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Admittedly, I don’t know him all that well, but it looks to me like Dave Buchen is having a sweet life. A founding member of Chicago fringe titan Theater Oobleck, he’s written and performed in loads of plays, often under a pseudonym like Dave Boo-Khaloom. At some point he found love and moved to sunny Puerto Rico. Now he’s embarked on an act of extravagant artistic idiosyncrasy—a grand geste. Buchen and composer Chris Schoen are leading an effort to adapt Charles Baudelaire’s initially notorious, now classic book of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal, for the stage. Not just any old stage, either. Their goal is to create a separate cantastoria performance for each poem in the 1861 edition.
Keep a Song in Your Soul: The Black Roots of Vaudeville
In the heyday of vaudeville, a cartel called the Theater Owners Booking Association controlled the touring circuit for African-American performers—who claimed the acronym TOBA really stood for “tough on black asses.” This fall the Old Town School of Folk Music re-creates that era with Keep a Song in Your Soul: The Black Roots of Vaudeville, which combines the talents of ragtime pianist Reginald Robinson, tap dancer Reggio “The Hoofer” McLaughlin, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a North Carolina string band whose CD Genuine Negro Jig won the 2010 Grammy for best traditional folk album.
OCTOBER
The Spirit Play A new Strange Tree Group play in which hoax becomes reality for three fraudulent “spirit mediums” in Victorian Chicago. 10/5-11/6, Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph, 312-742-8497, dcatheater.org, $10-$20.
