Free Street Theater

Best Play I Saw by Mistake

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/best-play-i-saw-by-mistake/BestOf

by Tony Adler
[June 2010]

Abe's in a Bad Way

Free Street Theater

As a matter of policy, the Reader doesn't review amateur or community
theater. But there are spots where the line goes all wiggly. What
about a troupe that produces serious, sophisticated work but doesn't
pay its actors? Is it amateur or professional? Or one that's been an
off-Loop fixture for years but basically functions like a community
outfit, putting hobbyists onstage? And what about the children?
Groups like Brain Surgeon Theater­whose ensemble includes both adults
and kids­and the much-praised, youth-centered Albany Park Theater
Project challenge easy distinctions between real art and kid stuff.

Founded in 1969 by off-Loop theater pioneer Patrick Henry, Free
Street Theater has evolved from a guerrilla enterprise a la the San
Francisco Mime Troupe to an arts outreach organization with a
significant focus on youth. I'd frankly lost track of it when I got
the press release in April for Abe's in a Bad Way, a Free Street
performance piece imagining Abraham Lincoln's thoughts as he lay
dying, so I didn't realize that the show was performed by a cast of
adolescents with only rudimentary skills. If I had, I wouldn't have
gone to see it for the Reader. But then I would've missed a small
marvel. Abe owed an enormous debt to the cunning stagecraft of its
adult director, Anita Evans, who wisely avoided forcing her cast to
act in the conventional sense. Her stylized approach made it easy to
forget about their lack of chops and concentrate on their youth­and
their youth, in turn, redeemed the dark material. Earnest, exuberant,
diverse, and just plain young, the kids themselves embodied a new
birth of freedom.

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