Anne Bogart came to do a convo with Mary Zimmerman today at the university. I had no idea who Zimmerman was, except that she was from Northwestern and she once dated Ira Glass, although I'd heard people from NU talking a lot about Argonautika, but I hadn't connected the two. She turned out to be the most adorable and articulate woman...the kind of person who might be a composite of all the greatest high school english teachers you've ever had. And I think high school english teacher because she really plays herself up as folksy and cute and approachable, which makes you forget that two seconds ago she just threw in some exquisite dart of commentary on acting, or myth, or whatever. Like I said, she's a professor at Northwestern, so, there you go. She said one thing, she called back to the idea of production as an excavation of a preexisting object, but added that actors and directors are archaeologists but also the buried object itself. Also, that casting is destiny.

I kept wondering through the lecture if this woman is what people think of when they say "Chicago" theater. I'm still not positive that Chicago theater has an absolutely unique character, other than there's a million dust in the wind little companies and vibrant non-equity community. But I think of all the things I enjoy seeing here: Neo-Futurists, Steppenwolf, 500 clown, Barrel of Monkeys, the whole improv scene...and it's a lot of companies where the process tends to be the main attraction. And they're processes that are very contextualized to the people and places by which they're formed, so they're not such, like, identifiable schools of training or method. There might also be less of an interest in content here, especially the political. Anne's first question today was about the struggle to be an artist in this era, and Mary started talking about topicality and about how Argonautika turned topical by accident, but the general feel of her answer was, "what struggle?" and I kinda tend to agree with her. I know people say that the theater should be more aggressively tackling the political, but really, if nobody's going to the theater, where's the incentive, if your aim is to change the world? That's not to say that political plays aren't worthwhile--if they aren't, then no play is worthwhile--but there's still a reason that nobody's looking to start their revolution in a theater. On the other hand, this is Chicago, and everyone here's a little more interested in their own self and process, and maybe a little less in touch with the international sensibility than New York.

I haven't left Hyde Park in three weeks, so tonight I'm going to see Devil in a Woodpile at the Hideout. I hope this does something to jumpstart my guts.