Press and reviews for DOG, a theater company

A big draw at P.T. Barnum's American Museum just before the Civil War was "The Happy Family," described in the museum's Illustrated Catalogue and Guide Book as a "collection of beasts and birds . . . living together harmoniously in one large cage, each of them being the mortal enemy of every other, but contentedly playing and frolicking together, without injury or discord." Of course some say the predators were so mistreated they didn't have the energy to prey, and Barnum himself supposedly suggested that you can get the lion to lay down with the lamb as long as you have a plentiful supply of lambs--but the exhibit gave lots of people the satisfying sense that if dumb animals can get along, there was hope for humanity. More recently it's inspired the Magpies' Happy Family Series: an array of 21 short performance works about "'harmonic antagonisms,' the awkward equilibriums, true or false, that we forge with our loved ones/enemies." In nine programs of five or six selections apiece, strung out across three weekends and curated by Magpies member Shawn Reddy, the series presents work by a gaggle of Chicago writers and fringe artists (including former Reader staffers Brian Nemtusak, David Wilcox, and Martha Bayne). Among the offerings: Beau O'Reilly on house sitting, David Kodeski on families of choice, and Barrie Cole on a 40th birthday party. Jenny Magnus performs new songs, Theater Oobleck's Dave Buchen takes on Noah's ark, and his fellow Oobleckian, David Isaacson, does a chalk talk on "the age-old story: man meets beast, man loses beast, man gets beast in the end." DOG, a Theater Company, contributes a short film, Found Objects Theatre Grp. stages a Mark Chrisler play about Lyndon Johnson and Aleksey Kosygin on the eve of the Six Day War, and H.B. Ward emcees in the persona of the Tamer.

CHICAGO READER, [february 13, 2008]

vitrine at the Rhino Fest

At first, this collaboratively created piece by Dog, a Theater Company, has the stink of MFA avant-gardism about it. The three actors make gestures that clearly derive from theater games, relate to one another in ways that suggest improvisations--and theoretical discussions--to which the audience wasn't invited. And there's a device involving projected words that seems to want to be innovatively cute. The smell never completely goes away, but it begins to matter less and less as the actors' chops, wit, physical training, and mutual trust take control. H.B Ward is particularly impressive during a long passage involving a large, framed piece of glass. He looks like the guy in the next cubicle at work, but moves any and every way he wants.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, [march 25, 2005]

Stage Guide: Critic's Picks

ACTION ITEM: DOG DOES NOT PERFORM
It sounds ridiculous: A film about a theater troupe's inability to put on a show for this year's PAC/edge Performance Festival. Subtitled "DOG does not perform," "Action Item" had no business being anything more than a time-wasting jape. Yet as the members of the DOG theater company spill their guts in separate, makeshift home videos wittily assembled by Jason Greenberg, all the soul-searching about time crunches, health problems and incompatible pets turns into a strangely funny collage portrait of experimental artists staring middle age in the face. •

[* Editors Note: This section is excerpted from a longer article.]

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, [march 16, 2005]

PAC's 'L'air Lair' Creates a Site to Behold

....Among a handful of PAC/edge first-week offerings, the other standout was an extremely droll video from DOG Theater. Titled "Action Item: DOG does not perform," the 60-minute piece as described in the brochure finds the members of the performance collective offering "honest motives, clear dialogue and compelling reasons for its utter and complete absence onstage." In other words, it's a video about why the DOG folks couldn't get it together to do a real show.

The results had no right to be this amusing. Matters of health, family responsibilities and incompatible pets are dealt with wittily and well by director Jason Greenberg, who spliced together the performer's first-person home movies to create a collage portrait of artists attempting to balance work and life without falling apart. •

[* Editors Note: This section is excerpted from a longer article.]

TIME OUT CHICAGO, [march 10 - 17, 2005]

Fringe Benefits

by Christopher Piatt

The PAC/edge Festival showcases the best and the boldest of Chicago's experimental theater scene. But be warned: Passive bystanders are not allowed. You'll have to step over the art in order to get to the art at the PAC/edge festival, Performing Art Chicago's annual alternative theater showcase, which kicks off Friday 11 at Lakeview's Athenaeum Theatre.

