Sketchbook has gotten a makeover this year, and it’s about time. Collaboraction’s annual exercise in sensory overload—combining short plays, live music, art exhibits, and alcohol consumption—had been at risk of falling into irrelevance as its party atmosphere and ever fancier production values threatened to overwhelm the playlets that were supposed to be at the center of things.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Well, things are different this time. The 12th Sketchbook, appropriately titled “Reincarnate,” is more substantial than its recent predecessors and more sober. (Don’t worry, though, there’s still a bar). Of the five programs comprising the festival, only one follows the seven-minute rule. The other four collectively offer three half-hour plays and three one-acts clocking in at about an hour each.
The most straightforward is Lawrence Bridges’s The Interview, in which a guest (a different one at each performance; it was hip-hop artist Himself at the show I saw) sits onstage and answers personal questions read by an actor seated in the audience. The guest doesn’t know what’s going to be asked, presumably so that we can get the unadorned truth—but the format is also wide-open to long-winded rambling. I kept wishing for a documentary filmmaker to come along and edit out the boring bits.
Through 7/15: Wed 7, 8:15, and 8:30 PM; Thu 7, 7:30, and 8:45 PM; Fri 7, 7:15, 8:30 and 9 PM; Sat 11:30 AM, 2, 2:30 ,3:30, 7, and 9 PM; Sun 12:30, 1:30, 3:30, 5:45, and 7:45 PM; Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee, 312-335-000, collaboraction.org, $10-$65.
