogue. That's not a bad thing, especially when some of the strongest pieces utilize narration to create very effective drama and imagery.
The most stylish piece is Mara Casey's It's About Time, which is almost entirely about conjuring up a Western/film noir atmosphere. Danny Goldring's smoke-stained voice narrates what normally would be stage directions as we see Marlene ( Nina O'Keefe ) prepare for a date with cowboy Kenny ( Jim Faruggio ) in a desolate motel. The ending is a shocker, but it definitely lives up to the drawn-out buildup.
Ray Baker and Haruna Tsuchiya narrate Mark Harvey Levine's numbers-obsessed LA 8AM as a reminder of how precious and fleeting life can be amid mundane patterns for an ordinary couple ( Bob Turton and Kelly O'Sullivan in effective walk-on roles ) .
Latino pride in heritage and place fill Barrio ABC's, which features Sandra Delgado amid a clutch of cute kids who spell out what makes their neighborhood special. It's a bit Sesame Street, but it paints a colorful picture of Latino culture.
Without a doubt, the funniest and perhaps the most dramatic piece is Itamar Moses' Szinhaz, a Q&A session with an ex-Soviet avant-garde theater director named Istvan ( Steve Pickering ) and moderator/translator Marie ( Isabel Liss ) . Pickering's defeated references to awful productions and his sexual flights of fancy are hilarious, though he turns up the drama when he unexpectedly starts interrogating Liss' amiable Marie.
Other pieces aren't as fully fleshed out, though there are flashes of directorial brilliance and fun ( particularly in the underwater ramblings of Guy Massey and Cary Cronholm in Keith Huff's Deep Blue Sea ) . Sketchbook shows once again how much fun Collaboraction has with creation and collaboration. If you choose not to participate, then it's your problem.