"You don't understand art installations?" asks Susan Lipman, the festival's curator. "Sorry. You're gonna have to see a few if you want to get to the play."

Lipman's goal is to fill every square inch of the former high school with live art. "I think of the building as my collaborator," she says. In previous festivals, artists have performed in the lobby, coat-check closet and vending-machine room for as few as five people at a time. Sometimes people are caught off guard, but Lipman isn't worried about scaring anybody away.

Audiences at the festival have grown every year since its debut in 2003. That year 4,000 people showed up, despite (or perhaps because of) a bill filled with oddities such as the guerrilla clown troupe 500Clown and the physical performance company Plasticene.

This year's festival features more than 50 performances over four weeks. Longtime high-profile fringe companies like the Hypocrites and the Neo-Futurists are joining the lineup for the first time alongside more obscure troupes like DOG and the Rubber Puppet Monkey Company.

Flummoxed? The following are our picks for the festival's best bits.

[DOG's show is one of seven recommended for the festival.]

....Action Item: DOG Does Not Perform
Director Leslie Buxbaum founded DOG specifically for PAC/edge. Though the troupe has only performed at the festival, it frequently shows up on local theater critics' year-end top ten lists. In this performance, actors literally phone it in—calling from off-site locations where they're doing things such as laundry and making dinner—to explain why they're unable to perform. •

[* Editors Note: This section is excerpted from a longer article.]

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CHICAGO TRIBUNE [December 19, 2004]

Raising the Curtain on a Fine Year on Stage

THE YEAR'S BEST: THEATER [MIchael Phillip's list of top ten theatrical plays of 2004]

"Windows Server 2003/Active Directory Infrastructure" by DOG, a theater company, at Performing Arts Chicago's PAC/Edge festival, Athenaeum Theatre. A wonderfully sly exploration of technology and its discontents. Hope they remount this one.

[Editor's Note: This is excerpted from a longer article.]

THEATER JOURNAL [56.4, 2004]

The Johns Hopkins University Press
pp. 699-701

Performing Arts Chicago, Athenaeum Theatre

Chicago. 2, 4, 11 April 2004
by Roger Bechtel

"You smell nice," remarked the smoky female voice as I rushed into the men's room at the Athenaeum Theatre. Persevering through the flash of panic that I had burst into the wrong quarters, I quickly discovered that I was in fact the inadvertent victim of art, a video installation by Sandra Binion titled watercloset(s), mounted and running on the wall that screens the urinals from the gaze-real or imagined-of the open doorway. Timing, of course, was the source of my initial discomfort, but Binion's relentless, insinuating colloquialisms ultimately touched a deeper nerve. For beneath the seductive voice was a broad-shouldered invasion of that most private of public spaces, the refusal to allow even a moment's respite from the endless demands of performance—theatrical, social, or biological. This kind of aggressiveness has long been a hallmark of the Chicago aesthetic, and it was on abundant display at the second annual PAC/edge Festival, a collection of the best of Chicago's performance vanguard. Crammed into every theatre and hallway, coatroom and restroom of the Athenaeum building, an enormous, converted, turn-of-the-century recreation center and schoolhouse, the Festival presented some forty-four performance, theatre, and dance events, nine workshops, and seven ongoing visual installations. And while most of the forty companies represented enjoy only a local reputation, some have recently begun to garner national attention, including such Chicago stalwarts as Goat Island and Plasticene. As with most festivals of this size and inclusiveness, the quality of the events varied widely, but even the least fully realized of the performances offered its own rewards. From among the twenty-something pieces I saw, here then is a look at some of the Festival's more outstanding performances.

....Leslie Buxbaum Danzig's work was also represented by Windows Server 2003: Active Directory Infrastructure, performed by the DOG theatre company. With Buxbaum Danzig as artistic director, DOG was formed in 2003 for the express purpose of transposing seemingly incongruous cultural material to the stage. In the case of Windows Server 2003, the company applies the eponymous software program of the title—a program designed to enable communication between scores of computers—to the human actions and behaviors of its performers. The piece begins with a video projection onto white chairs of two of the actors attempting to explain the function and operation of the active directory infrastructure program, which, of course, is almost incomprehensible to anyone but the most adept computer technophile. What does escape the jargon and tortuous prose are the two principles on which the software is based: that everything must be named, and that all operation depends on replication—the latter requirement ironically highlighted when the live actors enter to interact with their video representations.

