Blog

from BJ Jones

It’s the week after the opening of Souvenir and our audiences and the critics appear to be most pleased.  It’s funny, charming and surprisingly moving, but what appears to fascinate our audience the most is that it is about a real person.

Over the years, work that reflects our human condition seems to resonate quite strongly.  Character driven, and quirky plays and musicals like last season’s Grey Gardens, or Side Show, the musical about the conjoined twins, always strike a chord with our subscribers and it’s one of the reasons I look for these interesting pieces when considering our upcoming seasons.

I like to find work that shakes up our perceptions of social and political issues, like Permanent Collection, Gee’s Bend, or Ground, a play that we commissioned and will premier at the Humana Festival this year in Louisville.

I mention this now, as I am in process of choosing next season and often I am asked by subscribers how I choose our seasons and how far in advance we work on it.  I tell them we are always looking for work that they will respond to.  We have had the rights to Souvenir for two seasons but we found other plays that felt more appropriate and timely, so we did those first. READ MORE

Souvenir is a “deceptively complicated piece” (Chicago Tribune) - funny and light on the surface, yet delving more deeply into the lives and psyches of its two characters than one might initially realize - and we’re so pleased that the critics have seen it that way.  Some of their thoughts on the multi-layered nature of the play are below.  We’d love to hear yours.  (To comment, just click on the title of this entry, then scroll down to find the comment area below.)

“Temperley also probes such fascinating matters as how singers really never hear what everyone else hears, and thus they don’t really know how they sound. They all take things on trust. More interesting yet, the piece also explores the question as to whether such little things as correct notes, pitch and rhythm really matter as much as the guardians of culture say they do. If you can move people without them - maybe move people more because you don’t have them - then who needs them?” -Chicago Tribune

“[Powers] succeeds in making Jenkins seem less a figure of fun than a true American original. She has a game foil in Anders, who brings out the tenderness in McMoon’s reluctant ability to overlook his patron’s flaws, which might otherwise seem like opportunism.” -Time Out Chicago

“Everyone with a need for artistic self-expression is not necessarily artistic. But who is to say what is art? Florence Foster Jenkins had the means to do what she felt was her destiny.” -TheaterWorld.com

“[Cosme McMoon] accepted a well-paying gig he thought would be short-lived and under-the-radar, but it turned out to be life-changing as for years he provided impeccable musical accompaniment for a woman who seemed blithely unaware of how dreadful her singing was, or, if she knew, simply believed that art was simply what you imagined it to be in all its glory.” -Chicago Sun-Times