Sunday, 5/20: “If This Neighborhood Could Talk” @ Lifeline Theatre

Sunday, May 20th at 2:00pm at Lifeline Theatre - 6912 N Glenwood Avenue.

From Dorothy Milne:

Check it out!  New play about affordable housing issues in Rogers Park and nearby Evanston.  One performance only!  And you know someone in it!

Are you free this Sunday at 2pm?  Interested in the issues of our neighborhood?  do you like plays that are only 40 minutes long?  And hey, do you like knowing someone (Gregory Altman) who’s IN the play?  Here’s the scoop, this is Way Cool –

Lifeline Theatre is hosting one performance only of:

If This Neighborhood Could Talk

Initiated by Next Theatre of Evanston, it is part of their Next Communities project, which brings community people together with professional artists to create new plays, focused on community issues.   Playwright Ebony Joy was commissioned to create this piece about affordable housing issues in Evanston and Rogers Park based out of workshops with members from these communities.

Admission is free (donations accepted).  Reservations are suggested by calling 847-475-1875 x2.

About the play:

Last fall, Next Communities Director Julie Ganey headed into the community to discover what issues were top of mind for citizens of Evanston and Rogers Park. Over coffee with aldermen, city workers, community leaders and lots of people who just like living in these neighborhoods, the answer came back: “Housing. Gentrification. Affordability. Development.” Community members join forces with Evanston playwright (and Fleetwood Jourdain Artistic Director) Ebony Joy to take a close look at some tough questions about how these communities are growing. How can Evanston and Rogers Park prosper without leaving neighbors out in the cold? Who should bear the cost of affordable housing? And what makes a healthy community?

About the participants:

Next Communities contributors and performers include developers, real estate professionals, affordable housing advocates, landlords, tenants, homeowners, and long term residents of every economic stratum. “It is an ambitious thing to bring a group of strong minded citizens with divergent views into a room together to form an ensemble and create art,” noted Ganey. “At the very first workshop, we agreed as a group that we were not there to change each others’ minds as much as understand why others might feel the way they do.”

Widowers’ Houses at TimeLine Theater May 13

Widowers’ Houses is the the first of George Bernard Shaw’s plays, produced when Shaw was already a celebrated literary critic. Published along with five other plays, Widowers’ Houses was grouped with three other “unpleasant plays,” as opposed to the three “pleasant plays” in the collection. Of the six, perhaps The Devil’s Disciple is the most well known. They all share examples of the fascination Shaw had with exposing the inequities in social life through his acid humor.

The widower of the play’s title is a wealthy man, traveling with his daughter and their retinue on a cruise in central Europe. Also on the cruise is a recently graduated physician, a young man of means but little “breeding.” So little, it appears, that he needs a man of tact to guide him through the social hubbub he might find himself in while on holiday.

The crux of the play is that eligible young bachelor and widowers’ daughter meet and, in secret, become friendly (this is Victorian England after all). At the same time the young bachelor’s man contrives for the widower to meet the physician, become aware of each other’s class, and begin the process of striking a marriage bargain.

The play would end in the first act, but the young man finds out that his would-be father-in-law makes his wealth by renting substandard housing to poor people. He is a slumlord. So aghast is the naive young man that he goes straight to his beloved and tells her he still wants to marry her, but he doesn’t want her (father’s) money. They will just have to live on his income (he has an annuity of 700 pounds annually).

This is the point for true love to assert itself, for the two to fall into each others’ arms, declare eternal love, and, if all goes well, convince the father to give all his ill gotten gains to charity. If that happened, it wouldn’t be Shaw. What does happen challenges our assumptions about the roots of wealth and power in our society. Along the way, we recognize similar issues we face a century later, issues of gentrification and public housing, privatization and profiteering.

The May 13th performance of this play is a special event of the Labor and Arts Festival. Tickets, normally $25, are discounted to people who mention the Festival. The special price for Festival attendees is $20. In addition to the savings, theatergoers will have the opportunity to attend a post-performance discussion with community activists and analysts well aware of the housing and income issues working class people face today. We’ll hear from them their views on the relevance of the play and we’ll have an opportunity to offer our own takes on the play and the issues raised.

Panelists are:

• Fran Tobin, who currently works as Midwest Regional Coordinator for Jobs With Justice, and has years of experience throughout Chicago dealing with issues of affordable housing;
• Beauty Turner, assistant editor for the award winning newspaper of and by public housing residents in Chicago, Residents Journal;
• Maria deJesus Estrada, PhD, a professor at Harold Washington College, and editor of the Tribuno del Pueblo, a bilingual newspaper that concentrates on poverty issues; 
• Willie “J.R.” Fleming, Cabrini Green resident/ organizer/ documentarian/ website designer and researcher with the Coalition to Protect Public Housing. Fleming Presented Testimony before the U.N. Office of the High Commission on Human Rights this Year. He is currently the Chairman for the Hip Hop Congress Community Chapter in Chicago which deals with issues of social and economic injustice using music as a platform to unite the people.

Check out Timeline Theater’s website to learn even more.

Remember to mention the Chicago Labor & Arts Festival when purchasing your tickets! See you at the performance. . .