Applied to the vagaries of human conduct, however, punctilious naming and exact replication are impossible impositions, and here they serve as a frame for the gentle comedy of human failure that ensues. Again there is a metatheatrical aspect: the actors ostensibly play themselves, but instead of making theatre per se, their collective task is more abstract, something along the lines of to measure and document whatever enters their field of play. What follows is a series of vignettes amounting to a catalog of innately human obstacles, a collision of accident, ego, emotion, desire, and, in the most humorous moment, gluttony. Yet this is not simply a comic spin on man versus machine, but an attempt to uncover the subtle pressures that information technology imposes on how we perceive our own communicative capacity. What often emerges is a deep frustration with both our comparative imprecision and the inevitability of uncertainty. When Laura, the most vulnerable and volatile of the group, haltingly says, "Sometimes when you're not thinking and you just do something...," the remorse and self-recrimination are palpable.

The theatrical reputation of the city that gave us Steppenwolf and David Mamet, as well as the more recent Tony-winning revivals of Death of a Salesman and Long Day's Journey into Night, is understandably associated with a sinewy style of acting and a rock-solid American realism. There is, in fact, a kind of Bulls-and-Bears sensibility that marks the culture of Chicago, and which seeps into even the most esoteric of its artistic institutions. The PAC/edge Festival was no exception, and if anything unified the multiplicity of events it was an unabashedly physical approach to performance coupled with a refreshingly unpretentious willingness to take risks. What the PAC/edge festival most clearly demonstrated, however, was that the city is rife with young artists eager to exercise their intellects as well as their bodies, and dedicated to the idea that the human condition can be illuminated as clearly through experimental forms as through mirror reflections. Inarguably, as the PAC/edge Festival proved, Chicago's theatrical life is far more diverse and rich than its reputation allows. •

[* Editors Note: This section is excerpted from a longer article.]

CHICAGO TRIBUNE [march 17, 2004]

PAC/edge fest touches a ragged nerve

Just now, in the middle of pulling together some impressions of the opening-weekend Performing Arts Chicago festival known as PAC/edge, I made a series of phone calls to a Tribune technical support analyst and a publicist. We tried to figure out why the publicist's photos weren't being "recognized" by the Tribune's computer system. The "trouble ticket" opened on my behalf read, tersely, "GRAY Unable to Open PSD file." The tech support guy sent me an e-mail about it, to go with all the other trouble tickets I've racked up in the recent months since our system was "upgraded."

I bring this up because the best show I saw in the PAC/edge opening weekend was called "Windows Server 2003/Active Directory Infrastructure." It's a hilarious and sweetly melancholy performance piece from the DOG theater company. If ever you find yourself ambivalent about the glories of technology, as they relate to the puzzles of human interfacing, DOG's multimedia achievement may speak to you too.

It begins with video footage of two men talking about software programs projected onto a couple of high-backed chairs. One by one, the five DOG performers—including the two actors we've already met on video—enter and exit using the Athenaeum Studio 1 space's five doors.

At times, we seem to be witnessing bits of a rehearsal in which actions are either "approved" or deemed confusing by colleagues. (If only all workplace interactions could be categorized in two easy ways.) The actors sometimes pause to watch the text of the show they're performing crawl across the stage floor: Laura Grey and Vicki Walden execute a mini-drama over the control of a mysterious timer: Grey and Erik Hellman engage in a tryst, but are interrupted by their voyeuristic cohorts.

"Windows Server 2003" glides on the wit, precision and distinctive charm of its ensemble. (The other two are John G. Connolly and Jon Sherman.) Too often, performances on the subject of encroaching technology are pots calling the kettle black; they're so in love with computers, the critiques of the subject ring false. Not here. Director Leslie Buxbaum Danzig's touch is light, complex and sure. •

[* Editors Note: This section is excerpted from a longer article.]

CHICAGO READER [march 19, 2004]

Good Things In Small Spaces

When uptown presenters showcase downtown performers, the results usually resemble the faux boho of Rent, exuding the odor of investors' money rather than artists' sweat. But Performing Arts Chicago's second annual PAC/edge Festival, a five-week affair that includes the city's most progressive performing artists, still smells of little but perspiration…Though PAC's executive director Susan Lipman generally imports international acts to upscale venues, she knows the fringe well enough to construct a festival around its stalwarts…DOG, which debuted at last year's PAC/edge, is every bit as subtle and sophisticated as Lucky Pierre [see full review text]. But while Lucky Pierre seems content to do little or nothing onstage, here DOG exhibits a maniacal need to entertain—even when nothing entertaining is at hand. In Windows Server 2003 / Active Directory Infrastructure the five performers spend most of their time trying to charm the audience into not noticing that they have little to do, scurrying about, each convinced that he or she should be over here instead of over there. More often than not they end up in a line downstage, fidgeting nervously, self-conscious grins plastered on their faces. A nightmarish cloud of anxiety hands over the show: it's as if the group spends the hour gearing up for a performance that somebody's forgotten to script.

The humor that results, built around a center left intentionally empty, was the hallmark of DOG's debut piece, Interference, as it was of the group's predecessor, the late Cook County Theatre Department. Not surprisingly, Windows Server 2003 is most satisfying when it seems least concerned with its purported subject: an actual Microsoft program, Active Directory, that allows a network of computers to communicate with one another. What matters is that five unsettled and unsettling people in a tiny space, each of whom seems to know the others inside out but is attempting to hide some unknown secret, are interacting with the explosive, unforced joy of a virtuoso clown routine. Director Leslie Buxbaum Danzig coaxes such fine-tuned performances from her cast that you'd swear this ensemble had been together for decades.

But…this show falters when it takes a literal approach. As a program note explains, the piece is an attempt to translate the computer program into theatrical form—but too often there's a one-to-one correspondence between the program and an onstage line or gesture. In Active Directory each bit of created information must have a unique name, for example. So when one actor names an event that just happened—"Vicki left"—another actor must "approve" this appellation. If Vicki leaves again, the event must be described in different words for the description to be approved. Moreover, each named event must be tied to a particular fraction of a second, frozen on a digital clock projected onto the stage, or it must be repeated.

Much of the piece unfolds in similarly literal fashion, resulting in abundant humor but a restricted metaphorical space. Windows Server 2003 doesn't give the mind much room to wander, pinning down meaning rather than opening it up. Though this skilled ensemble is enjoyable in itself, the evening promises more than it delivers. •

[* Editors Note: This section is excerpted from a longer article.]

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES [april 10, 2003]

A Large Package of Edgy Performances

Interference, a work of physical theater, was created by Leslie Buxbaum Danzig and DOG, a theater company, and involves an ingenious use of multimedia effects by Gary Ashwal (video), Jason Greenberg (set and graphics), Brian S. Bembridge (lighting), Angela Altenhofen (costumes) and Dave Pavkovic (sound). Very loosely inspired by "The Birds," the ancient Roman comedy by Aristophanes, it is about modern communication (or, more to the point, the lack of it) among lovers, co-workers and a truly zany pair of winged and beaked creatures. It goes on a bit too long, but some of the sequences are richly satirical and even moving. The quirky creator-performers are John G. Connolly, Laura Grey, Tere Parkes, Lea Pinsky, Jon Sherman and Vicki Walden. •

[* Editors Note: This section is excerpted from a longer article.]

CHICAGO READER [april 4, 2003]

Running With Empty

Want a peek at avante garde heaven? The inagural monthlong PAC/edge festival features some 15 full scale productions, a healthy smattering of workshops, lectures and installations, and even an open mike at which you might win the grand prize of $8....Fully half the festival's anchor productions are world premieres, including Curious Theatre Branch's Chumpstrap: A Madras Parable and Refracting Rainbows and 500 Clown's 500 Clown Frankenstein. But the biggest gamble is the new DOG in its first piece ever, Interference. This playful, demanding, thrillingly hip conundrum—the most exciting debut since Lucky Pierre burst on the scene seven years ago—offers irrefutable proof of the fringe's continued fertility.

To some extent DOG rose out of the ashes of the late, great Cook County Theatre Department. Three of its members—actress Vicki Walden, set designer Jason Greenberg, and composer Dave Pavkovic—were part of that brain trust, and DOG's extraordinarily talented director, Leslie Buxbaum-Danzig, saw Cook County's work in its waning days. Like that troupe, DOG eschews most theatrical conventions—character, scene, plot, and, some might argue, content—in favor of lyrically quotidian actions: corralling an errant office chair, speaking in awards-ceremony style into a vacuum nozzle, eating birdseed while perched on a clothesline. And the actor's perform with Cook County's trademark deadpan nonchalance, as though acting were a way to kill time until something interesting happens.

The troupe is equally influenced by Japan's Dumb Type, a high tech, defiantly antitheatrical collective that's visited Chicago twice in recent years. Its influence is felt most immediately in Pavkovic's sparse electronic score, which combines stripped-down club beats with piercing tones to create a menacing sonic cavern. It's also apparent in Gary Ashwal's coy video projections, which blur the line between live and pre-recorded events. At one point an actress exits through an upstage door, and a moment later her head appears in a video projection of a window, as though she were watching us from backstage. Other times we see video of actors offstage drinking coffee, apparently bored to death, while an onstage performer attempts to deliver an important speech about God.

But whatever their influences, this ingeniously understated ensemble—which also includes John G. Connolly, Laura Grey, Tere Parkes, Lea Pinsky, and Jon Sherman—speak a beguiling, original, and highly cryptic theatrical language, and somehow manage to speak it fluently their first time around. The accomplishment is all the more impressive given the oddity of the goings-on: an unflappable customer-service agent is eager to deliver everything to everyone, a mousy woman tries to buy running shoes despite protests from her pushy boyfriend, a man in a cheesy bird costume aims to convince a frantic waif in shoulder pads she can fly, and a stone-faced woman spends most of the evening staring at everyone else.

It's difficult to fathom what all this "means," but like their colleagues in Goat Island and Lucky Pierre, the DOGs forgo meaning in favor of provocation, mystification and intrigue, fixing a Fluxus-like eye on the beauty of everyday human interaction. Wisely, Buxbaum-Danzig avoids pretension by dramatizing the work's opacity: the performers often seem bewildered, as if trying to make sense of the strange people around them. All the action—or, more accurately, non-action—flows like carefully orchestrated music. And thanks to this superb ensemble's exquisite clowning skills, everything's done with abundant humor. Not since Cook County has emptiness been so entertaining; let's hope this promising group offers even more emptiness in the years ahead. •

CHICAGO READER, [november 13, 2009]

Highly Recommended

CHICAGO READER, [february 13, 2008]

vitrine at the Rhino Fest

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, [march 25, 2005]

Stage Guide: Critic's Picks

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, [march 16, 2005]

PAC's 'L'air Lair' Creates a Site to Behold

TIME OUT CHICAGO, [march 10 - 17, 2005]

Fringe Benefits

CHICAGO TRIBUNE [December 19, 2004]

Raising the Curtain on a Fine Year on Stage

THEATER JOURNAL [56.4, 2004]

Performing Arts Chicago, Athenaeum Theatre

CHICAGO TRIBUNE [march 17, 2004]

PAC/edge fest touches a ragged nerve

CHICAGO READER [march 19, 2004]

Good Things In Small Spaces

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES [april 10, 2003]

A Large Package of Edgy Performances

CHICAGO READER [april 4, 2003]

Running With Empty

CHICAGO READER, [november 13, 2009]

Highly Recommended

CHICAGO READER, [february 13, 2008]vitrine at the Rhino Fest

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, [march 25, 2005]

Stage Guide: Critic's Picks

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, [march 16, 2005]

PAC's 'L'air Lair' Creates a Site to Behold

TIME OUT CHICAGO, [march 10 - 17, 2005]

Fringe Benefits

CHICAGO TRIBUNE [December 19, 2004]

Raising the Curtain on a Fine Year on Stage

THEATER JOURNAL [56.4, 2004]

Performing Arts Chicago, Athenaeum Theatre

CHICAGO TRIBUNE [march 17, 2004]

PAC/edge fest touches a ragged nerve

CHICAGO READER [march 19, 2004]

Good Things In Small Spaces

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES [april 10, 2003]

A Large Package of Edgy Performances

CHICAGO READER [april 4, 2003]

Running With Empty

CHICAGO READER, [february 13, 2008]

vitrine at the Rhino Fest